Category Archives: Defence

Britain, China, Defence, Government, Military, National Security, Politics, United Nations, United States

Chagos deal risks the UK’s nuclear deterrent

CHAGOS ISLANDS

BRITAIN’S nuclear deterrent would be at risk from Chinese interference if the Prime Minister capitulates over the Chagos Islands.

A covert satellite system used to direct British and US nuclear missiles would be compromised if Keir Starmer signs off a deal with China-friendly Mauritius, it is feared.

The UK is currently locked in negotiations, led by Attorney General Lord Hermer and National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, over handing over the strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean following a UN ruling.

The archipelago, controlled by the UK for more than two centuries, is home to the joint UK-US Diego Garcia military base. Britain is set to pay billions to Mauritius to lease the base back for 99 years under the terms of the deal.

But concerns have been raised that the UK’s system for coordinating nuclear missiles relies on connection points on the Diego Garcia base. To function properly, these “nodes” require physical protection and British control of the island’s electromagnetic spectrum.

However, the deal includes a clause saying other countries could also use the spectrum, from which Mauritius could profit.

This could offer Beijing a gateway to jamming the highly classified Automated Digital Network System 3 (ADNS 3), which is shared by the Royal Navy and the US Navy, and, which crucially, is part of the “Nuclear Firing Chain” (NFC). The deal would enhance UK national security, but without it, Britain would lose access to the spectrum. The future operation of the base without a deal would clearly be at risk.

Nonetheless, critics suggest that the government’s arguments are totally fabricated. They say that the islands are far more important than just this and the potential threat to our operations from a no deal is a total fiction from the pen of the Cabinet Office – and, by extension, the human rights law firm, Leigh Day.

Lord Hermer was a go-to barrister for Leigh Day before his appointment as Attorney General last year and he has been accused of a deference to international law over domestic needs.

Leigh Day is currently representing asylum seekers who claim they were trapped on the Chagos Islands after being rescued at sea by the Royal Navy. In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that Britain’s continued administration of the islands was unlawful.

Despite the UK ignoring the ruling, it was subsequently ratified by the UN General Assembly, which found the islands rightfully belonged to Mauritius. Sir Ben Wallace, a former defence secretary, said: “Many of the UN judges who made the flawed ruling come from totalitarian states including China.

“Is the PM really going to put their opinions before that of Britain’s security? Diego Garcia is British and must remain so.”

And, MP Tom Tugendhat said that in his former role of security minister, he had seen the advice on the implications of the deal, but the version being presented to the public was “nonsense”.

The settlement could also mean that the Royal Navy could be prevented from entering a buffer zone which Mauritius intends to set up around the islands.

Without any protection from Western navies, there is heightened fear that China could get close enough to the sensitive military facilities.

It is known that ADNS 3 provides assured tactical wide area networking between ships and shore around the world to support full battlespace connectivity.

Britain’s nuclear threat is carried by the Royal Navy’s bomber submarines. Any breakdown of communications or hostile interception of messages which are part of the NFC, or any other breach, would mean Britain losing its nuclear deterrent.

This is a highly technical matter, involving a lot of classified systems, which, according to critics, is being overlooked by government lawyers.

This part of the world is key to China’s expansionist agenda, and any deal with the UK would appear to facilitate that. These systems rely on guarantees around the security of Diego Garcia.

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Aid, Britain, Defence, Economic, Government, Politics

Defence spending is lacklustre. Structural reforms are needed.

DEFENCE SPENDING

Intro: Why do we still send millions to China when we desperately need that money to defend ourselves against countries like… China?

WHEREVER you look, Britain’s adversaries are on the offensive. Russian hegemony and aggression shows no sign of abating. China’s military jets breach Taiwan’s airspace almost on a daily basis, and with its unprecedented defence spending, Beijing’s ambitions evidently stretch further. Iran’s proxies attack British ships in the Red Sea while Tehran is on the verge of gaining nuclear weapon capability. The security threats we face are the greatest in a generation.

In geopolitics, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. And the UK, hands meekly by its side, is yet to muster any credible response. Despite a recent increase in spending, our Armed Forces are still reeling from 30 years of cuts and disastrous unwinnable wars that have steadily eroded our conventional capability. We are shockingly under-prepared for this more contested world.

At the outbreak of the Falkland War in 1982, the Royal Navy had 43 frigates and 12 destroyers. It now has 13 and six respectively.

Russia regularly deploys spy ships to tamper with our undersea cables, yet neither of the two specialist ships needed to protect them have materialised, despite being announced in 2021.

The British Army has shrunk to its smallest size since the Napoleonic era. Of serious concern, there is a £17billion black hole in the Ministry of Defence’s ten-year procurement plan. By some estimates, if Russia invaded a NATO member – a very real and distinct possibility – our stockpile of ammunition would last just eight days.

Most scandalously, the foundations of our defence, our Trident nuclear deterrent, has been appallingly neglected. Just two of the four submarines that deliver our continuous at sea deterrent are functional. They are so stretched that our Vanguard submarines are being sent on longer deployments than ever before. Submariners now have to spend five months continuously at sea – three months more than in the past. The next generation of Dreadnought submarines set to replace our old and creaking fleet is well behind schedule.

The dangerous and humiliating collapse of our nuclear deterrent is a catastrophe waiting to happen unless we urgently grip this crisis. A reckoning is inescapable.

The cost of sustaining Trident is cannibalising the rest of the UK military budget. We have no choice but to increase defence spending to three per cent of GDP to deliver the uplift we need to defend ourselves. If Greece and Poland can do it, why is it beyond the UK’s reach? Most in Parliament agree; that’s the straightforward part.

