Author Archives: markdowe1

Britain, Defence, Europe, Government, Military, NATO, Politics, United States

UK commits to defence spending of 2 per cent of GDP for next five years…

DEFENCE SPENDING

Britain has committed in meeting the NATO target of spending 2 per cent of national income on defence, the Chancellor announced in the Budget.

Military chiefs applauded the decision although there are fears of ‘creative accounting’ – because intelligence spending could be included in the figures.

The Commons foreign affairs committee chairman, Crispin Blunt, said: ‘The pledge to meet the NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP on defence is not quite as profound as it appears.

‘The Government is apparently changing the way they measure defence spending to meet this important target by including expenditure outside the MoD budget, including £2.5 billion on the secret intelligence agencies.’

The pledge will likely be welcomed both by NATO and the US, who have both voiced concerns about the importance of meeting this target.

Whilst welcoming the announcement Admiral Lord West warned: ‘If this is creative accounting I would be very disappointed.’

George Osborne said the Government would spend 2 per cent of GDP on the military every year of this decade and raise the defence budget by 0.5 per cent a year in real terms. Until now, ministers had not committed to spending at that level beyond the current financial year – prompting pressure from backbench MPs and military chiefs.

Mr Osborne said: ‘The Prime Minister and I are not prepared to see the threats we face to both our country and our values go unchallenged.

‘Britain has always been resolute in defence of liberty and the promotion of stability around the world. And with this government it will always remain so.’

The Chancellor announced a new fund, worth up to £1.5billion a year, which will be spent on intelligence items such as cyber security.

Recent figures released by NATO revealed that Britain is line to spend 2.1 per cent of national income on defence this year. But this includes all of the £1billion cross-departmental fund known as the Conflict Pool, which is used to support fragile and war-torn states rather than military operations.

The UK is just one of four of NATO’s 28 member states who currently meet the 2% target and last month the U.S. called for billions more to be spent citing the situation in the Balkans. ‘I think it’s clearly the view at NATO that the Ukraine situation has been a game-changer,’ said Robert Bell, the U.S. secretary of defence representative in Europe.

NATO announced in June that it would be ‘naming and shaming’ the Western European countries which failed to spend more than 2% of their gross domestic product on defence, at the same time that US President Barack Obama expressed his concerns at the G7 summit that UK spending would fall.

The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review which is taking place this year will review the threats facing Britain and its ability to tackle them. Writing in a British newspaper last month, defence secretary Michael Fallon said that the review will ‘be positive and assertive about Britain’s place in the world: ready, willing and able to act to defend our values as we always have done.’

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Defence, Government, NATO, Politics, United States

U.S. defence budget to cut 40,000 troops over next two years…

U.S. ARMY DEFENCE CUTS

The proposed cuts to the U.S. defence budget would reduce the active-duty Army from its current size of around 490,000 soldiers to about 450,000, its smallest number since before the United States entered World War Two.

The troop reductions were first announced in February 2014 when then-Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled the Pentagon’s budget for the 2015 fiscal year. The figures were also included in the Pentagon’s four-year planning document, the Quadrennial Defense Review 2014.

Defence officials have confirmed that the Army was moving ahead with the plan to reduce uniformed and civilian personnel and was expected to announce further details about which units would be affected by the cuts.

The personnel cuts come as the Pentagon is attempting to absorb nearly $1 trillion in reductions to planned defence spending over a decade.

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Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, Terrorism, United States

‘Significant airstrikes’ carried out by the US-led coalition on Daesh…

ISLAMIC STATE

One of the most sustained air operations carried out to date against the group Islamic State (IS) has been carried out by the US-led coalition.

The United States, using the Arabic acronym Daesh for the IS group, have said ‘significant airstrikes’ were carried out overnight, executed to deny Daesh the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq.

The joint-command statement issued yesterday detailed a total of 38 airstrikes on targets belonging to IS in Syria and in Iraq. Tactical units and vehicles had been hit and sixteen bridges were destroyed in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, as well as Hasaka and Kobani, according to the statement.

Raqqa has become the centre of the IS control of territory which extends across both Iraq and Syria.

This is one of the largest deliberate engagements that the US has conducted in Syria, and the US military believes it will have serious debilitating effects on Daesh’s ability to move from Raqqa.

There were twelve strikes on IS targets near eight cities in Iraq. A statement from Iraq’s Defence Ministry has said government forces repelled an IS attack yesterday morning on the town of Haditha and the nearby Haditha dam in Anbar province. It claimed 20 militants were killed in the attack.

Last month IS lost control of the border town of Tal Abyad to Kurdish fighters. The Turkish border town was a major conduit for the group to smuggle in supplies.

The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet has reported that the Turkish army had called a meeting for next week of the commanders of the 54,000 soldiers deployed along the Syrian border.

Turkey is believed to have increased its military defences on the volatile border in the last week as fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has intensified. The build-up has fed speculation that Ankara is planning to intervene in Syria to push back IS and halt Kurdish forces, which have made gains against IS in the area.

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