Key defence questions to be addressed in the SDSR

By Professor Trevor Taylor

However, there are at least five identifiable questions concerning the higher levels of defence which the review should address, and which the text should be scrutinised for answers. They are as follows:

 

1. Will the UK continue to aspire to deploy forces comparable in capability with those of the US?

Extant defence policy directs that UK forces should be able to contribute on a sufficient scale and with significant capability to a US-led international operation that London could expect to have a real voice in the shape of the campaign? The clearest of this policy can be found in the White Paper Delivering Security in a Changing World (2003):

The most demanding expeditionary operations, involving interventions against state adversaries, can only plausibly be conducted if US forces are engaged .... Where the UK chooses to be engaged, we will wish to be able to influence political and military decision-making throughout the crisis.... The significant military contribution that the UK is able to make to such operations means that we secure an effective place in the political and military decision-making processes. To exploit this effectively, our Armed Forces will need to be interoperable with US command and control structures, match the US operational tempo and provide those capabilities that deliver the greatest impact when operating alongside the US (3.5)

A similar comparable statement can be found in the Defence Industrial Strategy, again a White Paper, in 2005.

Given the scale of US investment in defence research, development and equipment production, this commitment has had major implications for the sophistication and cost of UK equipment. If something similar cannot be found in the SDSR, the aspiration involved can be presumed to have been quietly abandoned. Given the scale of US expenditure on technology and the extent of US technological ambition, the prospects for an affordable UK defence programme and projects that stay on time and budget could well be seen to have improved.

In a RUSI Future Defence Review (FDR) paper, Michael Codner gives five strategic options that the UK could take in its spending review. The first two options will include the retention of almost all current military capabilities, albeit in a diminished state, with a focus either on ground forces, for long term engagements such as in Afghanistan, or naval power and flexible, quick striking ground forces for short-term early interventions and naval security.[1] The third and fourth options would place the UK as only being able to act in a contributory manner in future conflicts, either as an operational partner to the USA or NATO or as a peace keeping force.[2] The final option would be the complete downgrading of the UK's operational ability to nothing more than home defence.[3]

Every option will require some sacrifices to some of the operational abilities of the UK and ask some severe questions about the UK's standing in global politics and force employment and whether the UK can afford to continue its policy of co-operability with the US.

 

2. Will the UK ambition for 'operational sovereignty' be abandoned?

Extant policy, laid down in the Defence Industrial Strategy, says that the UK should enjoy operational autonomy, which entails industry in the UK having the capacity to sustain and modify equipment in service with UK forces. For equipment purchased from overseas, this implies a significant readiness to transfer technology on the part of the supplier company and its government.

Operational sovereignty for the UK includes an independent nuclear deterrent and the ability to project all of the UK's conventional forces around the world. In other words it requires the UK to maintain all of its conventional capabilities, including carriers, airlift capabilities for the armed forces, engineers and other specialist arms of the services. Whether all this can be done for less money remains to be seen.

The FDR paper Entente or Oblivion: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Franco-British Co-operation on Defence, by Etienne de Durand, outlines the fact that the UK's forces can no longer hope to keep all of its operational ability in the current economic and strategic climate.[4] De Durand believes that the only way the UK can hope to maintain any form of major standing in global politics is to co-operate militarily with the French,[5] who face similar decisions in their own defence spending. This will offer many advantages: joint procurement will ensure cheaper procurement, and a greater co-operability, and the pooling of capability resources will mean that specialised roles that are not used as regularly or are very expensive, such as air lift, carriers and some engineering roles, could be maintained and shared at a much lower cost.[7]

If a statement of intent to maintain the UK's current level of sovereignty is not included in the SDSR then the ambition involved must be presumed to have been abandoned, raising the question of the what more qualified stance will take its place. In terms of the basics of relationships, it is significant that co-operation with France would be on the basis of inter-dependence with both sides needing the other. Inevitably, US relations are more asymmetrical with UK dependence being the most prominent feature.

 

3. Will the changes in force structure and equipment commitments create an affordable programme for the next decade, or will a bow wave of commitments still be visible as one looks forward beyond 2015?

