Defence Spending

[Bravo2sugars]

I've just finished reading todays Daily Telegraph. On the back page is an article about how much Gordon Brown is in the red and paying for the war is going to mess up this years budget even further, blah, blah.

Much of the article discusses the cost of the war, but buried in the middle is a paragraph that mentions rumours of yet another defence review circulating around Whitehall (SDR part III?). At the moment we are spending circa £25 billion or 2.4% of GDP on defence, compared with cold war levels of £54 billion (in todays money).

Now this may just be what the article says it is, a rumour. But maybe the politicians have realised that the extra pocket money we received a couple of years ago is simply not enough and may actually be considering funding (and maybe even manning if thats not going too far) us properly.

Is there anyone out there who can throw some light on this? Are we likely to get the extra cash?

:-/

 

[Shotgun]

Blair and Brown couldn't give a flying toss for the forces, when they gained power they saw the army, navy and air foce as good source of money to fund their PR campaigns as they cut the MOD budget and TA (now be nice) There's no chance any money will go to the forces after this is finished, however many platitudes Honest Tony and the Gay Gordon spout.

The cost of the war is, partly, a con to bring in more tax too. What do people think? Squaddies and the rest, with their equipment, just sit and cost nothing in peacetime? They count the costs based on everything, but we still use kit, fuel and pay the lads.

 

[woopert]

Blair and Brown couldn't give a flying toss for the forces

And worse for the caring liberals, the Forces represent the history and Establishment they detest with a passion and wish to destroy. Who remembers the drive to open up the armed forces to the disabled and the "study" to put women in the Inf that the Brig in charge said was nothing more than a coupl of days "aggressive camping"?

 

[flash_to_bang]

What they will fail to address is the areas where the cuts (sorry, efficiency measures) have made the most difference.  Units need to be able to hold their own stock of spares, so a tank is not off the road for 6 weeks waiting for a throgglesprocketthingy that cost 50 pence.  Also we need the kit to do the job-period.

Tony Blair will I think try to help, after all we are saving his face, but as for Gordon Brown!

He hates us, always has, always will

 

[OldSnowy]

Another cunning wheeze - with the advent of Resource Accounting & Budgeting, and the introduction of such choice gems as 'interest on capital' and 'depreciation', from this year the 'Defence Budget' will - on paper - increase from around £25Bn to nearer £36Bn.

Don't worry - it doesn't mean any real extra money (though we did get some from Gay Gordon last year), but it does imply that Defence psending has increased.

When in doubt, change the rules  

 

[msr]

Seems that there's another £1.25bn on the table

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2891835.stm

 

[PartTimePongo]

You just beat me to it

Chancellor Gordon Brown has announced an extra £1.25bn ($2bn) of funding to help pay for the war on Iraq.
He told the House of Commons that the new amount would take the Ministry of Defence's (MOD) special reserves for the war to a total of £3bn.


That's to spend on war fighting operations. Of course, there isn't much chance of getting it back, if American companies have all the contracts, and are dealing with the oil sales now is there?

I don't know why, I'm really angry, and very emotional about this issue. it feels like when a trusted mate shafts you, or, when you can see a mate is about to get shafted by some bird, but he's so in love, he's not listening.

Blair has done nothing  but suck arrse at Camp David apparently, so good men will continue to bleed for nothing.

 

[ExPara]

Maybe, they can buy some boots and trousers:

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24397

 

[Jip Travolta]

 

[Bravo2sugars]

I've just read an article in todays Daily Telegraph with the ominous title of "Army to axe one in five of its tanks".

Have a look at the Telegraphs website for the full text, but I've abbreviated and paraphrased relevant parts below. In short though, it transpires that there were plans afoot, devised a while before the fighting stated in Iraq to cut between 58 - 84 Challenger 2's and 18 - 24 AS90's. This was initially reported by the journal "Defence Review".

The article elaborates by saying that the measures were part of the MoD's 'Equipment Plan 2003' and were not based on costs (hmmm...) but on the belief that in future the Army would be required to fight "lighter" battles.

The plans however are already been seen as a mistake as a result of the past 12 days or so of fighting. The Americans already reinforcing their heavy armour. I wouldn't be surprised if we followed suit, despite Mr Hoon's denials.

The importance of the AS90's operating under 1 Div has been emphasised by repeated request for fire support from US Marines operating around Nasiriyah.

Further to this is reports that Apache helicopter gunships have alarmed allied commanders by its apparent vulnerability at low level to RPG's and that less than a third of them are currently operational. The Apache is/was intended to take over the RAC's anti-tank role.

the article ends by quoting "Defence Reviews" editor as saying that the plans needed rethinking.

Hopefully they will be. This does look like another exercise in bean counting. One thing that GW2 has proved so far is that we must maintain an effective high intensity capability.

Comments please.

 

[Line_Grunt]

have a horrid sense of history repeating

Anyone care to place bets as to a few more amalgamations after this war is over!!

I have a horrid feeling that we will see the financial short termism demonstrated to such good effect since GW1 rammed down the armed services throats once this conflict is over.  

I'm sure they (the government) will try and package it in glowing terms that they are really spending more on kit, uping the force ratio and improving things for the soldiers - very similar to what is being punted around for the NHS at present.

It is all crap - no matter how clever the kit is you still need somebody to take and hold a piece of ground - airpower on its own does not work - period.  If it did the americans would have won vietnam without any trouble, we wouldn't currently be charging around the desert getting shot up by trigger happy ********* in A10's.

