Just days before the last U.K. troops leave Iraq, U.K. Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox said a strong economy is a national security requirement and an affordable defense program is the only responsible way to support armed forces in the long term.
Fox’s speech May 19 at the Chatham House think tank in London, with a backdrop of the end of eight years of Operation Telic, About 170 mostly Navy personnel will see their training and support mission end May 22.
First call on resources remains operations in Afghanistan and Libya, Fox said, but long term strategic planning and preparation remains vital, particularly since conflict and threats to national security and interests are not predictable as to time, place or kind.
“The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) has ensured that we will remain in the premier league of military powers,” Fox said. “It is not an agenda for retrenchment; it’s an ambitious agenda for transformation over time. It is not an agenda for the next general election; it’s an agenda for the next generation.”
As in the United States, the health of the economy is a national security issue, and defense programs and people will face cuts and other effects as will the rest of the United Kingdom.
“I didn’t come into politics to cut the defence budget, but neither did I come into politics to be fiscally irresponsible–because the consequences of that are written deep in the historical record,” Fox said. “To be a hawk on defence, you need to be a hawk on the deficit and the national debt, too.”
Defence spending is about the fourth largest bin of public spending, and the Ministry of Defense must play its part in reducing expenditures, he said.
The SDSR, which has made inroads into the approximately $62 billion deficit, was followed by a series of reviews and MoD has moved on to the next planning round to move forward the work to balance defense priorities and budget over time.
“The Department has recently initiated a three-month exercise as part of that work to ensure we match our assumptions with our spending settlement,” he said. “This allows us to draw all this work together to inform the next planning round and to avoid the mistakes of the previous government in building up to an unsustainable Defence program.”
Fox agrees with Prime Minister David Cameron’s personal view “that achieving our vision for the future structure of our Armed Forces will require year-on-year real growth in the Defence Budget after 2015.”
Politically, for those parties who believe Britain should be “active on the world stage and protected at home,” a key signifier should be a commitment to meet Future Force 2020, he said.
That future force would see the Royal Air Force built around hi-tech multi-role combat aircraft Typhoon and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), surveillance and intelligence platforms such as Airseeker, and a new fleet of strategic and tactical transport aircraft including A400M and Voyager.
In 2020, the Royal Navy would have new aircraft carriers with the JSF carrier-variant, a high readiness amphibious capability, a new fleet of Type 45 destroyers and Astute-class submarines–and ready at that point to accept the new Global Combat Ship.
The Army, based on Multi-Role Brigades, would be “powerful, flexible, fully equipped for the land environment and able to operate across the spectrum of conflict,” he said. A view of the future similar to that of the U. S. Army.
“We will remain one of the few countries who can deploy and sustain a brigade-sized force plus its air and maritime enablers, capable of both intervention and stabilization operations almost anywhere in the world,” Fox said.
Additionally, the United Kingdom will remain a nuclear power, maintaining a “minimum” credible power, based on the Trident missile, and continuous at-sea deterrence.
As a member of international alliances, such as NATO, the United Kingdom will hold up its end, he said. “We still have the fourth largest defense budget in the world and will continue to meet the NATO target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense over the spending review period.”