{"id":173525,"date":"2010-01-13T04:59:37","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T09:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skyscrapercity.com\/showthread.php?t=1044383"},"modified":"2010-01-13T04:59:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T09:59:37","slug":"fifth-of-armed-forces-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/173525","title":{"rendered":"Fifth of Armed Forces Doomed"},"content":{"rendered":"
Defence cuts ‘will shrink UK armed forces’<\/p>\n

http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/8455754.stm<\/a><\/p>\n

The British armed forces could be forced to shrink by up to a fifth because of a lack of money, a military think tank has predicted.<\/p>\n

The Royal United Services Institute said the number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 by 2016.<\/p>\n

Its report said the cost of troops and equipment was rising, and major cuts were "inevitable".<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Defence said budgets would not be cut at all next year.<\/p>\n

The report’s author, defence expert Professor Malcolm Chalmers, warned hard choices lay ahead and efficiency savings would not be enough to put Britain’s defences on a sustainable footing.<\/p>\n

He said even being "cautiously optimistic", intense pressure on government finances meant the MoD’s budget was likely to fall by 11% in real terms by 2017.<\/p>\n

And he said a much deeper reduction of about 15% over the next three years could not be ruled out.<\/p>\n

Professor Chalmers warned the problem would be made worse because the costs of employing troops and civilian personnel have been rising in real terms, as has buying and running equipment.<\/p>\n

Cuts to the available budget combined with growing costs meant the next six years were likely to see a reduction of about 20% in the number of service personnel, the report said.<\/p>\n

Military capabilities in terms of ships, aircraft and ground formations would also be reduced by a similar amount.<\/p>\n

Professor Chalmers indicated that major cuts would be inevitable whichever party was in power later this year.<\/p>\n

He said there would be a strong temptation for a new government to postpone making tough, potentially unpopular choices, perhaps by only looking a few years ahead, rather than a whole decade, when reviewing defence.<\/p>\n

He warned ministers would face the choice between suffering the "political pain" of defence cuts all at once, or in "successive small doses".<\/p>\n

Professor Chalmers told the BBC: "Defence is something you have to plan on a long-term basis, and it’s much better to plan it long-term than year to year because the implications of that is more and more waste and inefficiency.<\/p>\n

"Given the fact that we all know there is going to be a severe squeeze in the overall government budget, unless defence is ring-fenced it will face cuts of the sort of magnitude we’re talking about."<\/p>\n

Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said spending cuts would be painful.<\/p>\n

"One thing is certain, there has to be a review because the present arrangements have resulted in very considerable overstretch, procurement has had a pretty shabby history in truth," he said.<\/p>\n

"And against the background of the general economic situation there’s a very strong argument that says we should be protecting frontline services in health and education, and defence has to take its share of the damage."<\/p>\n

The institute’s predictions come ahead of defence minister Bill Rammell’s keynote speech on the future of the armed forces.<\/p>\n

He is expected to focus on "the impact of modern society on defence" such as the Freedom of Information Act and 24-hour news.<\/p>\n

Responding to the report, an MoD spokesman said it welcomed the RUSI’s contribution to the debate, and said "like all departments, the Ministry of Defence is facing challenging financial circumstances".<\/p>\n

"We routinely review spending to ensure we focus on Afghanistan and live within our means," he added.<\/p>\n

The MoD said the chancellor had already said not a penny would be cut from the defence budget next year – but it was not possible to give a meaningful assessment beyond 2011 as future spending plans had not been set.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives and Labour have said they will hold strategic defence reviews after the general election. The last was held in 1998.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defence cuts ‘will shrink UK armed forces’ http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/8455754.stm The British armed forces could be forced to shrink by up to a fifth because of a lack of money, a military think tank has predicted. The Royal United Services Institute said the number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}