British army will never again be among military superpowers, report claims

Thinktank says cuts and Trident plan will leave black hole in finances, but UK will still be able to assist in operations like Libya Britain’s shrinking military will “never again be among the global superpowers” but will have enough capability to assist in operations such as Libya and Afghanistan in the future, a study said on Tuesday. However, the MoD’s finances will be capsized and its resources further diminished unless there is a substantial increase in defence spending to cover the “looming” costs of the replacement for the Trident nuclear deterrent. The warning comes from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank in a tough report which questions whether Britain’s defence crisis is really over. Last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review led to sweeping redundancies across all three services, and the early mothballing of, among others, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and the fleet of Harrier jets. In a brutally frank assessment of the British military, the report states: “The UK will never again be a member of the select club of global superpowers. Indeed it has not been one for decades. “But currently planned levels of defence spending should be enough for it to maintain its position as one of the world’s five second-rank military powers (with only the US in the first rank).” Many in the military are likely to bridle at the analysis; last week the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West, struck a completely different tone, causing a furore when he said the UK should not consider itself a second-tier power like “bloody Belgium or Denmark” . The RUSI study, though, says that coalition-imposed funding cuts on the MoD have made drastic action inevitable. The report, titled Looking into the Black Hole, states that the MoD appears to have taken the necessary, painful action to achieve a near 8% reduction in spending, and fend off the immediate budget crisis. But it warns that further “hard battles” lie ahead to bring down costs “in areas as diverse as equipment programmes, pay levels, service accommodation, boarding school allowances and regimental identities”. The report’s author, Professor Malcolm Chalmers, writes that the future of the services now depends to a large extent on the MoD’s ability to “control the costs of its largest programmes, which have historically been the most technologically challenging and the most subject to cost increases.” He identifies three key projects – the successor to Trident, the new Joint Strike Fighter, and the Type 26-frigate, and says any one of them could pose substantial financial risks to the MoD. “There continues to be a risk that the MoD’s plans could be blown off course if the cost of major programmes increases more sharply than planned … the largest, and politically most difficult, procurement programme over the next two decades will be the construction of a successor to the Trident nuclear deterrent submarines.” Because the government has insisted that the cost of Trident will come from the MoD budget, there will have to be a big increase in defence spending beyond 2020 – when most of the nuclear deterrent costs will be incurred. Without it, spending on other new equipment “will fall back sharply after 2020″. The report also warns that the drawdown from Afghanistan, which has already begun, “could weaken the MoD’s bargaining position, especially if current efforts to reduce the nation’s fiscal deficit have not yet fully succeeded”. Chalmers says, however, that “it is important not to overstate the extent to which long-term military capability has been damaged” by the recent cuts, and those still in the pipeline. The Libya operation has revealed capability gaps, the repair of which will be made more difficult by the spending squeeze,” the report says. “But, on current plans, the UK should still be able to maintain a wide spectrum of capability, albeit at a reduced scale than in the past.” In a further blow to defence, the British arms giant BAE Systems is expected to announce around 3,000 job cuts on Tuesday, mainly at sites in its military aircraft division in Warton and Samlesbury in Lancashire, and Brough, East Yorkshire. In a statement the company said: “BAE Systems has informed its staff that we are reviewing our operations across various businesses to make sure the company is performing as effectively and efficiently as possible, both in delivering our commitments to existing customers and ensuring the company is best placed to secure future business. “Whilst there has been a lot of media speculation it has always been our intention to communicate the results of the review to employees as a priority, and this will take place on Tuesday 27 September.” Military Ministry of Defence Defence policy Public sector cuts Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk

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