Time to Get Serious About Defence

Following on from his initial manifesto post, Alastair MacMillan moves on to defence.

Target: Defence forces that are well-balanced to meet the threats that may manifest themselves against us and our allies. To prevent war, we must be seen by our adversaries to be strong in depth.

Until the advent of flight and submarines, battles were fought largely within sight of one’s enemy. Now battles are also fought in cyberspace, real space and via long range missiles and drones controlled from hundreds of miles away.

Not only do we have to be able to match our adversaries in these new areas, but we also still need to protect our coastlines, our shipping (both sea and air) and all our infrastructure: ports, power stations, data and power distribution cables and exchanges, water and food distribution etc, from conventional attack and blockade.

We have the smallest army since before the Napoleonic War, and the navy and air force are both shadows of their former strength. We have a system of recruitment that is totally unfit for purpose – it treats those who volunteer with contempt, tangling them in red tape rather than working to get them into uniform ‘tout de suite’. If the would-be recruit is not snarled up in bureaucratic delay, he or she is likely to be appealing some minor medical idiosyncrasy.

There are some who believe that Mr Putin would never dare attack NATO, and that we therefore do not have to worry about the war in Ukraine spilling over. These are in many cases the same people who said he would never invade Ukraine, and that Britian and the US were scaremongering in their claims to the contrary. NATO is a grouping of strong countries but many like the UK have pretty dysfunctional armed forces, and therefore we are heavily reliant on the United States to come to our aid should Russia turn its attention to the Baltics, Finland or Poland, all of which it lays either full or partial claim to.

The present Prime Minister has promised to increase defence expenditure over the next six years to 2.5% of GDP, and to increase the supply of munitions on to a war footing. That all sounds great, but it is too little too late. We need to be prepared for a war that may happen literally any time, if it is not in Europe it is going to be in the Far East, where China is seeking to destabilise its neighbours, and we could end up as in WWII fighting on two fronts.

Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, old equipment when it went out of service went into reserve. I remember going round HMS Victory from school and the guide pointing out the ships in the distance at anchor that comprised part of the reserve fleet. Now when ships are decommissioned, they are scrapped or sold off. Aircraft used to be mothballed and sometimes in times of need brought out of retirement to fill a gap; all that has changed, rightly or wrongly, but as a result there is little to fall back on when we need to gear up in a time of emergency. Aircraft, ships, tanks are time-consuming and expensive to build, but they form the potential capability that the military has. In time of war, the spring which has been primed in peacetime needs to expand rapidly, pulling in reservists and providing them with the equipment they need to fight.

If we just think about the conventional needs we have, a population of over 60 million that needs to be fed and watered with food, of which nearly forty percent is imported by both sea and air. Almost all our raw materials in terms of metals and timber are imported either as ore or semi-finished, largely by sea. Most of our fuel, whether it be gas or liquid again is imported by sea. This essential trade has to be protected both whilst in transit, but also when approaching and leaving port. In transit, shipping would need to be convoyed to protect against submarine and air attack using frigates capable of dealing with both threats. We have at the moment nine operational frigates with this capability that are already operationally overstretched, and therefore our maritime trade would be almost completely unprotected. Having survived an Atlantic crossing, merchant ships would then run the risk of mines in the approaches to ports. It used to be that every major port had mine sweepers designated to it, but now the navy’s fleet of mine sweepers would be hard-pushed to cover the approaches to the main naval bases at Faslane, Portsmouth and Plymouth.

As far as the threat from the air is concerned, we rely on a limited array of ground based mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries and the six Type 45 destroyers that again have other duties.

There are many scenarios of what may play out, but whatever may be the case we are unprepared both in terms of equipment and also people.

It is essential, and what I would be pushing for, is actually a front-loaded increase in defence spending to rebuild the equipment capability in part destroyed by the present Foreign Secretary when he was Prime Minister, following Mr Brown’s salami slicing of naval capability. This should aim for a minimum fleet size of 40 frigates and destroyers. The quickest way of doing this would be to order more of the Type 45s, 26s and 31s. More aircraft for the navy and RAF, and an enlargement of the army to over 120,000 regular troops. In addition, a renewal of mine sweeping capability which should become a focus for local reserve unts.

At the same time the system of recruitment has to be governed by the aim of getting the volunteer into uniform within days or a few weeks at most, rather than an average for the army at present of 5 months. There is no shortage of those who would like to join up, but the enthusiasm of most is killed by the process. It seems to be forgotten, in their arrogant contempt for those who actually want to volunteer to fight for their country, that people can’t put their lives entirely on hold whilst they wait to be told when their next online interview, medical or fitness test is going to be. We also can’t go on with the situation where a small number of medical ‘prima donnas’ can finish a recruits’ chances at the last minute based on information given in his or her original application, many months or in some cases years after this was submitted.

We have a rapidly militarising China, a Russian economy geared almost entirely to war, there are over twenty regional wars going on round the world, and we are going into an election where defence is barely mentioned. We can keep our fingers in our ears and pretend that all is well with the world, but in doing so we are failing the people of this county. We have a choice: spend 5% now or end up spending 40% in a few years’ time as we rush to try and catch up.

Ah, I hear you say, all well and good but how are you going to pay for it? Largely through spending cuts in other areas, and by changing the way many public services are provided and thereby making the public services considerably more efficient which is for my next piece. It is also worth noting that a large percentage of the equipment budget, spent with UK manufacturers, is recycled back to the Treasury through payroll and other taxes on the businesses doing the work.

Alastair MacMillan runs White House Products Ltd, a manufacturer, distributor and exporter of hydraulic components to over 100 countries. He is a supporter of the Jobs Foundation.

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