UK slashes armed forces by 10 percent

[frigidmagi]

CNN

The United Kingdom will cut its armed forces by 17,000 people -- about 10 percent of its uniformed manpower -- in the next five years, Prime Minister David Cameron announced Tuesday.

The military will also immediately retire its flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, as the government slashes budgets.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox insisted the cuts will not affect combat operations in Afghanistan, where the United Kingdom is the second-largest contributor of foreign troops, after the United States.

Cameron's government, which came to power in May, announced the reductions a day ahead of revealing how it plans to cut spending across the board in the face of deficits.

"Defense cannot continue on unaffordable footing," the government said in a statement explaining the Strategic Defense and Security Review, as the exercise was called.

"Tough decisions are required to reconfigure our armed forces to confront future threats whilst we also tackle the 38 billion pound (about $60 billion) deficit that has accumulated in the 12 years since the last Defense Review," Fox said.

Cuts include:

-- Decommissioning either HMS Ocean or HMS Illustrious, two ships on which helicopters can land;

-- Cutting about 40 percent of the Army's Challenger 2 tanks and 35 percent of its heavy artillery;

-- Retiring the Hercules C-130 air transport fleet 10 years earlier than planned.

The Army is set to drop from about 102,000 to 95,000 personnel by 2015. The Navy will fall from 35,000 to 30,000, and the Air Force from 38,000 to 33,000.

The Ministry of Defence will also cut its civilian staff by 25,000, it said. The current staff level is about 85,000, ministry official Will Jessett told CNN.

The United Kingdom intends to be able to field a brigade of up to 30,000 troops for overseas deployments, the ministry said.

I can't say I'm surprised by this. With Europe "tamed" and Russia openly moving it's military to a defensive organization and deployment and the economic troubles that have slammed the world... It makes sense for the British to cut their defense budgets. Money is tight and all the trouble on the horizon is in Asia, Africa or the Middle East far away from Britain and not necessary something they need to be involved in. I do wonder how they plan to man those new aircraft carriers though.

[Norseman]

It may make sense for Britain to build the carriers properly and then just spend money on maintaining them. You can't improvise a carrier in a hurry, but you could bring an existing one out of mothball or reserve fairly fast.

[SirNitram]

Or simply cut the rest of the fleet. Carriers perform missions and offer options other ships can't. You can't field only carriers, but slimming it down to accomodate the big guys might be wise.

[Batman]

The question is do the UK actually need those carriers? Carriers can absolutely do things no other ship can, and if the UK needs to be able to do those things than yes, the carriers should be given priority.
I'm just not sure the UK needs those carriers to begin with.
Carriers are primarily for force projection, and does the UK really need that capability anymore?
I'm positing this as a question, mind you. Offhand, I can't think of a thing they would need it for, but that's just an uninformed right this now gut feeling.

As for the mothballing, I think that'd work for carriers a lot better than for other ships. The important part (technological currency of the air wing) can be dealt with without bothering the mothballed hull.