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It is inevitable in peace time that regardless of the political complexion of the Government, defence spending is cut in favour of health, welfare, education and so on because that is what the taxpayer’s want. The interesting thing that follows and historically this is not new, just emphasised more in this technological age, defence spending is funnelled into big projects that provide civilian jobs. The thinking would appear to be that building ships, aircraft and tanks can be justified because it creates civilian jobs whereas increasing the pay and conditions for serving soldiers cannot because it doesn’t show up as benefiting the civilian population.

In terms of the Defence of the Realm, this is most likely the worst imaginable and most inefficient strategy that any Government could adopt favouring the hardware (capital spending) over software (the troops). It is also rather illogical in terms of a delivered result set against the cash spend for the UK in the early 21^st Century however and to be fair, there is a dichotomy here which we need to examine by looking at the past and specifically WWII. I will not dwell on the intimate details of each example, information is freely available for those who wish to do their own research.

World War II

The Battle of Britain was when the young pilots of the RAF from many nations, defeated the German Air Force. As far as any “statement” can be, this sentence is totally correct although it hides a far more complex story in historical terms and one example is to look at “aircraft losses”. In strictly numerical terms and depending upon which dates you choose to encompass the actual period of the “Battle of Britain”, the losses are pretty equivalent with the RAF having lost fewer aircraft than the Luftwaffe but not by that many.

However there is a slightly hidden element to those figures which concerns the pilots. For the Luftwaffe losing an aircraft meant an over 90% loss of their aircrew killed or captured and therefore no longer available for future missions. For the RAF it was far less with probably 50-60% of shot down pilots back in combat within a number of days and as by then under Lord Beaverbrook, aircraft production in terms of volume was building, the British were on to a winner.

By the latter stages of the War, Germany had developed and put into production, some of the finest fighter aircraft of the period but because of the attrition of the Allied Bomber Offensive, they had run out of competent pilots to fly and fight them. The point I’m trying to make here is that obviously, the “technology” is important but, without the appropriate people to be able to use and manipulate that technology, it has absolutely no value what so ever !

Today

So let us now return to the 21^st Century and consider or, reconsider what that actually means but, we will stick with the ‘aeronautical’:

There are only two new aircraft projects to consider, the Euro-Fighter – Typhoon and the Joint Strike Fighter. The Typhoon was designed during the Cold War to take on aircraft from the USSR in an air defence role, the problem being that by the time it reached production, the world had moved on and the USSR was no more. The JSF is a next generation aircraft carrier launched stealth fighter jet for existing American Fleet carriers, for the UK to use them, we will have to build some new aircraft carriers.

There are two key problems with these type of projects, the time it takes to develop them and in any manned aircraft, the design limitations and compromises imposed by having a human being on board and their limited G Force tolerances. The aircraft themselves are highly sophisticated, a complex of airframe, electronics and weapons systems which together account for the gestation period these take to bring into production plus their cost. What this all amounts to is an aircraft that cannot be “mass produced” in the sort of volumes common during WWII, but also the complexity means that it takes a very long time to train pilots to fly them. Losing a plane may represent £50 million down the drain but, losing the pilot becomes an unbearable cost because without him, the aircraft is actually just £50 million of electronic junk.

Apply Some Logic Here

However sophisticated these aircraft are, who will they potentially fight against ?

I’m not going to do a country by country political analysis, let’s just look at Russia a country that is still resentful about the “Fall of Communism”, flush with oil revenues and with the historical talent and ability to match the USA in terms of aircraft technology both hardware and software. However, for over a decade there was no major spending in development and that is a very long time period in this game. So if the Kremlin suddenly turns on the R&D funding what are you going to do, spend the money playing “catch up” or are you going to try for doing a “leapfrog in technology terms” ?

The answer is obvious, only a total fool would try to compete, the solution is to jump ahead and in doing so, neutralise the existing technology.

Asymmetric Warfare

If we look at our recent (Western) experiences with “Militant Islam”, what we can see from the Twin Towers onwards is “Asymmetric Warfare” through suicide bombings and so on. The Mullahs are not trying to compete with the West, but by developing “martyrs for the cause”, they have introduced an element that cannot be countered by technology and by doing so, changed the game to their terms, they have turned their “weakness” into a strength and to a fight on ground of their choosing and not ours.

This is very important because throughout military history, choosing the ground on which you fight is key and most often, leads to victory. But it is far more than just that because these people have also reminded us of the need for both offence and defence to have “depth” so that no one “blow or defeat” and however intense can end the war, there are no “knock out blows”.

If you can convince a family in Gaza, a lonely British Muslim of Asian origin living in Luton that their “destiny and religious glory” lies in blowing themselves up and you can repeat this a 10 times a week, how can you be defeated with such an army of Kamikaze soldiers that the “enemies” security services don’t know about ?

One could write at considerable length about this but the question is, just what should we in the UK be investing in with regard to providing an adequate or, capable defence for the citizens of these islands ? In trying to answer this question, we need to accept that our greatest potential threat but also, our greatest potential asset lies in Pakistan and British Asians of Pakistani origin, it certainly does not lie in a pair of expensive aircraft carriers.