During a recent House of Lords debate, Baroness Smith of Newnham (Liberal Democrat) pressed the Government for clarity on key defence issues, including the decommissioning of military equipment, procurement plans, and the impact of rising costs on the defence industry, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Praising the Armed Forces and the bipartisan commitment to their support, the Baroness remarked, “We owe them a duty to ensure that defence expenditure means that the equipment for our Armed Forces is the best appropriate and that we are putting the right resources into defence.”
However, she noted lingering uncertainties in the Government’s strategic defence review, particularly around when the commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence would be implemented. “We do not know at this point when the 2.5% is going to be introduced, so that is an uncertainty,” she said.
Baroness Smith sought answers regarding the recent push to decommission military equipment, questioning whether these decisions were driven by rising maintenance costs or long-term strategic planning.
“Could the Minister say whether the decommissioning of equipment is being done now because the Secretary of State has discovered that the time has come and, in fact, it would cost more to keep these ships and other pieces of kit operational? How much is the decommissioning going to cost?” she asked.
She also queried whether decommissioning formed part of a broader review process, asking for transparency on what the Secretary of State and military leadership were considering.
Turning her attention to the defence industrial base, Baroness Smith expressed concerns over how increased national insurance costs might affect SMEs. “While the primes might be able to take that as relatively small change, is that true of the sub-primes? What impact will it have on the small and medium-sized enterprises so vital for the defence industry?” she asked.
Highlighting the broader relationship between defence spending and the economy, she noted the potential for a virtuous cycle, where a growing economy supports greater defence spending. However, she warned, “If the defence sector and the economy as a whole go into decline… what impact is that going to have on our defence expenditure?”
Baroness Smith emphasised the need for greater transparency and robust planning to ensure both the Armed Forces and the defence industry receive the support they need.
“These are some clear questions that we need to understand. They are not intended to be unhelpful, but simply to ask whether we are really giving the support needed to the defence industrial base,” she concluded.
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These initial cuts feel like another attempt to prepare us for deeper defence cuts following the SDR in spring.
the budget has already been increased for next year by £2.9 billion and the government is committed to increasing it beyond that up to 2.5% so why do you think their will be defence cuts? what evidence are you basing your feeling on?
Because they’re a labour government, and that means they’re no different to a conservative one.
All politicians lie
That’s not really much of a quantitative basis to form an opinion.
Agreed
Various questions arise here so just a few of my immediate thoughts.
I am hoping that moves to decommission platforms is more about better more focused spend of the saved money elsewhere in the short term where the budget will remain likely restrained before we build up increasing expenditure thereafter. Though it has to be said making these decisions now when the Review equally is seen already to be used apparently as cover for other decisions with the claim they can’t be made now (ie in terms of reassurance) due to it, is hardly a good look, or even suggests innate competence let alone any understanding of the importance of good pr. Rightly or wrongly it raises doubts and allows those with an agenda to press it home and influence opinion.
If choices have to be made I can’t help thinking losing aging landing ships is probably the lesser of two evils if it boosts more pressing capabilities like say more Archers, or speeding up frigate build et al, simply because I do wonder when and where in modern warfare we will use such assets in the sort of conflict we are increasingly likely to face supporting the Norwegians on their northern coast perhaps? I will beyond these doubts have to listen to those more recently active in the forces or have strategic expertise to truly comment. It has been said they will be replaced however so such capacity does still seem to be deemed important which gets back to the bad look of establishing yet another gap in capability. That said I think any replacements need to be seriously flexible designs that can have far wider use than the Albions. But again that’s a debate others may be ultimately better placed to contribute to.
Because the £2.9 billion was not new money and the 2.5 per cent is still in the realms of dreamland Jim. Also we are already having cuts made. Watchkeeper probably makes sense; Albion and Bulwark questionable but the helicopters being cut is just another reduction in capabilities without a committment to thier replacements.
The overall spend is almost neither here nor there. What matters most for cuts is the amount spent on UK conventional defence capability. Anything spent on operations, on Ukraine, on pensions, on nuclear all subtract from the headline figure, before we get to people and to conventional procurement and maintenance.
