Over a year has now passed since the disgraced former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon issued the infamous statement, “2017 is the start of a new era of maritime power, projecting Britain’s influence globally“.

So much has changed in the space of a year. Sir Michael Fallon, the politician that earned his knighthood for being one of David Cameron’s closest friends is now history. The new defence secretary, the politically ambitious Gavin Williamson appears to be fighting the Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip Hammond, demanding more money and an end to cuts.

Philip Hammond has shown himself to be a strong proponent of deep defence cuts, including a recent suggestion that the army could operate with just 50,000 troops. Hammond’s ideas would suggest that he has limited knowledge of the Army’s commitments and how the organization operates. This is perhaps surprising considering that he ran the Ministry of Defence between 2011 to 2014. In 2012, Hammond stated:

After two years’ work, the black hole in the defence budget has finally been eliminated and the budget is now in balance, with a small annual reserve built in as a prudent measure to make sure we are not blown off course by unforeseen events.

The two years refers to the savage cuts issued in the 2010 defence review. One wonders how Hammond did it, unsurprisingly he never got into specifics and yet now the MOD still appears to be struggling with its budget and has another major black hole to contend with. According to a recent report by the National Audit Office, the MOD’s ten year equipment plan is not affordable. Simply put there is black hole that ranges from £4 billion to £20 billion. During his tenure as Defence Secretary Hammond was a strong proponent of supplementing Army Regular cuts with a recruitment drive for the Territorial Army, known as the Army 2020 plan. This policy is also failing and alarmingly the British Army Regular strength has suffered a shortfall and is roughly 4000 personnel short.

Philip Hammond’s previous actions have shown that he is happy to cut in the short term to balance his books with no regard for the nation’s global capabilities in the long term. A recent leak of proposed military cuts to The Times newspaper made for some distressing reading.

These proposed cuts have now apparently been placed on the back burner due to a new defence review that has been launched this month to be concluded by Summer time. Some members of the Conservative party have been threatening to revolt and the issue has caused divisions within the party. Due to the threat of a supposed revolt, I suspect that his review is little more than a short term reprieve for our Armed Forces.

Worryingly the Royal Navy’s amphibious capability has come into the potential firing line in all three of the above options. It seems inevitable that amphibious platforms are still going to take the brunt in the next review. HMS Ocean is being sold to Brazil and this will free up personnel for HMS Prince of Wales. The navy is currently only able to operate one Albion class amphibious transport dock at a time due to one being placed in ‘extended readiness’ since the 2010 defence review. HMS Bulwark is now currently in a state of extended readiness. Despite this rotation, the two ship’s futures have been in doubt for quite sometime. The MOD has potentially seen the culling of amphibious capability, including Royal Marines personnel as a way of cushioning against the cost of the UK’s two new carriers.

Whilst one bay-class ship is mothballed, this still has running costs. HMS Albion cost £2.5 million to place into extended readiness in 2011, along with annual running costs of approximately £300,000 per annum. We can only assume that HMS Bulwark would follow a similar programme, albeit with marginally more expensive inflationary running costs. The worry with this strategy of extended readiness is that from a MOD perspective, £300,000 annual costs could be seen as an efficiency saving, i.e stop it all together and maintain just one or none.

The MOD has been cutting to the bone in the name of efficiency drives. The recent removal of HMS Atherstone and Quorn are two recent examples of MOD cost effectiveness measures. In comparison to the major warship assets within the Royal Navy, Minehunters have much lower running costs, roughly £2.7 to 3 million per annum. It’s a shame to see a gradual reduction in Minehunter numbers as they play a key role for global maritime security for the United Kingdom which relies on secure sea lanes. In respect to the defence budget these are minuscule costs for an essential service, but as we can see, over the years the MOD bureaucrats have been happy to chip away at various small but essential assets:

ScanEagle

RFA Diligence

Batch 1 River Class Patrol Vessel – Despite these ships being replaced, the batch 1’s removal from service comes before necessary. It would have been more sensible to have these vessels compliment the new acquisitions. Of course manning would a problem at the moment.

Anti-ship missile capability: The Harpoon was granted a reprieve up until 2020 but with replacement unlikely until the 2030s. The Naval Air Arm has also no replacement for Sea Skua until late 2020 when Sea Venom is expected to be in service. This current situation regarding anti-ship missile successors has been due to poor planning and finance leaving UK warships to be potentially impotent in the face of an aggressive surface combatant.

Manpower – Reducing the Royal Navy by 5000 personnel may have seemed like a short term money saving solution but it’s had a drastic effect. For starters, the policy was short sighted and within four years the Royal Navy had to ask to borrow engineers from the US coastguard. The reduction in numbers has not made it easy for manning of the two new carriers, making it particularly difficult to justify maintaining other assets i.e Batch 1 River Class, HMS Ocean.

The real worry for 2018 is that Gavin Williamson still seems to think that extra money can be found for the MOD through further efficiency. Williamson has hinted at further cash from a review that he says is not intent on being fiscally neutral. Sadly, the reality is that this defence review is being led by National Security Advisor Mark Sedwill. He has made it clear in the past that cyber security should be the priority against current ideological cyber threat posed by Russia. In contrast to Williamson, Sedwill has already said that the budget is unlikely to rise. In the face of this kind of hostility to the nation’s conventional armed forces it looks like we can expect to see more efficiency savings coming from the MOD in the Summer. However, the government will no doubt describe the efficiency savings as new cash in a bid to reduce the potential for another Tory revolt.

Unless a real term rise in cash is going to be made available for the MOD then we can only expect to see more cuts to procure new equipment. A recent article has highlighted that the seventh Astute Submarine has not been officially ordered. Failure to complete the fleet of attack Submarines and leave them short would almost be business as usual for the MOD. Despite contracts having been completed for some of the long lead items for this final Submarine, the MOD has shown itself happy in the past to cancel procurement despite already spending money on development and production, the Nimrod MRA4 is a classic example of this policy.

The future looks very uncertain and I expect that in terms our Armed Forces will get ever smaller and face a real terms reduction in capability. The problem is that the public are ill-informed and do not have enough knowledge on our defence capabilities and as such it’s easier for politicians to point at large assets such as Aircraft Carriers to deflect any criticism. Without genuine support from politicians that help increase public awareness, defence simply won’t be high enough on the agenda. If anything, perhaps 2018 should be the year we bring defence back into the public eye, not photo opportunities, but knowledge and appreciation. No short term cuts, rather long-term investment in our Navy’s future. If we lose our capabilities, we lose our edge, our global reach and our own sense of self-assurance.