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HMS Dragon: \u2018with a fair wind, she\u2019ll arrive next week\u2019. | Credit: Justin Tallis \/ AFP \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery now and then, world events take a turn that exposes Britain\u2019s decades of self-deception\u201d on the subject of defence, said Fraser Nelson in The Times<\/a>. On 1 March, the RAF\u2019s main base in Cyprus was hit by a drone apparently launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon. It caused only minor damage; what was shocking was that the UK seemed unprepared for such an event, although Lebanon is just \u201ca short drone-hop away\u201d, and an attack like this had been anticipated for years.<\/p>\n Our response was to dust down HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer then undergoing maintenance at Portsmouth. (With a fair wind, she\u2019ll arrive next week.) In a panic, Cyprus<\/a> turned to Greece and France, \u201casking to be protected from the risk Britain\u2019s bases had exposed them to\u201d. Greek frigates and F-16s were on the scene within hours. A French warship and air defences followed. \u201cQuite the humiliation\u201d for Britain. And proof that \u201cour commitments far outpace our resources. Holes are showing, in shocking places.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Point of maximum weakness\u2019<\/p>\n The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, the attacks on the Gulf states, where around 300,000 British citizens live: this is exactly the kind of emergency that \u201cwould once have found the Royal Navy in its element\u201d, said David Blair in The Telegraph<\/a>. But for the first time in centuries, Britain does not have a single warship in the Persian Gulf or the eastern Mediterranean. Three of its six destroyers and both its aircraft carriers were out of action, undergoing repairs or refits.<\/p>\n After years of slow decline<\/a>, the Navy has \u201creached its point of maximum weakness\u201d at a moment when a crisis is exploding in the Middle East \u201cand Russia threatens the whole of Europe\u201d. Both Bahrain and the UAE have reportedly expressed concern about the UK response; Cyprus voiced its disappointment publicly. Britain could also only send a few extra fighter jets to the region because the RAF, too, has been \u201ccut to the bone\u201d, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail<\/a>. It has 130 active jets, down from 850 in 1989. The Army is \u201cin no better shape\u201d<\/a>, with just 70,000 active personnel, a third of the number it had in 1990.<\/p>\n Our current malaise \u201cis the result of politicians from all parties trying to outrun\u201d the same question for decades, said Matt Oliver in The Telegraph<\/a>. How can Britain be \u201ca great military power<\/a>\u201d if it won\u2019t pay for it?<\/p>\n At the start of the 1990s, Britain\u2019s health and defence budgets both hovered at 4% of GDP. Today, health accounts for 8% and defence just over 2%. New Labour was often accused of failing to invest in the forces. But the \u201csqueeze\u201d was harder during the Coalition years: the budget fell by 22% in real terms from 2010 to 2016. Yet even today, the Ministry of Defence has one of the largest military budgets in the world, at \u00a366 billion per year.<\/p>\n So taxpayers may wonder what has gone wrong. The answer lies in part in \u201ca string of procurement disasters\u201d, for which civil servants and top brass must share the blame. We have expensive platforms \u2013 aircraft carriers, F-35 jets, nuclear subs \u2013 but insufficient manpower, weapons stockpiles and all-round resilience. As ex-defence secretary Ben Wallace recently put it, our forces have been \u201chollowed out\u201d.<\/p>\n End of \u2018peace dividend\u2019<\/p>\n The challenge is formidable, said Larisa Brown in The Times<\/a>. Al Carns, the Armed Forces Minister, has said that, by 2029, \u201cEurope could be at war with Russia<\/a>\u201d. Former senior military chiefs warned in a letter to the prime minister this month that Britain \u201cis facing its 1936 moment\u201d. Assuming that funding can be found, the UK and Europe\u2019s defence industries will have not only to ramp up production, but also to cope with the transformation of the modern battlefield already seen in Ukraine \u2013 by drone technology, robotics, cyberwarfare and, increasingly, autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n Add to that the likelihood that Donald Trump\u2019s America would not \u201cfight for us\u201d, said Edward Lucas in The Times<\/a> \u2013 or certainly cannot be relied upon to do so. \u201cEuropeans may loathe Trump, but they\u2019re not ready to fill the gaps… They lack the hi-tech weapons, high-end intelligence, logistics expertise and \u2018mass\u2019 (quantity) that the Americans have provided since D Day.\u201d Filling these will be costly and difficult, \u201cif we manage at all\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet politically, defence remains a hard sell, said The Independent<\/a>\u2019s editorial board. Among voters, there is no clamour to build \u201cnew cyber-defence<\/a> units in the way there is demand for, say, cutting NHS waiting lists<\/a>\u201d. Keir Starmer and his cabinet know that the era of the \u201cpeace dividend\u201d is over, said George Eaton in The New Statesman<\/a> \u2013 that Britain and Europe \u201cneed to go faster on defence\u201d, as the PM put it last month. But nothing much is happening. Labour may or may not increase defence spending from 2.4% of GDP to 3%, as the Ministry of Defence wants, by 2029 \u2013 the year that Carns thinks we could be at war with Russia. The government shows no willingness to confront voters with the fiscal trade-offs that come with higher spending. Britain remains \u201cin denial on defence\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. 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