British defence budget woes--a lesson for Canada too?

It seems to me the defence forces of both countries face similar, er, challenges--and Brit defence spending currently is a heck of a lot more substantial than ours:

Defence is at a crossroads – with no signpost
So here are some priorities: add 10,000 to the Army; forget ‘balancing’ the Forces...
...
The MoD is preparing a Green Paper on Britain’s future defence requirements [something our government will not do], ahead of a full-blown strategic defence review after the election [ditto]. But the indications are that, rather than drawing ruthless conclusions, the MoD is still preoccupied with “balanced Forces” — the desire to do everything from fighting Cold War-type battles on land, sea and air, to fighting every manifestation of the War on Terror.

With such an approach, all we shall end up with is armed forces that are balanced between themselves — equal pain for all — but not against the actual threat, which requires boots on the ground in Afghanistan and, likely as not, elsewhere too. Defence is at a crossroads: but we are lost exploring the by-roads...

[The] unwillingness by some of the top brass to confront inconvenient truths looks all of a piece with the unwillingness these past ten years to face the facts of a decreasing defence budget and the eye-watering growth in the cost of big equipment projects, let alone the changing requirements of modern conflict. Without crystal clear advice and a sense of priorities, we get short-termism and suffer unnecessary casualties — just as we are now seeing.

The strategic defence review will take place at a time of even less money for defence. There are some instinctive defence truths that ought to be reflected in it. One is “want of frigates”, which Nelson said would be found engraved on his heart. The Navy must put on ice its obsession with capital ships. The Iranian hostages affair in 2007 and the recent hesitancy in coming to grips with piracy shows just how far that glorious service has slipped from the time of Napoleon’s lament that wherever there was a fathom of water, there you would find the Royal Navy. Recovering the real essence of the Nelson spirit ought to be the First Sea Lord’s greatest priority.

The RAF, too, must transform itself from a fast-jet flying club into a tactical air force. It must shift its focus to helicopters and transport aircraft, whose pilots are the real light-blue heroes of current operations. But instead the Eurofighter, a ruinously expensive air-superiority fighter, is being subtly rebranded as a “fighter-bomber” — that’s like putting a roof-rack on a Ferrari and calling it a family car. This is no way to deliver fire support to ground troops.

The Army, bearing the brunt of Iraq and Afghanistan, has to its credit been refocusing itself. Everything not related to current operations has rightly been put on hold. But it is just too small...

Allan Mallinson is the author of The Making of the British Army, and a former army officer

More from Mr Mallinson follows at this post:

I've [MC] 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...

Previous thoughts of mine along similar lines:

...Money, equipments and personnel for the military are important. What is more important is what a country expects the military to be prepared to do with that money, equipments and personnel. That is what this government is unwilling to try to specify.

Note the proportion of money devoted to maintaining a blue water Navy, as opposed to one focused on coastal defence and sovereignty protection. Why does our Navy need to be engaged in the Arabian Sea interdicting rum-runners (see Update)? Or hash smugglers?

The answer: jobs building and repairing ships in Canada, and the hoped-for attendant votes. Western countries have a surplus of frigates/destroyers for any likely multilateral blue water operations requiring such vessels. Canadian ones are not essential for the West as a whole; we are exceedingly unlikely to operate on the blue waters on our own.

Then there's the Air Force. Does Canada really require fighters with top-end aerial combat abilities (as opposed to interception and patrol in defence of Canada and North America) and ground-attack capabilities?

Trying to maintain "combat-capable, flexible, multi-role" Canadian Forces for all three services is, to my mind, simply impossible for those services all to be effective and efficient, given the limited funding that our governments (both stripes) are willing to provide.

So a true "defence strategy" would attempt to:

1) Outline how the government thinks the CF should be employed for national, and then international, purposes;

2) Outline what mix of service capabilities are required to fulfill those roles.

But that would require serious decisions with political and service consequences this government is not willing to make--nor are, I am sure, most Canadians. Will any Canadian government ever be so ready?

More at the comment thread here (I'm for a mini-Marine Corps plus national sovereignty protection--first comment at link). And how about:

A civilian maritime patrol aircraft fleet?

Get mad at me--but get mad at our governments first for not being willing, or able, to think honestly in public.