Labour is scaling back our defence capabilities while our enemies do the opposite
All of us at some time had to “retire” much-loved platforms. I retired the C-130 Hercules among angry cries of retired Air Force officers (even though it was the RAF who suggested it).
I retired them because the Airbus A400M was much better and had performed brilliantly in the Kabul evacuation, and the French and Germans had managed both low-level and high-level parachute jumps. I also retired them because it is much cheaper to run one type of transport aircraft than to manage two separate types with different supply chains and pilots.
All change takes time and we must always be careful in defence that we aren’t shaped by the retired military equivalent of trainspotters who want to bring back steam trains.
But retiring a platform can also mean retiring a capability. So secretaries of state need to satisfy themselves that losing the capability will be temporary or the Armed Forces don’t need it any more.
On Wednesday we saw the Labour Defence Secretary come to the House to announce the scrapping of two amphibious assault ships – HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark – one Type 23 frigate, and the Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and Puma medium-lift, as well as the Army’s medium-range UAV.
Translating this into lost capabilities, it means the Royal Marines have lost their main command ships, the Armed Forces have lost the remaining medium-lift helicopters and the Army’s artillery will be blind because they have just had their UAVs scrapped.
Now we could all get behind this statement by the Government if it paves the way for new equipment and better capabilities. So if we are to take the Labour Government seriously, what we should have heard about on Wednesday were the replacements that they plan alongside the cuts. For our enemies to be deterred they must know we intend to have no holes in our capabilities, or at least we will soon be upgrading them.
To tell the world we are scaling back our capabilities when our enemies are doing the opposite is pure folly.
No one is fooled by the tired and misleading excuse by Labour that “we have to wait for a defence review” – yet another one. Amazing how when it suits Labour, it doesn’t wait. It didn’t wait to bung billions of pounds to train drivers, doctors and the NHS. It didn’t wait when it splashed £8 billion on a nationalised Great British Energy company.
Defence isn’t a real priority for Rachel Reeves. If it was, perhaps she would have claimed she was an admiral on her CV.
When we left office there were plans for a new helicopter fleet, new landing ships and, most importantly, a timeline and path to grow the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. None of that was mentioned. Nothing.
Without replacements or reforms, or 2.5 per cent, this statement was not about retirements but about cuts.
Rt Hon Sir Ben Wallace is a former defence secretary