And the effect of cuts can be delayed by a long time. If you order 16 frigates when the budget is at 4%, you find yourself in a pickle trying to replace them twenty five years later when the spend is at 2.5% — even though the cut to 2.5% may have happened decades earlier. We haven’t wound down from the 2010 cuts and are still running at less than the 2010 budget. So replacement procurement will be carried out against the background of a lower budget than the previous cycle. Even when we reach the headline figure of 2.5% (whenever that will be), it won’t mean we are spending as much on conventional UK military capability.
The current government hasn’t distanced itself from the planned cuts of the previous administration, which is why we are being told expect cuts to the T1 Typhoons without replacements, and the Warriors retired before Boxers replace them (or whatever). It’s the stated policy of this government to cut first to create headroom. Why would we not believe them?
good piece, Jon well written. The Typhoon tranche 1 point is particularly relevant.
Jim, isn’t most of the increase to fund the supply of weapons to the Ukriane?
The budget is going up, some systems will inevitably be cut in the SDR as nothing lasts forever and systems become obsolete, but it should be a net gain.
I understand that the uavs maybe not fit for the Army, but couldn’t they be used for other departments/organisations? Or are they just that crap.
Well, 7 or 8 have crashed so far depending on where you look and I don’t recall ever reading an article that really said anything other than they’re a waste of money or “troubled” to some extent.
Didn’t they come from a very successful Israeli design? Loads of articles about how poor they are but nothing that explains exactly why they became so poor considering they were supposed to be upgrades. ‘Upgrades’ seem to be a recurring problem with British programmes as we have seen epitomised by Ajax. So is there an inherent recurring problem at and around the MoD and the processes involved, general over expectation and gold plating or just bad luck in an inevitably risky developmental environment.
But I agree this has been an area that has gone from Stone Age to the jet age in around 20years and now with Ai progress still continuing to evolve at a considerable rate. I was working for the major RC company when micro indoor quadcopters first arrived over a decade ago and they took my breath away, I had never flown and model aircraft and been told how difficult model helicopters were to control, but these things were just so easy to control it was eye opening to me.
The Hermes 450 didn’t carry an SAR so the army played around with it asking Thales to tweak it to take IMaster, calling the result Watchkeeper. When the Israelis upgraded their drones to Hermes 900 in about 2012, and we didn’t follow. The Hermes 900 also takes an SAR, so we could have moved over, but we prefered our own tweaking. Before long, all manufacturer’s upgrades applied to the new drones and the Hermes 450 became obsolescent, Watchkeeper along with it.
It might be a little worrying that we recently bought into Camcopter, which didn’t carry an SAR, and asked Thales to tweak it to take IMaster, calling the result Peregrine. I hope we learned the lesson.
I don’t see how a drone like that can be obsolescent if the radar is okay.
It is not like that drones in that class have significant more performance.
Recently, in Oman, they used GMTI radar they’ve recently had added to queue targets for Apache.
That sounds good to me?
Our last asset with this was Sentinel, and that was thrown away as well.
If there was a will, box them up and give the entire regiment to the Reserves forming a Regiment from IT professionals, gamers, Drone flyers, whatever.
If they’re ever needed now, they’re gone.
I believe IMaster comes with GMTI as standard these days. Those on Watchkeepers may have needed an upgrade at some point; however the two naval Peregrines should have it when flying over the shoreline.
It is a very old platform. You can well imagine how out of date the computers on board are.
So you are then in a situation of do you bear the whole cost of reengineering round new processors.
With Protector etc there is a large user base to spread R&D over – in this case just army.
Then the is the issue of packages that it can carry. Those too are individual to Watch Keeper….
Then you get to its not very stellar ability to stay in the sky…so do you want valuable payloads on it or even to be underneath it?
The whole thing was developed before hobby drones became what they are now. So I the controls are a bit more like a grown up version of the hobby model remote control planes I used to fly as a teenager [in the Dark Ages].
That and the retirement of a rusted through T23 are the ones that make sense to me.
Chinook cuts before the new frames arrive make no sense to. One-in one-out on that I’m absolutely behind but what we don’t need are dips in number and therefore flying hours and therefore pilots and maintainers etc.