 The Gray Report and the National Audit Office in 2009, and the Secretary of State himself since coming to office in May 2010, have all emphasised the over-commitment in the UK defence programme over the next decade. The SoS has referred to a black hole of £38 billion over ten years. With regard to the commitments in place before the defence review, there were some elements including the modernisation of the nuclear deterrent and the purchase of the Joint Strike Fighter whose big impact need not be felt after 2015. The SDSR therefore needs to be assessed in terms of whether the Government has created a defence programme affordable for the broadly level cash spend expected to be available for the next parliament but with a build-up of spending needs after 2015. The alternative would be a programme that could be judged affordable after 2015 with one of three assumptions made explicit. The three would be either an assumption of level cash being available 2016-20, or an assumption of level real money being available (i.e. with inflation taken into account), or an assumption that defence would be allocated a set share of a hopefully growing GDP.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers, in another FDR paper, points out that to create financially sustainable armed forces would require deep cuts of both personnel and capabilities.[7] These cuts could be as much as 20 per cent in terms of personnel but anything less may not succeed in producing the desired result.[8] However, the current strategic situation in Afghanistan could curtail a serious cut in capabilities for the foreseeable future.[9]

In simple terms this question boils down to whether this review provides the MoD with a sustainable scale of activity, or whether it sets the scene for a further round of reductions in 2015 or so.

A sub-question in this area is the extent that the MoD will rely on savings to be derived from increased efficiency to moderate the cuts it will have to make. By and large, there must be dependence on the Defence Reform programme to be led by Lord Levene over the forthcoming year to generate such savings. To disguise a note of caution in this area with a statement of the obvious, the more that the MoD relies on increased efficiency to create affordability, the more risk there is to the viability of the programme that survives the SDSR.

 

4. To what extent will the review recognise the idea of re-constitutable, sometimes called 'seedcorn', capabilities for an uncertain world?

Anyone's capability to forecast the nature of future conflicts seems limited. Major great power confrontation and fighting is a happily remote prospect, but that is different to saying that it could never come back. A recurrence of the kind of protracted counter-insurgency/ stabilisation operation underway in Afghanistan is an unappealing prospect, but it would be a brave decision to say that the UK need not be ever ready for such a contingency. Given that modern capabilities, both at the front line and industrial levels, would be difficult and expensive to reconstruct once they had been abandoned, there is some logic to maintaining some areas of capability at a low level, of no real use in the short term, but which could serve as a foundation for a rapid re-building at lower risk should circumstances change. 

The UK is accustomed to maintaining units within larger force structures at different rates of readiness (with specified times before they are ready for deployment). The review could well apply similar thinking to areas of capability. 

 

5. Will the Review acknowledge that the UK defence effort is likely to lack substantial coherence for the next five years given the financial constraints that have been imposed?

The scale of the MoD's financial problems has been well publicised, and the National Audit Office has found that 75 per cent of the MoD's budget is committed next year. Even assuming that some companies are willing to re-negotiate contracts, this means that the cuts to be introduced will be made where they can be made in the light of existing commitments to people and companies. This is unlikely to be quite the same as where they should be made to maintain defence coherence. Thus funding for the provision of all defence lines of development (training, personnel, equipment, logistics and so on) associated with a capability may not to be forthcoming. Moreover, the preparation and equipment of forces for Afghanistan will remain a priority.

It remains to be seen if the SDSR will take note of this considerations, which imply that the objectives and required outputs of the defence budget should be modified and the MoD's performance reporting qualified. This incoherence of defence effort should be temporary, but it will take more than a couple of years to adjust all elements of defence into new patterns.

The more positive version of this question asks whether the SDSR will provide a convincing explanation of how defence coherence is to be maintained when significant defence savings have to be found in the short term from not more than a third of the defence budget.

 

Conclusion

The questions above underline that what is not the SDSR may be as significant as what is included, and constitute what may be thought of as at least some of the questions on the SDSR examination paper which the Government should answer.

The SDSR process so far has undoubtedly proved a tougher exercise for the MoD and its political leadership than some might have expected. Press reports have made clear that relations between defence ministers, the Chancellor and the Prime  Minister have been strained during the process, and Conservatives with memories might bring to mind the internal divisions in the Part arising from the last Conservative defence review undertaken by John Nott in 1981. The prospect of undertaking a successor exercise every five years might not appear as appealing as it did when political figures endorsed the Gray recommendation for such a regular exercise.

 

 

NOTES:

[1] Michael Codner, A Force for Honour: Military Strategic Options for the United Kingdom, (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2009), p. 7

[2] Ibid., p.8

[3] Ibid., p.8

[4] Etiene de Durand, Entente or Oblivion: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Franco-British Co-operation on Defence, (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2010), p.1

[5] Ibid., p.6

[6] Ibid., pp.10-11

[7] Malcolm Chalmers, Capability Cost Trends: Implications for the Defence Review, (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2010), p.14

[8] Ibid., p.9

[9] Ibid., p.15