The Tory defence policy will be simple: cut, brutally

Wednesday, 13th January 2010

The British military has been horribly overstretched by the wars of the Labour years, says Max Hastings. But the Tories’ only option will be to cut further still. Hideous decisions lie ahead

Opponents of draconian cuts in navy and RAF strengths cite the importance of a balanced strategy, which addresses potential future threats as well as current commitments, dominated by Afghanistan. The problem with this approach, admirably sensible in theory, is that it threatens to leave Britain’s forces balanced only in inadequacy.

My own strongly held view, shared by some much cleverer people on both sides of the Atlantic, is that the only credible way forward is to undertake a drastic restructuring, which explicitly prioritises ground forces. We should plump for a properly funded fighting army with appropriate support, including helicopters and transport aircraft, and a big commitment to unmanned drones. In a rational world the RAF, already smaller than the US Marine Corps’s organic air wing, would be integrated with the army. Politically, this is probably a bridge too far. Imagine the headlines: ‘Cameron achieves what the Luftwaffe could not’; ‘new Battle of Britain lost on the playing fields of Eton’.

But the charade of treating all three services as of equal importance, especially in the allocation of top jobs, should end. The army, fighting a serious war in Afghanistan, is exasperated by a perceived nonsense: that the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, is an airman deemed unsympathetic to soldiers. The army deplores Stirrup’s appointment of RAF officers with little knowledge of ground warfare to key staff appointments, including that of senior liaison officer at US Central Command in Florida, which controls current combat operations.