Category Archives: Britain

Britain, Government, Iraq, Islamic State, Military, Syria, United States

British pilots used in bombing missions over Syria…

SYRIA

Intro: Action that has never received Parliament’s approval. Ministers accused of ‘deceiving the public’

An RAF Tornado at the end of one of its missions. Aircraft which shortly could be used against Islamic State targets in Syria.

An RAF Tornado at the end of one of its missions. Aircraft which shortly could be used against Islamic State targets in Syria.

British pilots will continue to fly U.S. fighter jets to bomb Islamic State targets in Syria despite not having the approval of Parliament.

Ministers have been accused of ‘deceiving the public’ after it has emerged that at least three Royal Navy pilots have been targeting and killing IS fighters in the war-torn country. MPs voted against military action there in September 2013.

The Government insists it ‘had always known a handful of UK military personnel were involved in air strikes’ against jihadists in Syria, but this was acceptable because they were embedded with the U.S. military.

The Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, says this is standard practice, and ISIL (Islamic State in the Levant) has to be defeated. Admitting that we don’t have parliamentary authority at the moment to carry out air strikes in Syria, he refers to the fact that the Americans do and that they have been doing that to ‘keep us all safe’.

On the question as to whether British pilots would continue their role, Mr Fallon said: ‘Exchanges between allies are absolutely routine – there aren’t a huge number of them, but they help, of course, with interoperability with our key allies.’

Mr Fallon said he would not seek approval of Parliament because this was different from British fighter jets conducting air strikes.

He added that when – not if – British military strikes began in Syria, he would seek approval.

David Cameron was also aware that RAF pilots were taking part in bombing sorties over Syria, but did not tell Parliament. Political opponents have accused the Prime Minister of withholding vital information and called for him to make a statement to the House of Commons.

Some have warned that the missions will lead to ‘mission creep’ and perceive that our involvement will lead to a greater involvement with added pressure for ground troops.

MPs specifically voted against military action in 2013 and air strikes there remain a controversial issue. British fighter jets are dropping heavy payloads on IS militants in Iraq, but they are only allowed to fly spy planes over Syria. The RAF’s sentinel aircraft has been performing that function. But the issue of RAF pilots being used in air strikes without the requisite parliamentary approval could be seen as being a breach of trust with the British people.

The U.S. has been conducting bombing raids over Syria since last September. It deployed its aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson shortly afterwards, along with a squadron of Super Hornet fighter jets. It has now emerged that at least three British fighter pilots were flying the aircraft.

Wearing US overalls but with British badges and insignia, they would have been flying over Syria from last October until Spring, when the carrier returned to the United States.

 

 

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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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Britain, Defence, Government, Military, National Security, NATO

Thousands of cyber-attacks a day target British military…

CYBER WARFARE

The Ministry of Defence in Britain fends off thousands of cyber-attacks every day while its military systems log and report more than a million suspicious incidents on a daily basis.

Increasingly, the UK’s critical infrastructure has become dependent on digital and electronic communication. Cyber-warfare is now such a pressing national security issue that, within the next few years, seems certain to become the UK’s top security priority. This week, the U.S. defence secretary, Ash Carter, warned that a cyber-intrusion in a NATO state’s network would be costly and could trigger a collective response that extends beyond cyberspace. Earlier this year former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen claimed cyber security had become part and parcel of collective security and urged allies to heighten their defences against unconventional warfare.

The head of the British armed forces’ cyber-defence programme, Brigadier Alan Hill, has said that his unit picks up as many as a million suspicious cyber incidents a day on its networks, which he says if left unmanaged could lead to a breach, allowing for a major cyber-attack.

Hill claims that as many as ‘hundreds if not thousands’ of these suspicious occurrences are attempts of serious cyber-attacks on Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

Hill says that he deals with a lot of attacks every day of a varying nature. He insists that what the attackers are after has not changed, but it is the intensity and complexity of the attacks that has. He also lays bare that the threats are evolving almost daily and that it is imperative that defence systems stay ahead of these threats.

Hill heads the Ministry of Defence’s Information Systems and Services which is the highly classified branch of the armed forces, responsible for the state’s cyber defence capabilities.

Despite British Prime Minister David Cameron being expected to heavily cut defence spending, Hill believes that cyber security will continue to be well financed as the nature of such threats demand consistently cutting edge technology and solutions.

He said: ‘More agile procurement is the only way we are going to stay ahead of the game because the tech is changing so fast. We are very sophisticated, but there is no complacency allowed… Traditionally, we defined what we wanted and then over 10 years we had it built. That is great for tanks and ships and aircraft but it’s no good in IT.’

He said he expected ‘continued investment at scale’ in the next defence security review, despite possible cuts elsewhere.

A large part of why the Ministry of Defence is a target for cyber-attacks is because the UK has several stakes within multiple international organisations, and because of its global influence.

Not all cyber-attacks will be categorised as cyber-espionage but the UK and the Ministry of Defence will certainly be a target for such high-end attacks. The UK is a high-profile NATO member and has military deployments and secondments in various conflict hot spots around the world. Lots of things make the UK a desirable espionage target and some of them make the Ministry of Defence a target too.

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