29 October 2010
Experts have criticised this month’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, which cut defence spending by 8%, as a ‘lost opportunity’ to reshape Britain’s armed forces.
A survey of 2,000 defence workers, analysts and policy experts published today by the Royal United Services Institute also found that most believed that ministers had struck a ‘reasonable balance’ between cuts to the military and the rest of government.
The Rusi’s Defence and security review survey reports that many respondents were concerned about the scrapping of the Harrier jump jet, leaving a decade-long gap before its replacement, the Joint Strike Fighter, is ready.
‘The more impassioned [anonymous] responses argued that the review was a cost-cutting exercise in the guise of a strategic review that had failed to keep key capabilities or had missed an opportunity for a radical restructuring of the armed forces,’ the report said.
‘However, there were numerous respondents that thought the government had done a good job considering the constraints it was under.
Sixty-eight per cent of those polled said the review was a ‘lost opportunity for a more radical reassessment of the UK’s role in the world’.
Rusi director Professor Michael Clarke said: ‘The expectations surrounding the SDSR – the fact it has been coming for over two years, the pre-planning exercises, the anticipations of swingeing cuts – all created a momentum in favour of radical agendas which the review has only partially adopted.’
Meanwhile two-thirds said the government had struck a ‘reasonable balance’ between defence cuts and spending reductions elsewhere in government.
The report said that as the Treasury had begun by demanding defence cuts of up to 20%, the Ministry of Defence had done relatively well with an 8% cut. It noted that the MoD’s share of total departmental spending has now risen, from 8.7% to 9.1%.
