The last Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), patched together after the coalition came to power five years ago, was an embarrassing and unseemly shambles.



The aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, the latest in a long line of ships bearing that name (the first was the flagship of the fleet which defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588) was scrapped at the last minute, together with its fleet of Harriers. Half completed Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft were broken up.

For a country supposed to be proud of its military heritage and armed forces, it was an unacceptable panic-driven debacle that should have humiliated the government far more than it did.

There is little sign that the next SDSR, due after May’s general election, will be any more coherent than the last one.

Treasury demands drove the 2010 exercise into panic mode and there is a real danger that its 2015 successor will be no different. A trio of Commons defence committee reports, rushed out this week to catch the pre-election dissolution of parliament deadline, dramatically illustrate the mistakes of the past and the dangers ahead.

Among withering comments in its report, “Decision-making in Defence Policy”, published on Thursday, the committee described serious shortcomings in the way military operations were planned and procurement decisions executed.

“In Afghanistan in 2005, for example,”, the defence committee notes, “ a risky decision was made to take responsibility for Helmand Province, and then in 2006 to deploy troops to isolated platoon positions in the North of the Province. Decision-makers grossly underestimated the scale of Taliban resistance, leaving the soldiers in a dangerously exposed positions. A province, which the decision-makers initially proposed to control with just over 3,000 British soldiers, ultimately proved to require the presence of 32,000 British and American soldiers, and 32,000 Afghan troops.”

The committee cited another example – the decision to equip the navy’s new aircraft carriers with short take-off and landing F-35 jump jets, rather than a “ catapult and traps” version even though, as the committee puts it, “they could carry fewer weapons, less fuel, would require dramatic reinforcement of the deck, and meant that the carriers could not take French jets.”

Thursday’s report adds: “ In 2010, the MoD tried to reverse this decision, before concluding two years later, that it was too late in the process, to be able to afford to change the decision. In both cases, the MoD seemed to have been poorly informed and misunderstood the nature of the problem.”

The committee continues: “ Those responsible do not seem to have sought the right expert advice, or if they did, ignored it...In both cases, the structure of decision-making was bewildering. One Secretary of State claimed that he was not aware of being in the chain of command. Some civilians seemed uncomfortable challenging military advice. There was little sense of any long-term strategy underpinning the decisions.”

In a report on Tuesday the defence committee said the second large aircraft carrier planned for the navy – the Prince of Wales – would make “little sense” unless enough money could be found to provide it with planes to fly from it and ships to protect it. Bringing the Prince of Wales into service “will involve very considerable additional costs, additional manpower, extra aircraft and the considerable amount of support and protection needed to make it viable”, the crossparty group of MPs warned.

In a report the following day, Wednesday, they drove home the point, referring to the “seemingly uncosted” impact of the second carrier on the rest of the armed forces, as well as the resources needed to service, supply and protect it. Each carrier would need four escort ships, placing an immense strain on a navy already short of ships and personnel, the committee warned.

“The world is more dangerous and unstable than at any time since the end of the cold war”, the Commons defence committee warns. “It is vital to rethink the fundamental assumptions of our defence planning if we are help arrest the descent into chaos, which threatens to spread from the western Mediterranean to the Black Sea.”

Britain must develop the capacity to respond to terrorism, brutal authoritarian regimes, extremist groups holding large territories as pseudo-states, state collapse, and civil war. Witnesses told the committee Britain needs “spooks, geeks and thugs” – intelligence services, cyber experts and special forces – to combat modern security threats.

It makes only passing reference to Trident, though it says, pointedly, one of the key questions the new government must answer is: “Which threats to UK national security is the nuclear deterrent expected to deter?”

The future of the Trident nuclear ballistic missile system – described as Britain’s ultimate strategic weapon - was excluded from the 2010 SDSR. (A recent CND survey of over 500 candidates across all parties showed 81% of respondents would vote against Trident replacement.)

An article in the latest Newsbrief from the Royal United Services Institute reminds us that 25% of the military equipment budget will be spent on nuclear weapons over the next decade, and, on top of this, a significant amount on two large aircraft carriers. “Inevitably”, it warns, there will be “significant cuts elsewhere”.

This can only mean cuts in the very projects that are capable of confronting the new and real threats the MPs spell out in their reports this week.