Budgets and military capabilities

I've argued that...

...some government must decide what operational capabilities of the CF are vital to the national interest and therefore must be funded. And which capabilities are not essential. Otherwise Canada will end up with three services, each of which is trying to be as close as it can be to all-singing and all-dancing (the "multi-purpose, combat-capable forces" mantra--boy is a new White Paper needed). But those services will in fact end up increasingly off-tune and out of step. Because the money will not be there to let the show go on...

Now, the British case:

...
Transformation is something we ourselves have to complete. Why, for example, are we so overstretched keeping 8,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan out of an Army of 100,000? Frankly, it is because we are still trying to shoe-horn expensive projects like aircraft carriers and Eurofighter into an ever-diminishing defence budget. Unlike you, we have simply not matched our increasing interventionism these past ten years with greater defence spending.

Indeed, to use Auden's description of the 1930s, in defence policy we have had a low, dishonest decade. And we are staggering under the burden of equipment projects that, whatever their Keynesian benefits, are no help on current operations. Our carrier programme alone is £3.9 billion from a budget with a £2 billion hole in it. We know that if we are to continue our special military relationship, Britain must conduct a substantial defence review to get its priorities right.

This will mean some loss of cherished, independent capabilities [emphasis added--I would just say that Canada realistically does not have the capabilities to take any major independent military action abroad]. Politicians will be loath to face up to this - cuts in big projects are too public an admission of failure to provide for defence - and senior officers will prefer holding out for more money, as if there were no financial crisis.

But someone has got to take hard decisions. We might, for example, find common interest with the Italian or the Spanish navies in keeping an aircraft carrier in commission under joint command. We will have to be more realistic about the limits to our freedom of what kit we can afford to buy and from whom. To benefit from economies of scale, we will have to co-operate more with the US on buying equipment...

Allan Mallinson is an author and former soldier [his novels are great reads--Flashman without the irony]