Albions being binned sends all the wrong messages.
Tankers – why? Something we had plenty of and could in an emergency have a surge capability and attrition loss [unbelievable concept].
i agree, no issue scrapping these drones and unfortunately a very old T23. It amazes me the British Army that’s apparently starved for cash did not get rid of these drones years ago.
While Albion class has no real position in modern amphibious warfare I agree scrapping them before MRSS is ready send the wrong message and for a measly £9 million a year savings.
I’m not too bothered on the helicopters as we do have a large fleet of Chinook by anyone’s standards.
The disposal of the LPD,s , the Waves and chinooks save a a ridiculous few million of pounds but send a message , the current government as the previos one is not interested in defence , so our enemies as Russia , China, North Korea or Argentina can be ready to attack Britain without an adequate answer. It,s a very dangerous action.
Should the army have got rid of its Watchkeeper drones before getting replacements?
Old kit is better than no kit.
To be fair they could procure a decent off the shelf class 3 drone for next Tuesday if they really wanted it.
Not too bothered. You do surprise me. Chinooks at 75, then 60, then 51 now 14 to be disposed of; 14 new ER type to be ordered but no order. Also Puma to be discarded and no new order for the Medium lift Helicopter. More defence cuts?
Only thing I would say is Merlin is not really a medium rotor replacement, although classed as a medium rotor it’s on the border between medium and heavy lift..your traditional battlefield medium rotor is a 10-12,000ib empty 20-22,000Ib max weight ..Merlin is 23,000Ib empty, max weight 33,000Ib…it’s a big old rotor designed for long range and carting torpedoes and ASW equipment for distance and loiter time.
The whole argument about these cuts is ridiculous but please don’t add to the downright lies being told about the LPDs.
The Bay class vessels that are to be retained are in every way inferior in amphibious warfare ops to the Albion class. They have no command control or HQ capability, less capacity for stores and embarked military force, less than 20% of the landing craft and are not built to warship standards. Please do not mention that they can carry a helicopter because you could put a ‘tent’ on the LPDs if required.
We have insufficient crew for the LPDs and they cost more to run and the savings are pitiful but the loss in capability is significant.
Of course they can now quietly reduce the RMs still further and justify reducing or totally abandoning the order for the LCVP replacement programme.
The LPDs required an increase in self defence capability and new ship to shore craft with supplementary helicopter lift being provided by other vessels until the MRSS vessels entered service.
Allegedly these vessels are extremely vulnerable to modern weapons such as hypersonic missiles and drones and I tend to agree without additional protection but people then to fail to mention that if we needed to reinforce for example the Baltic states with British Army equipment using the Point class. Then surely using a fixed port installation is tantamount to suicide or does that not suit the narrative.
I would argue dedicated amphibious shipping is the only way an Island nation such as the U.K. can put its forces ashore wherever it pleases and without the risk of using little more than Channel Ferries.
We have yet again failed to read the lessons of history and understand our unique geographic position in Europe.
Another HM Treasury defence review masquerading as a real SDR.
Spot on.
Indeed those drones are very out of date, in reality drone tec is changing so quickly that at present even if you’re not using and losing them in war you need to really be considering class 1-3 drones as essentially assets with a 2-5 year life cycle and procure with that in mind. So off the shelf, modest priced and just enough to allow your formations and teams to practice the craft of using them, with a clear path to mass purchase if you ever go to war.
Re the other cuts,
1) With the rotors I would imagine that these were knackered and Cannibalised airframes that were on the books but not deployable. At least that’s what I hope. As we all know sometimes things can be on the books but are essentially only there for accounting purposes and are no longer usable without significant investment and rebuild. What interests me is the speed at which they replace the Puma…it’s been delayed well beyond acceptable every Puma was meant to be scrap metal in 4 months time and yet still no medium rotor order..which should have happed 6 years ago. I suspect if looked into there are very few of the Puma airframes that are now deployable and air worthy and many of them have been defacto cut for a few years, either out of airframe hours or just cannibalised for spares.