As has been said above - the vindictive narrow minded politicians, whining liberals and politically correct incompetants will want to have a go at the military once this is over to ensure that we don't get too big for our boots!!!!

I'm sure Gordon Brown will have some scheme to help him get out of the trouble he has caused with the economy, by stealing funds and resources from the forces and them happily sending them off to do his and Blairs dirty work. It seriously pisses me off.....

 

[Jip Travolta]

...the future is in our hands then.....

 

[Iraqi_DMI]

Lions lead by donkeys

.................PS:  who ever is advising your ministers, needs to read up a bit more about what this Network Centric Warfare is really about.  Perhaps by GW3 you will have grasped, its about full visibility of ALL assetts, not just the enemy's.  

Try  Here http://www.dodccrp.org/ncwPages/ncwPage.html

Not here:   http://news.mod.uk/news_headline_story.asp?newsItem_id=1848

Someone on your side really hasn't grasped the "Spend to Save " concept.

our argument is with the donkeys, not the lions

 

[woopert]

our argument is with the donkeys, not the lions

who is our ?

 

[Bravo2sugars]

I agree with WOOPERT, either IRAQI_DMI has sausage fingers when it comes to typing or he needs to reconsider what he posts on this site.

 

[Iraqi_DMI]

Clearly, english is not my first language.

To clarify:  There can be no doubt in the capability of those delivering your warfighting capabilities at grass roots level.  ( I refer to these as lions, above)

• As warfighters, you have consistently identified IFF as an explicit need in the Land environment.
• Your political leaders pay court to their Yankee masters, citing NCW in their political speeches
  {second URL in my last post above}.
• Yet, despite talking the talk, your leaders seem unable to find the money to spend on IFF.  From what I have read on the internet, IFF is a critical component of NCW.
  {first URL above}

 

[Shotgun]

Look, why is anyone surprised at what Blair and Brown does?

The Firemen is a good example. Whatever you think of the firees strike, they are now fighting not for money, but for their jobs. They've said they'll take the money offerered, but won't accept what Blair, and that fat twat Prescott, calls modernising of working practice.

Blair every five minutes....we are under a constant threat of terrorism...there is a heightened threat...etc. etc.

Yeah? And? We been living and working over that threat you tosser for years in NI.

What does he do? He wants to cut 5000 firemans jobs, the people who will meet the 'results' of the threat he keeps spouting about, and send them home at night but keep them on call. Of course, that will save paying them when they are only on call.

This isn't in defence of the firees, but the point is this, do you think you can trust this donkey? How long before the forces have a 'modernisation' of working practice? Defence is very low on this idiots agenda and he will take every penny out the system he can squeeze. And it will be dressed up as the forces 'meeting the modern threat effectively' The figures will also be made to look better too to show how they are putting real money in.

This is the kind of thing that pisses me off, our lads fighting his election campaign for the bastard in Iraq, regardless of your views on whether the lads should be there or not.

 

[woopert]

As warfighters, you have consistently identified IFF as an explicit need in the Land environment

Yes in an ideal world, however no country has been able to deliver a viable IFF solution to ground troops to the lowest formation level as the C3 complexities are too great for it to be workable on the current comms platform.

While never ideal, the need for IFF can be lessened with effective SOPs and RoE within the TAR. It is inevitable that FF will happen even with IFF. Also, the more complex your C3 systems, the more probability there will be of eventual error. Anyone who has studied statistics involving Ishikawa Analysis will be able to model the probability factor of error akin to the complexity of the system.

Your political leaders pay court to their Yankee masters, citing NCW in their political speeches
{second URL in my last post above}.

NCW? The second link relates to an MoD press release on the latest revision of SDR and talks about integrated intelligence gathering and real-time or near real-time digital information from multiple sources. What then are you referring to?

Yet, despite talking the talk, your leaders seem unable to find the money to spend on IFF.  From what I have read on the internet, IFF is a critical component of NCW.
{first URL above}

Network Centric Warfare is not dependant on IFF to enable true C4I as this is not concerned from a strategic perspective with formations at the lowest level. The concept of C4I depends on commanders being able to determine what larger formations of men are doing in real-time. Pl and sub-unit commanders are only really concerned with C2 and C3, which should not require IFF.

The danger with internet is that it is full of cranks like you fillin the heads of other cranks who know nothing with worthless drivel and crap that they then go spouting off to other sad anoraks and wind-up merchants. If you are going to start spouting off about C4ISR and other strategic concepts it would be helpful if you 1. got a commission in the army, 2. had served for a few years, 3. went to staff college to learn about the subject of which you speak.

If you want to wind the guys on this forum up, you will need to do better than that. Anyway, I think you had better get back to your GCSE English homework, otherwise your teacher might put you on detention and your parents might stop you logging onto the net to annoy the grown-ups.

 

[Iraqi_DMI]

1. got a commission in the army, ................
3. went to staff college to learn about the subject of which you speak.

If these are two of your three defining criteria, then I now start to recognise how desparate your collective position must be!!!.

May Allah be with you !

 

[Iraqi_DMI]

We are starting to get reports from the BBC in Kuwait that the RAF are dropping inert pracitce rounds on their sorties over Iraq!

Now try and tell me that you have no defence spending issues?  Even having to resort to stealing from the RAF museum to maintain face:

http://www.aerotechnews.com/starc/2000/051600/Raytheon_UK.html

You will probably be dropping soda syphons out of the back of the Islander in GW4!!  
( Crikey, look out Biggles!!  - Have that, you filthy Bosche )