Chris

The end of history and all that …

I was lucky enough to be in my school CCF back in the late 80s, Navy section, and so got to go on camps that gave us access to all sorts of places most people never see. When I think of the scale of the RN back then and where we are now it’s infuriating. So much of the stuff a navy needs can’t be bought off the shelf or ordered for delivery next year. We have too few destroyers because some idiot in the treasury decided that a T45 being twice as capable meant we needed only half as many of them (whilst forgetting that one ship can still only be in one place at a time), and they’ve spent hardly any time at sea because they under-specced the generators, all of which have had to be replaced, which has involved cutting open the hulls to get the old ones out.

We only have aircraft carriers because, in possibly their one really good decision, the outgoing Labour government in 2010 fixed the contracts so David Cameron couldn’t cancel them (it would have been more expensive than continuing). He did, of course, have a fleet of half-built RAF early warning aircraft scrapped instead, and delayed the frigate replacement programme with the results we’re now seeing to RN availability. It is utterly, utterly depressing.

I read somewhere this week that France doesn’t have this issue, regardless of its current economic woes, because defence review and spending is substantially influenced by a cross party committee drawn from the legislature which means much more of the decision making is kept out in the open and much less is down to the whim of whoever is actually in power. I don’t know how true that is but something like that could scarcely be worse than our own pointless, seemingly endless, strategic defence reviews which appear to exist exclusively to decide what should get cut next.