Date: 17 January 2014
By Ben Barry, Senior Fellow for Land Forces
Former US Defence Secretary Roberts Gates has told the BBC that ’with the fairly substantial reductions in defence spending in Great Britain, what we're finding is that it won't have full spectrum capabilities and the ability to be a full partner as they have been in the past’.
This was refuted in a subsequent BBC interview by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who said that the UK had ’a massive investment programme of £160bn in our defence industries, in our equipment‘ and concluded that ’we are a first-class player in terms of defence and as long as I am prime minster that is the way it will stay’.
Who is right? The short answer is that they are both right. But the next UK government is likely to face further hard choices about defence capability in the planned 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).
The IISS assesses that the 8% defence-spending reduction over five years made in the 2010 SDSR produced a 20–30% reduction in overall UK conventional military combat capability across the three services. The British government decided that its armed forces should do less, reducing the level of strategic ambition. For example, the planning assumption for troops conducting an enduring stabilisation operation was reduced from 10,000 deployed personnel to 6,500. Readiness was also reduced, with more time being allowed for mobilisation and deployment. This allowed the Army to reduce its regular troop numbers by 20% and the transfer of much of its logistics capability to the reserve.
Frontline combat strength was also cut, including the RAF’s Harrier jump-jets and the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, although these are due to be replaced by the F-35 Lightning II andQueen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers at the end of the decade. Some other capabilities were also dropped, including maritime patrol aircraft and the Army’s nuclear, biological and chemical defence regiment.
Gates is therefore right to say that the spectrum of UK defence capabilities has reduced. And if he is seeking to imply that the overall reduction in defence capability means that the UK’s ability to be a military partner to the US has reduced, he is also correct. Officials in Washington are concerned that the United States’ own reductions in military capability will make them more dependent on allies, both politically and militarily, so reductions in British forces will give them no comfort.
But Prime Minister Cameron is also correct to credit his government with investment in defence equipment and logistics support. The UK is continuing to develop and field advanced, modern equipment, including strategic airlift, a new frigate programme, and upgrading its armoured vehicles. It has also found the money to operate equipment and weapons specially procured for Iraq and Afghanistan, such as protected patrol vehicles, that have enduring utility across the spectrum of conflict.
However, this growth in equipment costs makes less money available for training, infrastructure and personnel, as identified by UK Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nicholas Houghton: ‘Unattended our current course leads to a strategically incoherent force structure: exquisite equipment, but insufficient resources to man that equipment or train on it. This is what the Americans call the spectre of the hollow-force. We are not there yet; but across Defence I would identify the Royal Navy as being perilously close to its critical mass in man-power terms.’
The 2010 SDSR aspired to the UK forces transforming into a ’Future Force 2020‘. The armed forces have consistently stated that this requires modest, but real, growth in the defence budget from 2015 onwards. The UK treasury does not appear to have agreed to this, and the influential House of Commons Defence Committee and many UK defence commentators have expressed scepticism that defence spending will rise sufficiently, if at all, after 2015 to fully fund Future Force 2020.
The 2015 SDSR will offer strategic choices to a new government. The MoD has already begun an effort to study the key defence issues, however the National Security Council, Treasury and Cabinet office do not yet appear to have given any strategic direction, including financial assumptions, to government departments. Much of the MoD work is re-examining familiar issues including NATO, European defence and regional dynamics. Defence Secretary Hammond identified that key capability issues would include the size of the UK F-35 buy, rebuilding maritime patrol capability and future military cyber capabilities.
If after the 2015 election David Cameron returns as prime minister, he may well find it difficult to sustain the military capability required by the 2010 SDSR without an increase in defence spending. The 2015 SDSR is likely to require further hard choices.
A full assessment of the UK’s defence capability and defence expenditure will be published in The Military Balance 2014, which will be launched at the IISS on 5 February. Print copies are available for pre-order and will be dispatched after the launch.
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