The UK and France combined had more than enough might to fix the situation at the time. Even in 1939 they had a favorable balance of force, but wasted it with a demented disposition of their tanks along hundreds of kilometers of front so that the Germans could easily have overwhelming local superiority of tanks.
It is an accepted fact, that was first pointed out by the Nazi generals themselves in Norimberga’s trial. You can search the data and find it out easily.

As to a fair percentage of the Uk population, i understand not liking wars. But i can reply two things: you do not know yet what’s like to LOSE one, and believe me, you don’t want to learn that.
Second, the SDSR is taking the way of reducing the UK at the position in which it is capable only to fight the wars of America. So this will worsen the situation, not improve it.
It is going to be worse than 1981 if the voices are true. We don’t know what could happen this time that make us regret it.

As to the record budget deficit, i accept myself that defence suffers cuts. But there must be THINKING behind the cuts, and there must be a recognition of the capital relevance of defence, that even before fighting wars, is ENSURING THAT THE WAR CAN BE AVOIDED BY SHOW OF FORCE AND SIMPLE PRESENCE.
Trident deters nuclear disaster.
Strong Armed Forces with power projection and presence deter the Falklands-kind wars.
And about cutting the budget, the 20-years-in-a-row shriniking defence budget did not cause the deficit nor does it matters much to it.

Go look how much Health, Education, Welfare cost to you UK taxpayer and ask yourself if that money is all used well, if the MOD is really the waster.
You’ll be surprised of how well-spent those 36 billions a year are, compared to most of the roughly 664 billions of the rest of government spending.

And ask yourself if it makes sense to ruin Britain’s position in the world while wasting 8 billions on International Aid included Food-for-Pirates in Somalia and condoms in Uganda. And plan to spend even more next year for it.

You still think it is worth the SDSR’s current face?
If you do, i wish you don’t need to regret it too painfully later, because you’re running a major risk without realizing it.
You are self-declassing to the B league, and you could and should stay in A.

Which brings us straight to the “Epic Fail” i already had pointed out earlier in my posts.
Reassuring, isn’t it…?

It would still need an increase in defence spending in either case. It makes far more sense to accept once and for all that such cuts to defence are, as Fox clearly states “impossible financially and intellectually” and adopt a less draconian stance on defence spending, one that accepts that certain capabilities should definitely not be lost.

You know my position about it all. I’ve grudgingly accepted there’s cuts that overall can be survived. But on the other hand there’s cuts that are simply too damaging: there would be no way in Hell to recover from the scenario Fox outlined in his letter.

A similar approach would be the real “Balanced Britain” option that the politicians emptily brag about: it wouldn’t be a full-size sea raiding not a massive army-like figure, but the UK would be able to act either indipendently or in coalition.

Unless you all believe that working in coalition does not mean supplying high-end assets like Sentinel (a never celebrated area of absolute excellence) but also Type 23, Nimrod, Type 45 and the 3 Commando Brigade with its invaluable experience and ability to carry out amphibious operations.

Here it is passing a wrong message: the cuts that come are just cuts. It is no “Global Guardian” nor anything else. The army won’t grow anyway. Nor will it escape a bit of cuts, either. Quite sizeable a bit, most likely.

By any other mean, five minutes of reasoning will evidence how “coalition ops” like Afghanistan require:
-Air support: in short supply. Denmark denied the 4 F16 it was asked to provide, and it is just the latest example
-Attack Helicopters
-Utility helicopters
-Special Forces
-Light Infantry, but with provvision of protected vehicles for patroling in theater
But also carrier-borne air support (the US wouldn’t certainly turn down the offer if someone was able to participate and ease the workload on its own Carriers stuck in the Afghan box), sea-lift, intelligence, recently even AWACS since the sky over Stan is becoming busier and busier.

And Afghanistan is merely the operation of today. Tomorrow, it’ll be just one of “yesterday’s wars”.

Can you see why i say the review is being half-assed…?

i think the general point is that its quite tiring (i certainly don’t have the energy) to keep jumping up and down, foaming at the mouth, every time there is a news story about defence.

Too bad. There’s too much people ready to jump at a polician’s throat as soon as a gold-plated NHS programme is delayed a year and too much sleepy people that never says a thing about how defence is being run from the 1980 to say the very least.

Awakening at war time and scream “there’s no choppers!” and “there’s no armored vehicles” and so along does not work. Noise should have been made when programmes to buy vehicles and choppers were terminated and the MOD told to manage it without the kit.
Even worse so the ones that awaken when the war is going and say “scrap the Carriers to fund armored vehicles and choppers instead, they are more needed!”. Even worse an error: vehicles and choppers come late anyway, money is wasted, blood is spilled, and the navy remains without what it needs.

