Defence Spending – The Budget

[scottishmatt]

The defence budget has been increased from £25 billion for 2003-2004 to £27 billion for 2004-2005. :laola:

It’s good to see that the politicians are realising that if they want a military that can deploy around the globe and fight – they need to pay for it. I just hope that this increase is not just to cover current projects that have costs spiralling out of control.

[lew]

WOOOOOOOW!!!


Happy days... wooohoooo... :laola:

lew

[Aldo]

It seems a bit much just to cover current projects so I'd guess it was a general increase in spending. I wonder what this means for the CVF, perhaps the original 66,000 tonners could be resurected.

[Tab]

Talk is cheap from a politician, when I see them spending the money I just start believing it. Lets face it they have been talkling about those carriers now for 7 long years and what do we have to show for it, an artist impression, maybe be they will draw some soldiers and their kit to bring the army up to strength.

[Guest]

I listened to Browns speech, I may be wrong on this but I thought that the camera panned on to Hoon when this statement was read meaning that the extra kudos was to be spent on HOME DEFENCE in the light of recent terrorists attacks.

Perhaps the TA and local councils are receiving this money to boost local defences and exercises, I know it has been talked about in recent months or weeks.

[AdamR]

Meanwhile Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue are being merged with up to 10500 jobs going. Our ports and airports are already loose as a Parisian whore. All this talk of home defence is cheap when the first line is being progressively whittled down.

[mercury]

Weyhey , new uniforms all round

[andy_s]

I can't see it making that much of an improvement as part of the rise will be due to inflation. It'll probably be spent on paying the wages of all those ''valuble resorce('s)'' that is the top brass, the military seems to be accumulating at the moment, not going on where it's needed most.

[voodoo sprout]

I agree with andy_s that any real improvement is unlikely, most of the rise will likely be spent on maintaining what we've got; after all there has been much talk of cuts simply to stay in budget, this will probably just mean we won't be getting rid of anything just yet. And while I don't agree that very large carriers are required, I do think it would be a very worthwhile investment to actually buy our own carriers rather than rely on the French.

And maybe I'm being too cynical, but given the behaviour of the governmetn recently nd of the Conservatives, I'm pretty sure this was just a political move as defence actually started to become an issue. The government has taken a fair amount of flak about the issue, and with rumours about the Tories cutting defence, Brown is hoping to gain the upper hand in an area which the Conservatives will find difficult if not impossible to match. It's similar with the job losses in bureaucracy, he didn't care in the slightest until it became a party political issue .

[Aldo]

The conservatives have said they'll freeze the budget. There'll be no decrease from them but niether will there be an increase. The budget will go towards current and future projects if anything, that is the main source of the budget problems, I don't think it's a coincidence that the extra £2bn is exactly the amount BAE are requesting for the CVF. Not only is the CVF an important part of the navy but it is also the flagship (no pun intended) of the smart procurement policy, so if the CVF failed then all the effort put into this new policy will have been wasted and the MoD and government would take heavy flack because of it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the budget if I were you, it's going through a tough spot now but it's not a sign of things to come. In fact it will get a lot better. For example the Typhoon, Brimstone, Nimrod and a small collection of other projects are heavily draining the budget and are the source of the recent budget deficits. However the Typhoon, Brimstone, Astute, T45 and most others are nearing the end of there R&D stage and are going into full production. This will take much of the pressure off the procurement budget and allow it to be redistrobuted towards manpower and other pressing needs. This should happing within the next 6-7 years but will gradualy get better from now on.

And while I don't agree that very large carriers are required

Why not? Our current carriers are ageing rapidly and will certainly need more time in refit and maintanance in the future so we can't keep these in service for much longer. We can't make more small carriers because the F-35, of which we are 15% of design team, can only carry about 8 of them. Small carriers are also far more unstable in bad weather and sustain a much smaller sortie rate than large carriers. Added to this the inefficiency and higher through life cost of small carriers, building more small carriers would be a waste of money. Not to mention that no hostile country is going to take notice of 8 aircraft parked off there coast, 50-100 aircraft is another story. In my opinion (and the RN's) large carriers are a total nessecity.

Also if we work with the French we will get our carriers much cheaper and there CTOL version would provide good test data on how we can convert our's to CTOL when the F-35 leaves service.