Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

It has just been announced on Sky, that the MOD have to agreed to budget cuts of less than 10%.

What next ?

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Can we have a link please.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

What next as in what arfur?
Something like this perhaps? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11556767

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

What next?

Arthur becomes capable of posting links to support his posts?

Failing the appearance of such supporting evidence the admins decide Arthurs posts are trolling the forum?

Arthur is banned?



Alternative scenarios exist, of course - for example ...

- the admins decide they love Arthur posting unsubstantiated nonsense and allow him to continue as a member of the forum.

- ordinary members denied this privilege decide to cease posting/responding in these forums - Arthur remains the only member of Cable Forum.

- The admins are happy, no controversy exists.....

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11556770

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Arthur


READ THIS and learn from it. If you make a statement on a forum it is the norm to provide a link to the source of that information or people will not believe a word you say.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

So did you want them to be cut more than 10% Arthur which will then place our lads on the front line at even greater risk than they are now ????

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Arthur. Do you accept that as a country, the UK is spending more money than it generates?

Assuming the answer is yes how would you deal with that issue?

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Arthur. You've posted a statement, asked a question, but given us no idea as to your own position on the matter.

10% of the defence budget is a massive amount of money. It's also a cut thay's perfectly possible to make without affecting the front line, without endangering the troops/missions, and without cutting jobs. The only problem is that it won't be done the way it should be, the wrong vehicles for reducing cost will be employed, and the required savings will be met but only at considerable cost down the line.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

a JOKE, scrap foreign aid instead ! the military dont have enough money as it is!!

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I really think that your all approaching this at the wrong angle. It's going to be less than 10% after intervention from the PM. The cuts were going to be more drastic which we are led to believe is vital hence the termination of many new schools being built, social services being quite badly cut it would seem, university funding being slashed and students required to pay the highest tuition fees in the world instead.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Perhaps the lesson to learn then is that maybe we should protest (or even riot) when a decision is made to drag us into being peacemakers yet again..Maybe we should leave it to Europe to make those sorts of decisions?

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

If the government leave those sorts of decisions to Europe we should definitely protest.

---------- Post added at 10:25 ---------- Previous post was at 10:14 ----------

It should be noted that claim was made by the University and College Union and has methodological issues, not least of which being that it leaves out private Universities, which charge prodigious fees, and doesn't account for that in some places, such as the US, degree courses are 4 years.

It doesn't take account of various variations either, for example that some institutions have varying levels of fees depending on where in the country the student is from, bursaries, charitable donations to universities that fund courses, etc, etc, etc.

It's a nice easy comparison and a misleading one which conveniently suits the UCU point of view. Their solution is that, because companies benefit so much from this education, the government should raise corporation tax and abolish tuition fees. I'm sure employers such as my own would be fine with that given their last 3 hires were from outside the UK as no suitable and qualified candidates were available.

Regarding other cuts I'll wait and see what the spending review has to say.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Fair enough. I was wrong, I retract the part of my post where I claim it's the highest in the world.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

personally i think it's politics at it's best ,i think cameron has played an ace here ,from a ratings point of view anyway .I don't think the government ever had any intention of cutting MOD spending by more than 10% at all and "super Cam " has rode in and saved the day with his "personal intervention",he's the boss and don't anyone forget it

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

The Military don't need money, the MoD does. It's the MoD's budget that's been cut, provided they spend the money that they have wisely there's no reason why the Military (or anybody else for that matter) should suffer.

The trick is that the higher ups should now be seeing this as a positive thing, they can use the required cuts to drive efficiences (rather than simply slashing expenditure across the board without any thought) and deliver a better service to the public and to the Armed Services.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

:tu:

http://registrar.berkeley.edu/Regist.../feesched.html

Note those fees are per semester, and also note the extra nearly $23,000 a year for non-residents of California. Note California, not non-residents of the United States. You can see how comparing UK fees versus the resident fees, which is what was done, is flawed. Over 25% of Berkeley's intake are non-residents.

Harvard's intake is from all over and tuition is on the order of $34,000 / year.

Including private universities soon skews things.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I suspect you are uncomfortably too close to the truth Martyh.

This smacks of a forced knee jerk reaction to recent comments by Clinton and Petraeus and a rather conveniently leaked memo.

Another shining example of the "special relationship".

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Firstly, the posting l put was on Sky News, if people watch it, they would have seen it.

And if forum team want to leave this forum l will, l don't need people to take the mick, the article was on SKY.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Why would the forum team want to leave the forum, Arthur?

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

then you should post a link to sky news thusly ..