What’s much harder to explain is how to fund this increase when money is tight. Hard trade-offs will need to follow.

Strong defence rests upon a strong economy that can fund military upgrades. To provide the type of defence we need the UK will need to relentlessly pursue pro-growth, supply-side reforms. This will include liberalising planning to build more affordable homes, roads and factories, reforming welfare to get abled bodied people back into work, and cutting regulation that stifles entrepreneurs and small firms.

We cannot continue shovelling more money into increasingly bloated public services. The UK must drive through radical reforms. The security of a nation depends on having a strong military capability.

Strong economic growth will not appear overnight. We cannot wait until tomorrow to tackle today’s crisis. The choices are stark: either taxes are raised hitting an already squeezed middle class, borrow more upon the trillions we already have as public debt, or divert spending from elsewhere.

We mustn’t add to the national debt with interest payments at already astronomical levels, nor increase taxes when the tax burden is at an unacceptable high. Neither should we divert existing spending on the NHS or policing.

Instead, we should cut the foreign aid budget, and redirect that money to defence. While the aid budget does provide vital resources for alleviating extreme poverty that we should continue to support, a significant chunk of our “development” spend is incoherent, wasteful, and not necessary. It’s beyond ludicrous that we send hundreds of millions of pounds to nuclear powers China, India, and Pakistan.

Almost a third of our foreign aid budget goes on the ballooning costs of supporting asylum-seekers in the UK. If we ended the abuse of the system by economic migrants and closed the farcical asylum hotels, billions of pounds could be freed.

Another third goes to multinational organisations such as the UN and World Bank. An estimated 15 per cent of that aid is spent on managing humanitarian crises, the rest we have little control over.

Only ten per cent of the total expended by the Foreign Office on aid goes specifically and directly to deal with humanitarian emergencies. Other uses of taxpayers’ money include nebulous spending on “open societies” and “research and technology”.

Halving the aid budget would free about £7billion a year and immediately push defence spending above 2.5 per cent of GDP. When growth returns, or a crisis unfolds, we could make carefully targeted increases in overseas aid spending.

In a world of difficult choices, we should view our contribution to global peace and security as primarily through hard power and free trade. After all, the expansion of global commerce has been the biggest alleviator of extreme poverty.

There’s an argument, too, that we should also bring back “patriot bonds” which enabled citizens to invest in their security during the World Wars. We should stop guilting City investors out of putting money into our defence industry through warped environmental, social, and governance regulations. Instead, they should be encouraged to support British manufacturing jobs, and our military.

We need to continue reforming our defence procurement systems to ensure taxpayers’ money goes much further and bring an end to the indignity of the MoD having to beg the Treasury for money every year. Nonetheless, billions could be saved in procurement efficiencies if proper structural reform was carried out.

In the words of Churchill, we appear “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift”. If we continue to dodge the difficult political decisions that need to be made, they will only come back as greater crises in the future.

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Britain, Defence, Government, Politics, Society

Defence is our first priority

BRITAIN

OUR political leaders are always gushing when reverting to how they feel about British troops. Recently, the prime minister said: “In a dangerous world, I’ve seen how you’re working around the clock for the good of us all.”

So much for the gratitude of politicians. While our leaders are quick to become dewy-eyed over the selfless dedication and bravery of our servicemen and women, they are depressingly reluctant to match their words with deeds.

Even Conservative governments – who should know better – have run down the Armed Forces they are so ready to send into battle or on other perilous deployments.

Defence budgets have been plundered to prop up unsustainable levels of funding elsewhere, most strikingly for health.

Those elected to govern make choices, of course. But the choices made are coming back to haunt Britain.

The threats facing us are far more unpredictable and serious than even during the Cold War. Yet the British Army is so short of soldiers, it can’t even field a single 10,000-strong division. The Royal Navy has been reduced to little more than a coastal force.

To make matters worse, the House of Commons’ spending watchdog says Defence faces a £29billion funding black hole, which means further vital equipment could be axed.

With war raging violently in Europe and authoritarian regimes on the rise, it is simply astonishing that not a bean was conjured up in last week’s Spring Budget. Our threadbare defences urgently require to be upgraded. Our political masters are short-sighted and have made a dangerous mistake.

Former defence secretaries, top brass, and war heroes are all calling for increases to Ministry of Defence funding from 2.3 to 4 per cent of GDP within a decade.

With the Budget gone, the perfect time to announce a surge in defence funding would be NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in July.

On the campaign trail in America, Donald Trump has said he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to pact members who failed to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence. His comments may have been puerile for many, but it is hard not to have a grain of sympathy with his sentiments.

For far too long, some European countries have skimped on security, opting instead to ride-off-the-back of America’s military might.  

By pledging to bump up our military budget to realistic operational levels, Britain can show real leadership.

If we are to get serious about defence spending, the MoD’s notorious procurement operation requires radically overhauled and reformed. The department has long set the Whitehall benchmark for incompetence and serial mismanagement of its budget. Taxpayers’ money has been squandered by the billions.

And while we need more troops, battlefield tanks, armoured vehicles, weaponry, and fighter jets, modern warfare involves cyber conflict, the use of unmanned aircraft, drones, and computer-controlled battlefleets. There needs to be proper provision for all of these things.

With a general election looming, Rishi Sunak fears losing votes by slashing other departmental budgets. But none of the other Government’s obligations is more crucial than the defence of the realm. If our security is compromised, all other areas of life are endangered. Only through military strength will we deter our enemies.

Time and again, British Forces have proved their incalculable worth to this country. The very least we can do in return is give them the resources and tools they need to do their job and keep us safe.

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