Just a few hours after the publication of the strategic defence and security review, two crack teams of speakers clashed over the future of the armed forces at a Spectator debate sponsored by Brewin Dolphin.
The novelist and military historian Brigadier Allan Mallinson proposed the motion — ‘The army, navy and air force are so 20th-century. Scrap them and have a massive British Marine Corps’ — with a heavy heart. ‘I love the armed forces,’ he said. ‘I watch the “Battle of Britain” with tears in my eyes.’ But the trinitarian approach had failed. He imagined a new combined force under the command of an army general. As Admiral Jackie Fisher once remarked, ‘the army should be a projectile fired by the navy’; but, Mallinson added, ‘the projectile does the killing’.
Adam Holloway MP, a former Grenadier Guardsman, imagined an army colonel salivating at the prospect of commanding a 2,200-strong unit equipped with artillery, fast jets, helicopters, amphibious landing trucks and other gleaming kit. But the outlay on procurement, training, food and accommodation would remain while the cost to morale would be high. ‘Let’s not cock up the armed forces,’ he said, ‘just to save a bit of money.’
Con Coughlin, executive foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph, claimed that rivalries within the armed forces caused gross inefficiencies and led each service to protect its pet projects. For two decades Britain has kept tons of artillery and countless tanks ‘sitting in Germany to defend ourselves against an attack from Russia’. He praised the Typhoon — ‘a superb piece of kit’ — but pointed out that it has yet to be deployed to Afghanistan because ‘oh dear, it hasn’t got a ground attack capability’. And it costs £69 million per unit. ‘Look at the forces over the past 20 years and you can see they’re headed for a merger.’
Robert Fox, defence correspondent of the Evening Standard, focused on the morale of individual soldiers. The men at Goose Green fought ‘for their mates, their unit and their cap badge’. Combining the three services would ‘pull the ethos of the army apart’. The merger plan was ‘a daft idea from the Harvard Business School’.
Dr Richard North, a writer critical of the defence establishment, reminded us that the Taleban, ‘who in some ways are running rings around us’, manage without three forces. Combined forces would focus on working for us, not against each other.
General Sir Richard Dannatt, former chief of the general staff, argued that it was folly to emulate the US Marine Corps — ‘a tactical expeditionary force’. Britain needs a full spectrum of armed services to protect our airspace, our sea lanes and to maintain our territorial integrity. The Falklands had taught the benefits of joint action — ‘jointery’ as the services call it — and there had been successful mergers of training facilities and helicopter command structures. Nor would a combined force be immune to inter-service rivalries. Referring to the coalition’s promise to review Britain’s defence requirements every five years, he said, ‘this is the opening salvo’.
The general and his team defeated the motion soundly.
—Lloyd Evans
Votes before: For 29, Against 46, Undecided 46
Votes after: For 38, Against 88, Undecided 0
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