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Pol...ss_Than_10_%25

this is achieved by copying the address in the address bar at the top of your browser and pasting into your message box

or you can do it this way sky link by using the insert link feature in this message box

it's very simple to do and will save a lot of frustration from other members

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

If you seriously intend the people on this WEBSITE to discuss your issue, then you should find them a WEBSITE where they can read up on it, rather than simply hoping we were all watching Sky News at the same time you were.

It really is not difficult to use GOOGLE or any other search engine you choose, in order to find a link to an online version of the story.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I have had a bad day, and l have been told that my job is on the line, if the budget cuts hit my industry.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

got a link for that ?

sorry couldn't resist :D

welcome to the rest of the world

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I'm sorry to hear that, however as Marty has just pointed out, you're in good company.

Be under no illusions Arthur, the current Government is simply clearing up the mess left behind by 13 years of debt-fuelled Labour madness. They are no more to blame for this than your school nurse was to blame for foul-tasting medicine.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

thankyou.

It may now be possible to discuss the MOD budget cuts in particular, rather than having the topic lumped in with a general diatribe against the new coalition government.

I'm, personally, in favour of drastically reviewing the defence budget in isolation from the overall deficit.

This is because I believe we should be taking a very hard look at our role in NATO & how the current procurement process matches that role.

The Trident issue is one item in that process, the proposed new aircraft carriers are another.

Both these items include major implications related to our liaison with the United States of America - which is why I don't think the topic belongs only in a general 'budget cutting' paradigm.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Yep....me too (and I imagine a good many other people on this forum).

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Well no. The current government is responsible for how they implement these cuts, what is cut, and how much is cut. It's perfectly fair to call them out on their decisions.

re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

True, and it is also fair to call out those who comment from the position of the 'luxury of opposition' ... or who otherwise have no actual responsibility or obligation to create and manage a comprehensive budget.

It's very easy to disagree with any one aspect of a budget, especially at a time when huge cuts are necessary. It's quite another to propose viable alternatives, taking into account the knock-on effect on other aspects of that budget.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I've updated the Yoda-esque thread title, as it was really bugging me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11570593


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...ions-like-iraq

Re: Strategic Defence Review: Mod budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Nimrod should have been axed years ago, along with the crusty idiots in the Mod who decided it would be better value than the yanks airborne early warning system, the cuts need to be in the Mod where the rot is. When I think of the billions these Muppet's wasted on crap equipment it makes my blood boil.

When your forces need a particular piece of equipment, & its available to buy over the counter, only a complete idiot would opt for a different & inadequate version, then spend more billions trying to get the thing to work.

The Mod is as bad as the NHS for buying crap, then spending more in a vain attempt to get it to work.

I would double the number to 50.000 civil servants, & leave the forces alone.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: Mod budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I would like to know what exactly we may have lost by scrapping Nimrod - there must have been some reason for developing an ELINT system exclusive of that provided by the USA .

As I understand it the problems with the MRA4 were more to do with the airframe than the systems deployment.

Those systems will now, presumably, be deployed via the Sentinel R1 operating out of RAF Waddington.

As for the aircraft carriers, there seems little point, to me, developing one to handle catapult assisted take off & landings & the other to rely on VTOL aircraft - the VTOL option relies on US development now the Harrier is to be scrapped - if the US is late delivering the F35B, or cancels it, this variant of the ship is going to be severely compromised - the best option is to make both of them catapult capable, imo.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: Mod budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Agreed, this old beast should have been decommissioned years ago and replaced with the very capable US version, in this day and age with the extreme cost of modern weapon systems and hardware we literally cannot afford to design and develop a purely British version just for national pride.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

We allegedley have the fourth highest defence spending after the USA, China and France and you think we should spend more:erm:

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Would these Defence changes affect our capability to defend the Falklands?

Oh and did I hear right that Trident is now part of the MoD budget? So other things in the MoD budget have to be cut more?

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

No, because Argentina doesn't have anything like the military capability that it had in the early 80s and because the islands are now armed to the teeth, unlike 1982 (the dwindling military presence there being one of the reasons Galtieri thought invasion was a good idea ... he didn't think we had the will for a fight).

