A divided house

Friday, June 19, 2009

Bickering and hostility between the services is at an all time high due to the budget constraints. Patrick Macgill looks at the latest in-fighting, its causes and how this is hurting the Armed Forces as a whole.



The Armed Forces are on the verge of civil war after the limited defence budget has left the three services fighting for control of minimal funds.

For years the MoD has faced a growing shortage of funds thanks to the rising cost of defence inflation, operational demands and small budget increases. But now with the budget crisis reaching a climax, resulting in deep cuts across the services and new restrictions on training and operations in order to save money, hostility and internal bickering are growing.

Internal bickering between the services is always commonplace, but the last few months have been different. The comments have become nastier, more direct and most importantly, more public.

The MoD faces a budget cut from £38bn to £36bn next year on top of a budget deficit that is already estimated to be at least £1.1bn. The war in Afghanistan led the former Defence Secretary John Hutton to call for funding equipment for current operations to come first and foremost, in other words, primarily land or Army equipment.

At the same time the Armed Forces is trying to modernise an aging equipment fleet that was procured during the Cold War when a war with the Soviets seemed inevitable.

It is not clear who fired the first shot in the recent service in-fighting. Last month General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff, made the first public criticisms of other services' procurement, saying that the Armed Forces was equipping itself with "Cold War relics", a direct shot at the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers and the RAF's Eurofighter Typhoons. The priority should be current operations Sir Richard argued.

Meanwhile frustration was growing in the Royal Navy after years of cuts and delays to programmes.

In fairness, some of the anger was probably warranted. The Type 45 order has been halved from 12 to 6. The Astute order was reduced from 12 to seven, with more cuts a possibility. The Type 42 fleet has been steadily decommissioned over the last decade without any replacements. Even after the Type 45s are in service the Navy will only have six destroyers compared to the 12 it had 20 years ago.

With the new carriers facing delays as well, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band had seen enough.

At first Sir Jonathon seemed willing to adopt the official MoD line on funding. Plenty of Royal Marines and other naval personnel were fighting in Afghanistan and needed excellent equipment as well.

But in February he sent mixed messages about cuts to the Royal Navy, telling Defencemanahement.com that it was "a perfectly proper debate to have" on potential cuts to the fleet air arm and that delays were understandable given the need for resources in Afghanistan.

In the same conference he also said that as long as he was employed by the Royal Navy he would fight for the two carriers and 150 JSFs and any other relevant capabilities. More cuts and delays were simply unacceptable.

Just over three months later, Sir Jonathon attacked the "operations first policy."

"I am not volunteering for the second division," he told a RUSI audience last month. "While Afghanistan is rightly our priority, it is not the only show in town."

Although never naming Sir Richard, he decried his comments about the carriers being Cold War relics saying they were a "minimalist view".

And so it went. But the bickering did not end there.

Air chief marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, the chief of the air staff is never one to walk away from a potential fight. It has long been rumoured that he is a ruthless behind the scenes man who has allegedly lobbied for cuts in the other services before the RAF has to make any sort of sacrifices.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Sir Glenn casually predicted that the fleet air arm would eventually be incorporated into the RAF; a sensitive point for the Royal Navy that he knew would surely enrage the admirals.

Every military in every democratic country in the world surely witnesses inter service bickering, but not on this scale. What is being said in public is the tip of the iceberg behind the scenes in the planning rounds. They have been described as "the bloodiest ever" by one defence official. Tempers are short and tensions between the services ar high.

This in-fighting is hurting the Armed Forces as a whole. Instead of providing a united front that fights for as much money as possible for the military as a whole, the service chiefs have single handily divided the Forces. This has left it easier for MoD officials and their Treasury counterparts to conquer the difficult task of creating a budget. One branch is bound to get a better deal compared to another, making the former more likely to cooperate in budget negotiations.

The irony is that the basic war strategy of divide and conquer is being used against the very organisations that practice it.

In reality, no one is getting a better deal. The Treasury and the MoD budget department's responsibilities are to create a budget within the spending limits of the comprehensive spending review. Making people or branches of the service happy is a secondary task. Over time cuts and spending limits will be spread through all three branches of the Armed Forces. Having the service chiefs bickering over funding and looking out for their own interests first and foremost only makes the job of a budget director easier.

A united Armed Forces at budget time would be harder to overcome politically. The kind of cuts now being implemented would attract more public and parliamentary attention and would encounter more resistance in budget negotiations. Defence cuts by the Treasury could be met with strong public resistance on the same scale as cuts to health or education.

But they are not.

Liberal Democrat shadow Defence Secretary Nick Harvey called the divide and conquer strategy an "unwise approach to procurement."

"We need to look at what is needed for Britain's defence capabilities as a whole within the budgetary constraints.

"Tough choices need to be made about the future of Trident and the Tranche 3 Eurofighter.

"Meeting one service's wish list at the expense of another's needs is an unwise approach to procurement.

"A new Strategic Defence Review is vital to restoring a sense of our immediate and long term priorities and helping us to achieve what is needed for all three services," Harvey said.

The next service chiefs may approach the budget differently. For now though the damage has been done.

As Abraham Lincoln once said "a house divided against itself cannot stand."