UK Defence – What Next?

Ex-Defence chief in call to cut new aircraft carrier order down to one – The Scotsman

Astonishingly, the quote comes from Marshal of the Royal Air Force The Lord CRAIG GCB OBE MA DSc FRAeS – a major patron of the UKNDA.  Very recently, this same gentleman and his fellow UKNDA patron were calling for Labour to avoid delays to major UK defence programmes, including the two planned aircraft carriers.

Similarly, the Sunday Times carried an article:-

RAF launches dogfight for control of navy’s aircraft – The Times 21 Dec 08

“The RAF is trying to take over the Royal Navy’s historic Fleet Air Arm and assume control of all army helicopters in a plan to cut more than £1 billion from the defence budget.

The navy clashed with the air force at a meeting of senior officials last week. Its admirals are furious about a campaign, waged under the slogan “one nation, one air force” which would see the Fleet Air Arm scrapped in 2013, a few months before its centenary.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, chief of the air staff, is proposing to scrap all 75 Harrier jump jets shared between the navy and the air force. Helicopters operated by the Army Air Corps, formed in 1957, would also come under RAF control. Its aircraft include Apache gunships which support troops on the front line, although transports such as the Chinook are already flown by the RAF.

The changes would leave the navy with no planes for its carriers until the new Joint Strike Fighter is introduced, which is unlikely before 2017. RAF chiefs want their pilots to fly the new aircraft from the carriers.”

By far the worst aspect of this inter-Service internecine fighting (becoming a fight to the death?) is that the Service Chiefs are doing the Government’s dirty work for them. It is a classic example of the ‘divide and conquer’ tactic and there is no-one better than Nu Labour in applying it. If we are to preserve (or better, achieve) the Armed Forces that the UK needs and deserves, the Service Chiefs need (for once) to put down their back-stabbing daggers and turn their forward-facing armament onto the Treasury and Downing St.