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I'm really depressed today.Living where I do I have already seen a real decline in MOD places and jobs within this area .:(

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Unfortunately, Maggy, the whole defence area has been similarly "right-sized" since the end of the Cold War; there were 100,000 personnel in the RAF when I was in (70's and early 80's) - 43,000 now (about to be reduced by another 5,000).:(

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

An 8% saving is really not that hard to make in our defence budget and is not something anyone needs to get upset about. As SMG said for years now we have been commissioning projects for kit where perfectly able and sometimes better kit is available to buy over the counter so to speak. We are not a major military power anymore like we once were and have to get rid of that attitude within too many of the desk warriors who feel we are. Not only could it save us far more then 8% it would make us a lot better then we are and despite the paper shufflers we are a damn good military who achieve great things far beyond the kit we have to use sometimes. Being honest i think there will be a massive cull in the public sector in terms of jobs and while i have every sympathy with anyone losing their job lets be honest we all knew it had to happen once labour were gone because they expanded the public side far more then the country could afford.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

This article on El Reg makes for interesting reading

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/20/comment/

On section that stood out, in light of the cuts being made, is the projects that will continue

- so that the final section in the article, regarding acquisition of Chinook helicopters, boggles the mind against that background ...

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Prescient (made over two years ago) sketch by Bird and Fortune :D

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

It's no consolation though and don't forget it's not just army,navy and RAF personnel whose jobs are at stake..It's the people who help to keep the services functioning in the immediate area of MOD properties.Plus all that MoD land that becomes available is prime building and development land.This means an even higher concentration of population in an already overcrowded corner of the South..and I can already point to several former MOD sites that have been developed already in this town..Shame we don't have the infrastructure to match and aren't likely to either in the future.It's even worse in a peninsular town..

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

An idea of where some of the cuts could be made.

Fair enough it doesn't take that many people to phone Washington and demand some new weapons but it shows just what a monster the MOD has become and that level of paperwork and admin exists throughout the public sector.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

There was a very interesting "Dispatches" on defence procurement a few weeks ago:

"Dispatches: How the MoD Wastes Our Billions"

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

its a shame to lose ark royal but since the sea harrier got scraped in the 90s the carrier lost its punch or even self defence against anything as the current gr9 hasn't got long range anti air missiles just a couple of winders so against an airforce it would be up ++++ creek anyway. With regards to the falklands would 4 eurofighters make that much of a difference and the 2 rapier batteries dont think so. It does beggar believe on what we could send to retake the islands buy some harriers from the us marines? Now the current model of the harrier the raf is good for cas missions but that role can be done by either the tornado or euro or worst case the hawk. ↲Now the new carriers should be catapult launch instead of vtol and just buy some rafaels from the french to use with them by the time the ships are ready they'll do fine and only have to wait 4 years to have the over priced jsf working on them.

---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 22:59 ----------

oh sorry about the lak of breaks in the text above but this stupid phone just doesn't like doing that

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I disagree re: the Falklands. The UK may be facing a period without the kind of maritime equipment that re-took them in 1982, but on the other hand the Falkland's own defences are far more robust than they were and Argentina's own military is a very pale shadow of what it was.

We may not have the force to re-take them but Argentina doesn't have the force to capture them in the first place.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

okay the argies haven't got that much in the way of air but those things can change quite easy remember win has 80 odd harriers for sale from now really and yes they aren't a match for the euro's but together with long range anti air missiles from the mirages and a4's they can cause issues

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

If you're suggesting that Argentina is likely to suddenly and rapidly go out to procure a few squadrons of second-hand aircraft, find the money to pay for them and the political will to send them to Las Malvinas, then I'd like to know where you're getting your intel (and you should let MI6 know as well).

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I believe the Falklands should not be used as a benchmark of our overall defence capability.

However, the lesson we should have learned there was that look down radar is mandatory.

Factor that in to the theatre in Afghanistan & the role of the 'drones' doesn't seem to be included in the 'review' - why not?

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

You all forget the UK's biggest conventional deterant, Submarine launched TLAM. We can hit any land mass in the world, we never had that capability before.

The political pressure having 1 or more Nuclear boats sat of a foreign coast is massive. Look what Conquerer did in the Falkland and that was without any land strike capability.
Stick a T boat of the Argie coast with 30 TLAM and watch them back right off. Same with other potential problem states.

I hate seeing our war fighting capability being measure only in our surface fleet which is redundant in the modern theatre. The Ark should have gone years ago i am glad they have finally seen sense and thank god they are not scrapping the Astute project.

And yes i was a sun dodger and probably highly biased :D

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

It's a way to pull out prime forces (and destroy local economies based on their local deployment) from a country that wants independence from Westminster. RAF Lossiemouth is now on tenterhooks.

:dunce:

When Nimrod was removed from RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall, the local economy suffered greatly.

