by Peter Barker
LONDON, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Deep cuts in the military budget announced on Tuesday will see Britain without a carrier-borne jet aircraft force, and a significant reduction in fast aircraft and in heavy armor.
British Prime minister David Cameron made the announcements as he outlined the details of a much-anticipated and much-criticized Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR), which has been five months in the making.
Cameron told the House of Commons that the SDSR was not driven by the need to cut costs alone, and it would leave Britain able to "punch above its weight in the world".
"We will continue to be one of the very few countries able to deploy a self-sustaining, properly equipped, brigade-sized force anywhere around the world and sustain it indefinitely if need be," he added.
The British military budget is just over 37 billion pounds a year (about 58 billion U.S. dollars), and against a backdrop of the most drastic cuts in public spending since the Second World War, and fewer conventional military threats, it was inevitable that the Ministry of Defense (MOD) would feel the government axe.
MOST EXPENSIVE SHIPS YET
Prominent survivors of the cuts are the two aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the first of which is under construction and the second in advanced planning.
The government has unwillingly allowed the continuation of the program to build the largest and most expensive ships yet operated by the navy, because for contractual reasons it would be more costly to halt work.
The first carrier could be delivered in 2016 and the second in 2019. But one of them will initially see service without any aircraft, because the current fleet of carrier-capable aircraft, the Harrier jump-jets, was axed in the SDSR and the American-built planes to fly off the carriers will not be ready until 2020.
The carriers will cost 5.2 billion pounds (about 8.2 billion U. S. dollars), and the planes to fly off them even more.
Cameron said the current fleet flagship, HMS Ark Royal, will be scrapped shortly and its sister carrier HMS Invincible will carry only helicopters, meaning that for almost the whole of this coming decade the navy will be without carrier-borne jet aircraft.
Other naval cuts include a reduction in the number of ocean- going surface frigates and destroyers from 23 to 19 by 2020, and manpower cut by 5,000 to 30,000.
The result of the spending cuts will be that Britain's military power will be weakened, and its ability to project power across the globe diminished.
The axing of the naval carrier strike capability, which will occur soon with the scrapping of the fleet flagship the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and the retirement of the Harrier jump-jet fleet, means that naval expeditionary power is seriously curtailed.
CAMERON'S INTERVENTION
Cameron's intervention makes sense politically. Although military spending is far from being the biggest budget of any government department, it is both prestigious and high profile, and any prime minister, especially a Conservative one whose party has long and tight ties with the military, risks the wrath of his own supporters, members of parliament, and of the electorate if he cuts spending too much.
However, he also came under public pressure from the Americans, who fear carrying a heavier burden of NATO spending and assuming more global responsibilities. Both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed their fears publicly, and it was revealing that Cameron phoned President Barack Obama the night before the SDSR was announced to explain the cuts to him.
Cameron was careful on Monday when he unveiled the NSS, to blame the former Labor administration, which ruled for 13 years before losing the May 6 general election, for spending beyond its means on the military.
He returned to the theme on Tuesday with the SDSR, and criticized a 38-billion-pound (about 59.6 billion U.S. dollars) overspend in the military budget on coming projects in the next 10 years on Labor profligacy.
Cameron also revealed that a final decision on the replacement of the four-strong submarine fleet which carries Trident nuclear missiles will be delayed until 2016, after the next general election, by prolonging their service life. This is a considerable victory for the coalition government's junior partner the Liberal Democrat party, which wants to get rid of the submarines and their replacements altogether, and which is now free to campaign in the 2015 general election for that.
The Trident delay will save 750 million pounds (about billion U. S. dollars). In addition the number of nuclear warheads carried on each submarine when on patrol will be reduced from 48 to 40.
But these cuts in military spending are light, at 8 percent of the annual budget over the next four years, at least compared to the cuts that will be announced Wednesday, in a comprehensive spending review that will lop off up to 40 percent of some government departments' budgets.
The military spending cuts, and the protests already raised against them, are small compared to the coalition government's primary task of cutting back the record public spending deficit of 156 billion pounds (about 245 billion U.S. dollars) by 83 billion pounds over the next four years.
The military cuts will also do little to tackle that record public spending deficit, as nearly a third of the government's annual budget of almost 700 billion pounds (about 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars) goes on welfare spending, with a further 120 billion pounds (about 188.3 billion U.S. dollars) spent each year on education.