So that at one point a smartass will be shouting “Where’s the aircraft carrier???”
(1982 docet! A month more and the RN admiral would have answered: “One in India, the other in Australia, Sir. Sorry, we can’t do a thing.”
Instead, while RAF answered: “no way” and the army “without air cover is a no”, the admiral Sir Henry Leach for pure luck and argentina bad-timing could say: “carriers were sold, but not handed over yet!”)

No, it does not work. It definitely does not work. You can’t fight two wars on peacetime budget. You can’t constantly downsize your force and lets its kit grow old and vanish without replacement and then wake up when the need is there and bloody evident.

It is a late wake up.

Also, these are not “stories” anymore. Fox letter is a clear sign that the cuts he contests are very real options getting too much favour in a sea-blind NSC.
It is a very worrisome thing. And the moment to make noise in any possible way, as the UKNDA and other organizations have understood.

Included politicians who had a “just-in-time” wake up and realized that defence cuts will be disasterous for their areas.
Most of them does not really see the real damage, the broad picture of defence, but at least they finally saw the “small” picture.

The more noise they make, the better.

Good to see everyone is being optomistic here! Lot of hyperbole banding around and most of it unwarranted, especially with reference to the RN becoming a coastguard. I doubt anyone here would accuse the dutch, Spanish or Italian fleets of being coastguards and the RN even with quite savage cuts being muted would be bigger and more powerful than those fleets. Likewise with the RAF and certainly with the Army. Its not the 1950s, the UK is not running an empire that requires constant guarding and neither is our constant presence required or wanted around the world. A decent, flexible, “fire brigade” capability is exactly what the UK requires, not a large scale “bobby on the beat” force. The UK will still be one of, if not the most powerful armed forces in europe and given a dire world crisis the combined might of the EU, is still one of the most powerful around.

You are dreaming. Your post lacks any sign of realism and wisdom. You are exactly one of the people the UKNDA very rightly calls the “men of Little Britain”.

You have no real idea of the long term impact of such crazy proposals.

And sincerely, a RN menomated of its amphibious capability, of many of its fregates and hopefully with at least a carrier in half-time service but maybe not even that (depending on how many F35 are bought) is not even worth the italian navy. Confronting it with the french would be humiliating.
The RN will retain the only excellence of the Astute subs. When those go and need replacement, if this nation-sized downsizing trend gets started, the Uk will buy four diesel-electric boats and retreat in its pathetic state of new belgium.

Think many, many, MANY times before you start on the self destructive run.

The RN isn’t interested in TLAM on Type 26. That’s what SSNs are for. We don’t have so many TLAMs that we need more platforms or launch tubes for them.

This is not entirely correct. More than a desire to expand TLAM capability and launching platforms do exists, and the RN tried hard to get them on Type 45 to start with. TLAM is reported as one of the weapons being considered for fitting on the “High End” new frigates, and these should be exactly the Type 26 (what was earlier called C1).
I can agree with you that easily money will once again frustrate the effort, but TLAM is what the Navy wants for the Type 26 at the voice “support of land operations”.
And it may get the army’s benediction this time, and a grudging approbal by RAF if the junior service gets finally real and thinks for the best for the country’s forces as a whole.

There has been considerable public debate and speculation about the fitting of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM) to the Type 45. This speculation was boosted by hints of interest from officials in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March and April 2003. However the RAF tri-service Director of Equipment Capability – Deep Strike (DEC(DS)), who sets the operational requirement, does not consider that a ship-borne LAM is required for the Type 45. Without a firm requirement, the Type 45 PCO cannot fund equipment fit, although a TLAM capability is provided for in the design. There is another complication in that only the Aster 15 or Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles are cleared for Sylver, which in turn is not cleared for anything else (including TLAM) – effectively Sylver would be needed for Aster and Mk45 for TLAM. But to date (mid 2005) the plan remains that initially the Type 45 will NOT be fitted with Land Attack Missiles; a land attack capability and TLAM is not formally a requirement despite years of effort by the RN.

For the Type 45, the TLAM effort failed because of considerable destructive pressure from RAF officers, who evidently fear that the major availability of TLAM and of more launching platforms would allow the UK to cope far too well with shrinking numbers of strike planes.
Exactly as it was for the RAF initial resistance to JCA buy as it was seen as an obstacle for FOAS new planes, the TLAM capability of surface ships was seen as a menace to strike planes of the RAF. What they failed to see is that FOAS, and now not even Tornado, have many chances to go anywhere because of budget cuts.
The RAF behaviour in both cases was childish to say the least, and ultimately damaged the RAF, the Navy and the whole country. Possibly, they’re learning the lesson now.
More insight on the TLAM british strategy here from a report of a few years ago:

The Ministry of Defense has argued that Kosovo “vindicated the principles and decisions” set out in SDR. Kosovo also tested Britain’s TLAM thesis. Central to effective coercion is the early application of credible force. To deter and to show resolve, Splendid’s presence was announced before ALLIED FORCE commenced. Precursor TLAM strikes – to degrade Serbian political, military, and economic strength, to shape the battlespace and enable the combined arms campaign – confirmed TLAM’s coercive and military strategic roles. Not only was TLAM the first weapon used, sometimes it was the only weapon used, delivering ordnance ashore during poor weather. TLAM provided a unique British and European capability in partnership with the U.S. and significantly enhanced Britain’s in-theater force capabilities. Also, the re-supply of TLAM rounds to Splendid answered British concerns regarding the sustainability of TLAM-tasked SSNs on patrol. From a coalition viewpoint, Allied commander VADM Daniel Murphy, USN, stated that “the targets destroyed in the early weeks were significantly TLAM targets.” TLAM was integral to the operation, bringing considerable and sustainable weight of fire. Particularly, its precision gave the Joint Force Commander a tool for reducing risks to friendly forces and non-combatants.
However, employing TLAM did present problems. First, the RN was forced to leave Splendid both in its launch basket and in the hands of Britain’s political leadership, and thus largely unavailable for other tasks. Second, the successive TLAM firings suggest that TLAM’s rationale evolved from strategic, through operational, to tactical purposes, as more became known about its capabilities and uses. NATO forces “were able to bridge the distance from strategic to tactical application… [TLAM] was the most responsive of all the weapons available to the task force commander.” Moreover, it has been suggested that NATO ran out of appropriate TLAM targets, and with political leaders generally favoring unmanned weapons, TLAM was often used against targets usually assigned to tactical air power. It can be argued, with the U.S. Joint Command tasking Splendid, that British TLAMs were used for tactical purposes, and became just another weapon fired from just another platform. Yet what is unclear is the extent to which British, as opposed to U.S., TLAMs were employed for tactical purpose. For example, British officials argue that Britain’s TLAMs were used for strategic coercion and for the shaping of the strategic and operational battlespaces only.

TLAM availability in greater numbers and on platforms other than SSNs would augment Britain’s coercive capabilities and its ability to effect expeditionary power projection operations within the Maritime Contribution to Joint Operations (MCJO), the RN’s emerging military-strategic framework for implementing the maritime aspects of SDR.
Extending the program was discussed during and following SDR, and then after Kosovo. Britain remains firmly committed to the staff requirement of 65 SSN-launched TLAMs. What has changed is that TLAM, a weapon which can supplement or supplant tactical air power with minimal risk of collateral damage, appears a more useful and usable weapon across the strategic, operational and tactical spectrum than previously envisaged, even when employed in limited numbers. British TLAM concepts of operations (CONOPS) have been reassessed. A widely held, but not publicly-stated, view is that Britain purchased insufficient TLAM rounds and will require more than 65. This would be so even if coercion remains as the declared CONOPS. More rounds, whether SSN-launched or otherwise, would provide Britain with greater scope to use TLAM in more than just demonstrative terms (whether demonstrating intent to an opponent or demonstrating partnership with the United States) and in overcoming attrition, particularly if anti-cruise missile defences become available. Perhaps the strongest argument for British procurement of greater numbers, whether for strategic or tactical use, derives from the challenges Britain will face in scenarios where the United States chooses not to become involved.
First considered in the 1990s before Britain chose an SSN installation, surface deployment offers visibility crucial in coercive diplomacy. It would provide more missiles on more platforms than SSNs. Options discussed include: TLAM-capable VLS for the new Type 45 destroyer or back-fitted into the Invincible- class aircraft carriers and the Batch 3 Type 42 destroyers; and fitting carriers or auxiliary ships with box-launched TLAMs. No future option has been ruled out. The Type 45, and the Future Surface Combatant (FSC) are possible long-term options for TLAM deployment.

well most of our allies have lots of escorts to offer

Lots of escorts…? Where???

Italy possibly is going to have only 6 FREMM in the future. Awesome ships, but 6. Plus a couple of Horizon destroyers.
France is dropping to 11 frigates in the long term, with 2 of those 11 FREMM changing to air-defence role since Horizon destroyers were 2 against a desired 4.
At the moment the better-off fleet is the spanish one, which tells you of a crazy Europe where governments must have all been terrible at geography and geo-economy considerations, so much so that European navies now look with envy to the Australia fleet modernization programme.

Also, looking at the capabilities of such escorts, we’d see that true Sub-Hunters are quite few considering the number of subs is actually rising around the world.
The Type 23s represents a sizeable chunk of Europe’s numbers of sub-hunters, and in terms of capability they arguably are the prominent part of the whole virtual combined fleet.
Also, even weakened and shrunk as it is, the RFA alone represents 37% of Europe’s combined capability in terms of strategic assets to sustain deployment abroad.
In terms of SSNs, the Royal Navy is well over the 50% of the force, with France providing the rest.