Most of my role in the RAF latter years were in support of Nimrod down there.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Ahem. Don't believe everything you read in the papers. The majority of Scots are quite happy to remain part of the UK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...ecord-low.html

It does however show that in an independent Scotland we wouldn't be able to sustain any meaningful armed forces. Trident would be binned leaving a couple of large naval bases empty and generally Alex Salmond would have to find even more money in his magic biscuit tin.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Alex Salmond seems to be of the opinion Scotland is fine financially and it's the rest of the UK dragging the finances down.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11547485

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

It's a nice cozy world he lives in, detached from the realities of everyday life. In some respects he's like the current opposition in Westminster saying everything sucks and would be so much better with them in charge but don't actually flesh out their claims with solid information about what they would do.

Having this in charge, albeit as a minority government, seems to have worked out fairly well so far up here but I wouldn't want them completely in charge and I definately wouldn't want an independant Scotland.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Why is the Nimrod being classed as an airbourne early warning platform? It isn't. When we wanted a replacement for the Avro Shackleton, a testbed Nimrod AEW was developed, it was ditched in favour of the E3 Awacs platform(also known as Sentry).

The Nimrod comes in two variants, the MR2 which is based at the Scottish base's and is a Maritime Patrol / Search and Rescue platform. The second model is the R1, that is based at RAF Waddington and performs task such as electronic jamming, intelligence gathering, etc. It's not an AEW platform.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Nimrod is also a very good sub hunter/killer... and if surface ships disappear in favour of subs, then the enemy's subs will be able to do their tasks almost unmolested.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

That would bementioned in the post above yours....;)

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

But it does look like the Astute project is scrapping itself as it seems that the Astute class does also have the ability to hit any landmass in the world as well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...lands-11605365

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

I saw that, but "Patrol" doesn't hit home the fact that it's a "Hunter Killer" as well.

Another role was/is escorting Royal flights accross the Atlantic... and watching Richard Branson prang his powerboats. ;)

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

clearly the government puts international aid as more importance then our defense.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

The defence of our shores are paramount, therefore the government are thinking of one thing yet again, MONEY.

An aircarft carrier they have is only suitable for helicopters, not Harriers, it is very strange how they can increase foriegn aid, at the xpense of ther own people.

They are cutting all the forces, so if there is a war tomorrow are they going to rely on the TA to support the country at war, like they are going to rely on specials to walk the streets against crime.

This government has gone totally mad. The people of this country needs forces to fight for this country, not have a government who will weaken it.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Who from arthur? ,who is going to invade us ? as far as i know no country is threatening us

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Cuts of 8%, over four years, are rather generous compared to what various other departments are going to have to put up with.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Arthur, you do know that these carriers (and the design of them) were ordered by the previous Government, don't you?

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Aah, where to start, where to start. :scratch:

First, aircraft carriers are irrelevant if the country was at risk of invasion. We can launch bigger, faster, more heavily armed aircraft from bases on land than we can from any aircraft carrier in existence (even the 100,000-tonne American supercarriers, which are about 40% larger than our new ones will be). The Battle of Britain was won from airfields, not the deck of Ark Royal.

An aircraft carrier is about force projection at great distance, in situations where you can't get agreement from a foreign power to launch your aircraft from their territory, or at least to allow you to over-fly it.

Second, the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers would be perfectly capable of carrying Harriers. The reason they will not do so is that the Harrier is considered too expensive in these straitened times. Originally the Harrier GR9s would have stayed in service long enough to be stationed aboard the new carriers initially, whilst the RN awaited delivery of its new fleet of Lightning IIs. That, sadly, will now not happen. However, the carriers now under construction are to be modified slightly so that in the event of a dire emergency, requiring the UK to be able to launch and land fighters from their decks, they will be able to do so, even if our own new Lightning IIs have yet to be delivered.

This is possible because the MOD has also changed its requirements for the aircraft that are to be embarked. They have opted for the CATOBAR* version of the Lightning II rather than the STOVL* version originally ordered. This will make the new carriers interoperable with US and French aircraft. IMO this is something that should have been decided upon initially. I always thought that opting for STOVL aircraft was an odd decision when they are not going to be constrained by an Invincible-class runway.

*CATOBAR - Catapult Aided Take Off But Arrested Recovery. Used currently by American aircraft carriers.

*STOVL - Short Take Off, Vertical Landing. What Harriers do. Used currently by the Royal Navy.

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

They don't have the force right now

Argentine to increase budget defence 50%

http://en.mercopress.com/2010/09/01/...-falklands-war

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

Re: Strategic Defence Review: MoD budget cuts of 8% by 2015
 

HMS Victory is already in service. She is the oldest commissioned warship in the world. ;)