‘ Royal Navy & RAF to bear brunt of multi-billion pound defence costs ‘
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/sean-rayment/7908487/Royal-Navy-and-RAF-will-bear-brunt-of-multi-billion-pound-defence-cuts.html

The Sunday Telegraph understands that the heads of both the Navy and the RAF have agreed that their services should face the heaviest cuts in order to allow Britain to play an active part in the wars of the future.

Anything in this? Or a case of list all the possible options as fact and see if you can get away with it. Plenty of quotes from Mr ‘One Source’ too. :rolleyes:

Not sure where the hell this bit has been dragged up from –

The highly advanced but hugely costly Type 45 Destroyers, where the cost for just six ships has soared to £6bn, is also vulnerable.

To be fair to Liam Fox, we don’t know in the context of what he said about the Challengers when refering to Afghanistan.

And he has made the point clear regularly himself that we can’t plan for the next war being just like that in Afghanistan and for the need to have generic forces.

Wouldn’t pay too much attention to this.

Not forgetting possible UCAV’s by that time though or is that too optimistic?

Besides, when the armed forces are taken as a whole – how much more powerful does a country (other than the US) have to be?

Liam Fox was before the Defence Committee today for about 2 hours. Not watched it all yet but for fellow saddos who have time to kill it’s available online here:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6518

Haven’t read anything, but what is the logic behind a smaller more agile force while limiting them to self defence only? Why do you need a deployable, agile force if it does nothing else than defending your glorious island? The logic behind these claims escapes me.

Self Defence of British Interests is what I meant, not just the home Island.

Published by Jane’s 09 July 2010

UK plans to axe a third of Typhoon force by 2015
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is to scrap or sell off almost a third of the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) Eurofighter Typhoon fleet over the next five years in an economy drive agreed in the final months of the outgoing Labour government. Although the incoming coalition government has ordered a review of all UK defence plans, Jane’s has learnt that the MoD is using the plans agreed in the 2010 Planning Round (PR10) as its baseline, leading to fears that the upcoming Strategic Defence and Security Review will make even further cuts in Typhoon numbers

Isn’t this just another option drawn up by the MoD people like the rumoured offering up of MRA.4?

Infact every option gets drawn up, then someone leaks it to the press as a ‘definite’ and the media is full of doom and gloom stories.

File it with ‘sell a CVF to India’

Well if you believe the press, some of whom don’t much like Fox’s brashness then there is a big spat between Cameron & Fox anyway.

Fox is pretty powerful in the Tory party though, and is the darling of the right wing back benchers. Whether he gets his way with Gideon remains to be seen, if it moves he wants to cut it!

Reading the times today, it looks like General Sir David Richards will be the next Chief of the Defence staff.

Confirmed today. So what does this mean for the SDSR? Pro-army input or will it be seen as easier to have an Army CDS when the army cuts are announced

True, although you have the thought that there is rather more communication and even cooperation between the Treasury and the spending departments than previously.

I thought it was interesting that Liam Fox said a week or so back that any Defence cuts would have to be in the medium term and that the Treasury understood short term cuts would have immediate consequences.