The latest UK defence news came out yesterday and it is not good news for anyone who cares about British defence, or defence of NATO / the West in general.
It was announced that the UK government and Ministry of Defence (MOD) has just cancelled its order for more A400M transport jets due to cost. This a huge blow as these are critical planes.
We saw in Afghanistan how critical it was to have a decent airlift capacity and capability when evacuating our people back home from Kabul. Other countries looked at us with envy at our airlift capacity, with many asking us for help.
We have also used our transport jets to move UK weapons and supplies to Ukraine so that they can fight back against Putin’s illegal invasion. We even flew desperately needed artillery shells from ammunition factories in Pakistan to Ukraine using our heavy transport jets. That is how useful are and how powerful they have proven to be. It is total madness that we are cancelling our further orders when other countries like France and Germany are ordering more, having seen how important they have been to us.
Now this cancellation would be bad enough if it were on it own but thus follows news that we are also getting rid of our entire fleet of remaining 14 C130 Hercules transport jets (C130J) by 2023. This is much earlier than their planned retirement date of the 2030s. This was justified by the MOD because we were ordering more A400Ms and they would take on the the mission of the C130s when they came into service.
We have also got rid of our smaller BAE 146 transport jets in 2022, the last truly British jets designed and built in the UK as regional airliners. This was also earlier than their original retirement dates.
To be honest, this is totally disgraceful. It is idiotic penny pinching now to save in the short term and it is easy to see how this will bite us in the you know where in the future if we ever need them (which it looks like we might with a war in Europe raging as we speak, and China telling the world they will invade Taiwan, likely by 2027). This happened with our Harriers in Libya where they would have been extremely useful yet this government retired them early and sold them as spare parts to the Americans who were laughing at our decision. This also happened with PPE during the pandemic where we had to pay billions more for items we should have already had in preparation. This happened with our gas storage where the government allowed the closure of rough by Centrica because they didn’t want to pay to help keep it open, and would not demand that Centrica did. And look how that has bitten us adding hundreds of pounds to the bills of British energy consumers. This happened with our nuclear power plants where the government refused to pay for new plants and now we are desperate for energy, reliant on electricity and gas imports from Europe and risking blackouts.
Do you see a pattern here? The government needs to invest more in critical infrastructure and defence. You cannot penny pinch with these areas. The first duty of government is defence. However it is always the one to be raided to save cash. If we get involved in a proper war (and I don’t mean shooting missiles at a ISIS terrorist in a cave in Syria), we will all pay for the stupidity of this government. We will wish that they funded the armed forces properly and did not allow them to fall into the state they are with 82,000 soldiers in the army, 227 tanks and less than 200 fighter jets. Our current 2% GDP budget for defence is not enough. It needs to rise to 3% immediately, all cuts need to be cancelled and we need to start buying kit designed and built here in the UK just like the French do.
We used to be respected and feared throughout the world. That reputation is in danger if this continues. We need to fund our armed forces properly for all our sakes otherwise we could lose everything should we ever have to fight for our country and values. Here at Boom Britain we will always fight to ensure the UK improves and strengthens its armed forces.
You can find out more at the Jane’s Defence website