2) The waves, I would agree with you, apart from the fact that whatever they were due to be scrapped in 4 years and there is no replacement planned..so they were always going. Infact the government was trying to flog them even 7 years ago. As is they are 23-4 years old, wave ruler has been in extended readiness for 4 years knight for 2, both went into readiness after heavy use and no refit, to get them operational would involve an expensive refit and we even have a nice shinny tide class in extended readiness..so the RFA are not even crewing and using the four tides. In reality if the RN and government had wanted 6 oilers they needed have build and crewed 6 tide class not 3 with one in extended readiness 1…this is another cut that was defacto happening from the mid 2010s….and It really shows the assumption around major surface combatant numbers. Personally if the ambition is to increase escort fleet numbers back up to 24 then they will need to order a couple of extra oilers for the 2030s..
3) Albions…this is the cut that hurts..especially bulwark, makes no sense at all.
Hi Jonathan
I don’t really have an issue with a smaller Chinook fleet, I believe many are in storage anyway. I agree we need the Puma replacement confirmed in SDR 25. My primary concern is the lack of a Trance 1 Typhoon replacements- goodbye at least one sqn in SDR 25!.
Re your point on return to 24 surface escorts, I just cant see them finding the money, 19 will be the number. Hope I’m proven wrong in SDR 25 though!
Interestingly , the RAN is planning to expand their surface fleet to 20. And off course circa 8 SSNs.
SB, re your observation
“the retirement of a rusted through T23 are the ones that make sense to me.” Might I add the Typhoon TI fleet?
Anyway , hope you’re well Sir!
they are crap and expensive and no other government department has a need for artillery spotting. These drones can’t fly in bad weather and represent a potential danger. No civilian organization would accept them.
Militarily they are worse than useless for anything other than low end counter insurgency work which we have a much better solution to with other drones.
The big picture on these cuts is that every Whitehall department has been told to shave its expenditure, to help get the public finances under control.
Each of the services has been asked to come up with some limited savings. RAF has gone for withdrawing Puma force, Army for scrapping Watchkeeper, RN for divesting itself of 5 older ships. This is Treasury housekeeping, it is quite separate from the SDSR.
Of course it is regrettable, adding to a long list of kit that has been retired without replacement, particularly notable over the last 14 years. However, some of it will be replaced by newer kit, if not as quickly as we would like.
The 8 elderly Bell helicopters used in Brunei and Cyprus will be replaced by the 6 new aajupiter 2 helos on order. The 14 older Chinooks will be replaced by the 14 new extended range Chinook ERs on order. The Pumas will be replaced eventually by the NMH AW-149. The reason why helicoptet replacement is so slow is mainly down to the piddly size of the rotary budget, which restricts us to buying a handful each year.
This year, budget is already spent on procuring the last 16 Apache AH-64E rebuilds. Next off the rank is the 6 Jupiter 2s, probably 202t/26. Then it’s the 14 new Chinooks; as these cost upwards of £100m apiece, that is going to take 3 or 4 years to get into service. Then finally the NMH, years late.
Nearly all the equipment programmes are in the same state, in that the budget is just far too small to maintain even the reducef number of equipments we now have and provide timely replacements. The Army is hardest hit on this front. The need to get up to 2.5% defence spend is not just a narrow plea for more for defence, it is bleeding essential just to maintain force levels at even their currently miniscule size.
The RN will almost certainly get 6 new ships to replace the 5 it is losing plus Argus, 3 FSSS and 3 MRSS. But again, years later than needed. The Army will start with a clean sheet ref UAV replacement for Watchkeeper. Another gap in the Army inventory, on top of the big hole left by the withdrawl of AS-90 years before its replacement will be delivered.
We have to hope that we won’t be called on to fight a peer war in the next 5 years, I doubt we have ever been militarily weaker than we are at present.
One very interesting point you made and needs to be remembered is that in year budget is the driving force. A programme may be agreed ( say 5 billion pounds) but that does not mean the money is set aside to allow that to be commissioned in the most timely and efficient way possible. Instead a ( limited ) in year budget will be allocated and that means that the in year budget may not allow for timely or even efficient delivery of the programme.
That’s a really good summary piece Cripes
However, you missed one essential point, what will replace the Typhoon Tranche 1?