Should i continue…?

A sensible SDSR should have started from a very few but very solid principles:

1) Both carriers to be built, and at least enough planes to provide a full air group.
2) Amphibious fleet safe, with the 3 Commando brigade safe.

Arguably, these are the most important assets the UK, not the Royal Navy, but the NATION, possesses. The key for power projection and capacity to indipendently affect policy, events and security on the international scene.
The rest should have been built around this assumption.

“…CVFs are the cornerstone of Britain’s defence policy…”

Labour-time affirmation. NO ONE EVER DISAGREED FROM THIS EVIDENCE BEFORE THE ELECTIONS, when voters had to be conquered with reasons and facts.
Now, evidently, reality loses importance.

Blair may be remembered like America’s slave, but if Cameron goes the way he’s apparently taking, in time he’ll be remembered as the one who ultimately shaped the UK exacly in America’s slave.
“…every operation will be carried out in cooperation with allies…” (read America)

That every in place of a more realistic “most” is the difference between the status of indipendent power with a range of options and with an influence and the state of mere reserve of men (pardon, “boots on the ground”) for someone else’s operations. And this while stating that the UK will try and stay out of those operations for a good few years at least. Coherence problems…?
What’s in a word these days…!

There’s an agreement with Australia for common work about the Type 26 and the one multimission-vessel once called C3, which could end up being common development to a degree, and mean Australia and UK will field the same classes of ships.

Also, an agreement on Type 26 joint-development is in place with Brazil as well.

Of course, if the SDSR does not spell the end of the Type 26 and/or changes the Type 26 in a massive, underarmed patrol vessel that Australia and Brazil will have no interest at all in.
Hard to compete with french and italian offers for FREMM frigates with a new ship that’s, to start with, apparently handicapped already by the demented idea of a single small hangar +dog kennel for UAVs.
Get a frigging full size hangar for “up to two” choppers like on FREMM: you aren’t forced to embark two choppers, but at least you have the capability to. It can be zero chopper, one or two choppers, one chopper plus UAVs and such. But get the frigging hangar right!

I’ve read somewhere that the Type 26 is “not going to be succesful in exports because it is too sophisticate and costy a submarine-hunter”, but i think it is not true. It is exactly the opposite.
Brazil and Australia (and many other possible customers i’d had) want EXACTLY a submarine-hunter.
Of course, if the Type 26 is developed with an ancient 114 mm gun, a silos for CAMM alone and a lot of “fitted for but not with”, people will look away from it and purchase FINISHED ships like FREMM. Check all the recent exportations of warships, and you’ll see that DEFINITELY they are all massively capable and well armed ships.

Look around everyone: underarmed oversized patrol vessels do not sell well anywhere.
FREMM is heavily armed, the Aegis-derivative ships of Korea, Australia, Japan and Spain are heavily armed and very advanced as well. The Type 45 did not sell because of how idiotically managed the programme was, and because the RN did not get at least one fully kitted out: it would have been awesome advertising, and now that the british armed forces still have a name and a credibility, it would have worked. (ever seen the advertisings of the 7.62 rifle the UK bought to use as L129A1? The brochure now has this waving Union Jack in first page with the proud announcement: SELECTED BY BRITISH ARMY!)
The Type 26 will sell if it gets a good VLS silos space where UK fits CAMM + (hopefully the navy will manage it this time) a bunch of MK41 Strike Lenght cells for TacToms, space for anti-submarine torpedoes (Stingray for Uk, any other NATO model wanted by customers abroad), and decent provvision for CIWSs and SSM missiles. A definite plus would be the 155/39 TMF gun firing army-style ammo: it is being quietly forgotten, but it was an EXCELLENT idea that even the US would gladly buy to fullfil part of their need for Naval Gunfire Support for the Marines, a requirement that became bloody evident with the loss of the last 406 mm guns on the Iowa battleships and that caused the birth of the AGS on the Zumwalth class.

Since the Zumwalths are only going to be 3, however, the US Navy would still all too happily adopt an army-compatible, NATO standard 155 mm embarked gun to fit on several of its DDG51 to complete its force.

And since the 155/39 TMF was succesful in land based firing trials, i hope it is not killed off now that 10 millions or so are required to complete the work. It is a very miserable amount to spend… So much that i hope that BAe eventually is courageous enough to foot the bill itself and propose the new gun for the Type 26 and put it on the market. I’m sure it would be rewarded. Otherwise, the market will be Oto-Melara only. Their last model 127 mm gun with Vulcano ammunition is a damn fine piece, and it will pretty much monopolize western-dependent market.

The 114 is becoming ancient for real.
And the savings of keeping a single 155 mm Ammunition Stock would be quite great in the long term.