TRI-SERVICE

Our Armed Forces - broke in all but name?

The UK spends over £30 billion per year on defence, the second largest amount in the world. But as Gwyn Prins and Lord Salisbury argued in the last issue (‘Risk, Threat and Security in the United Kingdom’), the armed forces suffer from overstretch and under-manning. Is it the Northern Rock of government funding – broke in all but name? The death of a Scottish reservist, to which I shall return later, provides a tragic vignette of the funding crisis gripping the armed forces.

The crisis is traceable back to the 1997 Strategic Defence Review (SDR). It set out the future composition of the armed forces in the face of expected threats and challenges. The budget funds two key elements of the UK armed forces, personnel and equipment, both vital to the composition of the armed forces and ultimately the security of the UK. Large equipment procurement projects, and defence inflation put the defence budget under pressure. There are a host of equipment projects (either recently completed or due for completion soon), each of which has cost or is due to cost many millions if not billions of pounds. These projects claim a substantial part of the defence budget, but the impact of their initial cost is exacerbated by an escalation in costs of around 10 per cent a year. Defence inflation is inescapable; equipment is expensive and doubles in price every seven and a quarter years, according to defence economist Keith Hartley. The military’s finest asset is its personnel, but a volunteer army is not cheap. If suitable terms are not offered, recruits will not join and trained personnel will leave. This is happening today. Recruitment and retention requires appropriate funding. Yet government spends less on defence than in 1997, in real terms. As defence inflation afflicts high-profile equipment projects, government resorts to penny-pinching on the humdrum but essential items such as accommodation, basic kit, training and rehabilitation facilities for the gravely wounded.

In order to alleviate the pressure on the defence budget caused by equipment inflation and overrun, the personnel budget is compromised. Thus, personnel bear the brunt, committed to operational duties with too few individuals; a shortage of units, causing disaffection, low morale and ultimately retention problems. The adverse effect on recruitment and retention is clear when, in April last year, the Army was short by 2,520 persons, the Navy by 1,860, and the RAF by 1,460 (figures given by Liam Fox in the House of Commons). The MoD’s own study, carried out in 2005, revealed that a quarter of the armed forces wished to leave at the earliest opportunity. The TA is in no better position. The MP for Aldershot Gerald Howarth said in the House of Commons in March 2006 that the number of TA personnel stood at 31,680, a shortfall in its establishment of around 6,500. He went on to argue ‘that only a third of the TA is ready for operations’ and that 13,500 men and women have left the TA since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with 500 leaving a month in 2006. The TA's manning levels are now at some of the lowest in history, yet deployments are the highest in recent memory.

Howarth’s comments about TA shortfall highlight the relatively unpublicised death of a young soldier deployed to Iraq in 2003. Armed forces under-funding impacted upon Private Jason Smith, who had served with the TA since 1992. He reported for duty on the 30 May 2003 to be deployed to Iraq with C Company, 52nd Lowland Regiment. He had ten days of acclimatisation in Kuwait, rather than the recommended fourteen. By the early part of August 2003, he was struggling in the searing heat. During the daytime, temperatures reached 50°C and, at night, dropped to between 30-35°C. On 13 August 2003, he died of heat stroke in his base at Al-Amarah Stadium. The army board of inquiry into his death noted that ‘the level of manpower within C Company was inadequate for the task in hand and prevented the soldiers from getting effective rest’. The board of inquiry notes that at the time of Smith’s death, C Company was working at a high tempo, patrolling and guarding a power station and in the days preceding his death, it had come under mortar attack and been involved in a riot. Witnesses state that there was insufficient manpower for the tasks they were asked to undertake.

The high tempo of operations was compounded by C Company’s inadequate accommodation. They were living in a concrete office block: without windows, doors, breeze or air conditioning, there was no respite from the scorching temperatures. The manner in which Smith lost his life is a tragic snapshot of the crisis. He was a reservist serving in an undermanned company in an undermanned Territorial Army. He was four days short of the recommended time he should have been allowed to acclimatise before being deployed. When in theatre, supply problems meant that the day-to-day soldiering difficulties were compounded by the lack of air conditioning at their base. It is sadly too late for Private Smith, but the men and women of the armed forces deserve better. They are being let down. The operational commitments which they are asked to perform show no sign of receding.

The legacy of Iraq means that there are currently around 4,500 UK personnel deployed in Basra. The mission in Afghanistan is set to loom large for a number of years to come, which will require nearly 8,000 British troops by 2009. Added to the intense operational duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the security duties the UK armed forces still have to perform at home. They are deployed in large numbers in Germany and have defence and peacekeeping duties in Bosnia, Kosovo, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, and the Falkland Islands. There are only so many places one can send a finite number of troops without stretching them to breaking point. One defence expert quoted by the BBC estimates that another £10 billion is needed for this year, if the current procurement programmes are to be maintained alongside operational commitments.

It is high time that the government ordered a fresh review of defence policy. It must contemplates the long-term role of the armed forces and takes a long, hard look at the relationship between the UK, the USA and the burden of NATO commitments. If the UK is to remain a faithful American ally and a senior NATO player, the government will have to spend more to maintain this role. The one statistic which counts most is annual defence spending per capita. The UK spends $990 per capita, whilst the USA (also involved in Iraq and Afghanistan) spends nearly double at $1,759 (SIPRI figures). The UK lags way behind its major ally in terms of defence spending. In the short term, this year’s allocation of £33.4 billion for defence spending is simply not enough. The funding crisis can only be solved by politicians with the strength of character to argue and persuade the British people Parliament that increasing defence spending is worth it for the safety and security of the nation. The politicians will have to convince the citizens of this country they will have to pay substantially more per capita for their defence and security if they are to have essential and state-of-the-art equipment and one of, if not the best, volunteer armed forces in the world.

Should the UK mission in Afghanistan fail then the prospects are bleak. Afghanistan will return to civil war; the Taliban will re-emerge and once again, a safe haven and training camp for Al-Qa’ida will exist. It is vital that the political argument is put to the British people and defence spending is drastically increased. Otherwise, the alternative is, as Sir Mike Jackson said, ‘to pull the duvet up over our heads and hope the bogeyman goes away’.

Let us hope that the finest asset this country possesses – its armed forces – do not break in the meantime.

Iraq and the Military Covenant

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