The Big Ticket Items

December 17, 2008 at 6:59 pm

The military budget is spattered with a myriad of projects & schemes from £100k to multi billion projects.

Each of the services has a big ticket item (to coin a current business speak phrase).

These are

1. Navy – Carriers (recently this project has slipped a bit, and looks rocky, but stick with me)

2. Army – Future Rapid Effects System

3. RAF – Eurofighter

For all these, the respective service chiefs would be prepared to “die in a ditch” defending.

Arguably there is a 4th, Political option, and that is “Nuclear” in the Trident renewal commitment made by El Gordo.

Now, we know full well in our heart-of-hearts that 4 multi billion pound projects are simply never going to get completed, and that at best, we can manage 3 (or more probably 2 and the third will be half baked!).

Now lets concider the timings of these things.

The whole british military is currently designed around the Holy Grail of fighting nations, namely LSDI (Large Scale Direct Intervention) which is the politically correct term for what used to be known as “fighting a proper war with a worthy opponent”.

For this we need a load of goodies, but mostly we need a deployable division (We have 1 & 3 at the moment) plus air superiority (much as it pains me, this is the jolly old RAF with their “crates”), and possibly a military sealift / amphibious capablility.

BUT. The massive overstretch that the army component has suffered in the last 5 years has knocked the stuffing out of it, and the big wigs have just done the sums, and told the government that it will not be able to deploy it’s division (if called upon) until at least 2016!!!

So No LSDI until 2016

This leaves some interesting questions / observations.

1. That we could simply cancel all eurofighter operations / flying /upgrades/ maintenance for the next 3, 4 or even 5 years. This would still give them 3-4 years to get ready to be able to provide the Army with it’s air superiority. C’mon RAF, we all need to make sacrifices! It is after all, All they are there for!!

2. That the Joint Strike Fighter, that is the essence of the Carriers is not going to be available to us until (at best efforts) 2012. Therfore, postponing the cariers is not such a loss as they are useless without the “crates”.

My money is on the Trident programm being the one that is “half baked, and the Eurofighter being drasticly cut. What say you?

St Crispin.