Lewis Page finds the MoD’s recently announced cuts to — shock, horror — make good military and economic sense:
It doesn’t happen often, but just for once there’s good news out of the Ministry of Defence — good news for British troops in combat overseas, and good news for British taxpayers too. But it’s bad news for the UK arms biz, and bad news for certain regional communities who rely on the MoD to bring them government money they wouldn’t otherwise receive — and don’t particularly deserve.
So what’s the government done?
In essence, they have cut down massively on military things which we don’t — and almost certainly won’t — need, and ordered a lot of things which we are desperately short of.
Other than the reduction of the RAF’s Harrier force by one squadron, the government also indicated they may cut the Tornado force by one or two squadrons. This is sensible because the Tornado was designed to do a job that no longer needs to be done — or, rather, no longer needs to be done by manned bombers. Another big change is that the RAF will be losing their Nimrod aircraft, which has both military and political aspects:
Quite apart from all that, the Nimrod MR2 — being a flying antique — is horribly expensive to run, both in money and in lives. The MR2’s extensive use above Afghanistan in recent times as a flying spyeye and to relay radio messages between ground units in no way justified its continued, very expensive existence; far less could such unimportant work possibly have justified the known risks of refuelling these aged birds in mid-air.
So getting rid of the MR2s loses us nothing important, and will make our service people noticeably safer — the Nimrod has actually killed one of our people for every 15 killed by the Taliban. Better still, this will permit another pricey airbase here in the UK to largely close, saving money to be spent at the front line. As a fringe benefit, the base in question — RAF Kinloss — is in a Scottish National Party constituency, giving people there a taste of the independence from the UK that they have voted for. (Strangely the local SNP member of parliament still isn’t happy**.)
