These vital ships would have given Great Britain a strong global strategic capability for many years, even decades to come. But that has just gone up in smoke given these now apparently approved savage cuts to defence spending. And I mean savage - 42,000 cuts to military and defence personnel, whole capabilities have been ruthlessly slaughtered. At least continuing with the building of these ships does leave open the opportunity to reverse today's decision to mothball them, but we are not, as they say, amused.
This is a bit of a puzzle. They gut the budget to buy the carriers, then still don't have enough cash for two air groups, then they will sell/mothball one of the ships after three years. No sense at all.
ReplyDeleteAlas, the UK will simply become another small European country.
This is quite sad and disappointing for me. I had heard that there were going to be severe cuts to the armed forces, but I had not believed that they would be quite this severe. While the government continues to squander vast sums of treasure on far less important things, it seems that the military is where they decide they can save a buck. I fear that when Britain finds that she needs a strong navy, as she found in 1939 and 1982 she will not have one.
ReplyDeleteHopefully I shall prove wrong in this, I understand that many nations today are cutting their defence expenditures to the bone right now and none of Britain's colonies seem to me to be in immediate danger (the Argentine navy is in even worse shape, and they seem to be the most determined threat the others like Mauritius or Cyprus do not seem very likely or able to cause trouble ) but if circumstances were to change as they almost invariably do, it will prove far more expensive to regain the power projection capabilities which are being thrown away now.