News Centre
23/08/2010
Navy Custs "Treaten Security"
Report by Kylie Harrison Daily Express
The Royal Navy is dangerously weak and the UK’s national security will be at risk unless more funding is secured, an independent think tank claims.
RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, says years of underfunding, coupled with the current financial climate, will leave the Navy’s fleet ageing, weakened and inadequate for vital tasks.
An article in the latest RUSI Journal warns that unless more money is urgently pumped into the Navy, the UK will be unable to safeguard trade routes from pirates, terrorists or non-friendly governments.
Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham and Professor Gwyn Prins, who wrote the article, maintain that the UK needs to build at least 10 new ships in the next decade.
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Welcome to the website of the United Kingdom National Defence Association (UKNDA). The UKNDA has been formed to support our Armed Forces and to campaign for “sufficient, appropriate and fully funded Armed Forces to provide an effective defence of our country, its people, their security and vital interests wherever they may be.”
Britain's Armed Forces: Under-funded and overstretched
Britain’s Armed Forces are chronically under-funded and over-stretched. Not since the 1930s have our Navy, Army and Air Force been so starved of the resources they need. Our Forces have been slashed in half over the past two decades alone – yet in the same period our military commitments have vastly increased. This is a disaster for the men and women of our Armed Forces – and a catastrophe for our nation.
Inadequate equipment means that lives have been lost unnecessarily. Pay and conditions for our servicemen and women have fallen well below those of their civilian equivalents – to the point where a traffic warden or cleaner can earn more than a soldier. And due to funding cuts, long-overdue improvements to housing for service families have been delayed or cancelled. The nation’s Covenant with the Armed Forces has been broken....