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July 22, 2004
A cut too far?
The latest round of Defence Cuts, the seventh since this government came to power, will see the Navy lose another 12 ships, the Airforce lose its remaining three bomber squadrons, a squadron of Tornadoes, and all the remaining Harriers. The Army is also hit hard with mergers, axings, and reductions all round. In Scotland, six Regiments will become five and then one. The RAF also loses bases and facilities, and the Navy faces similar losses, with the Royal Marines and the Army also having to give up parts of their estates. In all, the strength of manpower will also be reduced substantially, and a further 20,000 jobs are likely to go in industries that support the armed forces. Pretty good own goal I would say.
All of this is to save money so that more high tech kit can be bought and paid for out of an ever decreasing budget managed by morons who think that men and ships can be done away with if we have more technology. As usual we heard the mantra that fewer more sophisticated ships and planes can do more. Well, unless there is some really spectacular secret system out there, I can only say that a ship, plane, or tank can only be in one place at one time. If you go to war with smart bombs and unmanned aircraft, you do eventually reach a point where you have to occupy the ground you have cleared - or the enemy will simply re-occupy it when you aren't looking. The First Gulf War should have taught the Whitehall cretins that, but it is a lesson that has obviously escaped them.
Besides, we are too busy wringing our blood stained hands and being anti-Israel to actually notice that it is not the Jews who are destabilising the Middle East but the oil-rich and blood stained Arabs. But, perhaps that's a lesson too far!
For the moment, this government and their allies in the pen-pushing, feather-bedding chambers of Whitehall are able to decimate the armed forces. However, as Abe Lincoln once remarked, "you can fool some of the people some of the time, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." Thankfully people are starting to notice; perhaps they will soon start to react and do something useful.
Posted by The Gray Monk at July 22, 2004 01:48 PM
Comments
Even though we didn't do as deep cuts as the brits are doing now, the US is still paying the price for the cuts of the late 80's and early 90's. To bad Tony and his boys haven't learned a leason from the US about proper militray manning levels.
Posted by: skipjack at July 22, 2004 05:47 PM
No worries about the jobs. They can all work for the government, investigating the potential for further cuts n the military since this round won't actually save any money (by the time all the pen pushers are employed to investigate it).
I have an alternate suggestion: reduce the number of politicians; fix the salary of the rest to some even multiple of the dole (ditto for the senior public service) and then buy a bigger armed force.
The public service bods will whine but they always have the option of working in industry if they want to earn the big bucks.....
Posted by: Ozguru at July 23, 2004 01:43 AM