Some military planners have argued that efforts to update their detailed plans have been hampered by the lack of a new strategic framework in which to set their ideas. There is justice to this charge. The UK's Strategic Defence Review ("SDR") of 1998 set out a strategic context that was helpful in forming detailed plans, and was applauded as a result. But even its authors at the time felt that it was a framework that would last for about 5 years. They fully expected it to be replaced by a wholly new SDR in 2002-03, and that was well before the events of 9/11 changed the world.
Of course, the MoD can point at a number of initiatives in this area: the new Chapter for the SDR in 2002, the Defence Industrial Strategy of 2005, and the more broadly framed National Security Strategy of 2008 are examples. But all of these fall short of a coherent re-examination and comprehensive review of the UK's long-term defence strategy.
In corporate life, no enterprise should persist with a 12 year old strategy without at least re-evaluating it fully on a regular basis. Few who would expect to prosper would even try to do so.
Accordingly, it is the first recommendation of the Review team that a Strategic Defence Review process should be conducted on a regular 4 or at the most 5-year basis, as happens in the United States through the Quadrennial Defence Review process.
To give such a process maximum legitimacy and longevity, the team would propose that this should happen in the first year of a new Parliament, and should be enshrined in legislation to ensure that incoming governments did not try too easily to slip out of any difficult examinations of these issues.
Some have objected that such processes could be undermined by hung parliaments or short periods between elections, such as occurred in 1974. However, arrangements such as those governing the Boundary Commissions2 could be put in place to ensure that a common sense outcome prevailed.
The one major change that the Review team would propose to the 1998 SDR process would be that the outcome of this review should be fully costed, with the cost implications spelt out at the time of the review. The fact that this was not available to the 1998 review was the most significant weakness in an otherwise strong piece of work.
Some significant components of this 1998 plan, such as the provision of two aircraft carriers, were not fully costed at the time, and where partial cost estimates did exist, they pointed to significant, and unaffordable, bulges in equipment spending beyond the formal 10-year planning horizons of the MoD.
Participants in 1998, including Civil Servants and Military Personnel as well as Ministers, took the view that these problems would be ironed out in time, and that some kind of "bow wave" had existed within the equipment programme for a long time, and that its effects had always in the end been smoothed out.
While this was true, with the benefit of hindsight it now seems clear that the very existence of this bow wave is itself a significant contributor to the problems that have plagued defence procurement over a long period.
In reality, the bow wave allows the MoD to maintain a position that a whole variety of defence capabilities are in the process of being procured. This feels reassuring to the country about the size and scope of Britain's Armed Forces, but behind this comforting thought is the cold fact is that the budget does not exist, and has arguably not existed since the end of the Second World War, to support this level of ambition.
The policies of successive governments, and a lack of political will to present to the electorate the unpleasant reality of the position, has been a significant force behind this double-think. So too has the fact that the Cold War allowed the fiction to be maintained, because there was no fighting to expose the weaknesses in the system, and because the Warsaw Pact had similar problems. It is equally true that Ministers, the Armed Forces, and Civil Servants did not rush to confront the problem either.
Such elision may have been acceptable, and even desirable, during the Cold War. The UK, and NATO members generally, confronted an adversary that had similar problems. If called upon to fight on any given day, both sides would have only been able to field a fraction of the military force to which they laid claim. Accordingly, provided the paper tiger was sufficiently convincing, claiming a high level of military force could be claimed to add to general deterrence, and so reduce the likelihood of actual combat.
And there is an argument that this kind of posture preserves flexibility and allows us the option to ramp up efforts if needed. If we have a programme running which has half-built a fast jet fleet or flotilla of frigates, then more resources can quickly be thrown into expanding that programme if the need starts to arise, than if we had abandoned the construction of such systems altogether.
This vestigial Cold War mindset lies behind much of the planned defence equipment spending today. We seek to retain the capacity to regenerate substantial armed force and high-end military technology against the day it might once more be required for a substantial state-on-state conflict. The majority of our defence equipment resources continue to be funnelled into such expensive, and contingent, military assets.
If the UK had deliberately decided to focus only on long-range preparation, and had foresworn current military action short of a direct, immediate, and existential attack on the UK homeland, this might be a viable posture. But this is not the situation today.
UK forces have been in real combat or serious peace enforcement missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan, to name only the major actions, in the past 15 years. In all of these theatres we have sustained casualties and risked the lives and reputations of our forces. While we have by and large prevailed, in co-operation with allies in most cases, the operations have not been without risks or costs.
Unfortunately, the current level of UK defence resources does not permit us to sustain indefinitely both of these laudable objectives. We cannot fight the kind of unconventional, expeditionary wars that have been the stuff of much of the last decade, at the same time as providing the regeneration capacity across the full width of defence capabilities that keeps many critical military technologies within the UK, at anything like the current level of resources.
Future SDRs should also encompass a coherent framework for the defence industrial base, as the 2005 Defence Industrial Strategy did. As with the rest of the SDR, however, it needs to be fully costed and affordable. While choices made under such a review process might be painful for parts of the industrial sector, the Review team heard from many industrialists that a secure basis for planning would be a prize worth considerable pain.
The lack of a coherent planning framework makes it hard for industry to plan capacity, or to know which capabilities the MoD is interested in pursuing
within the UK, and which it is content to source on the global market. The Defence Industrial Strategy was a first step towards addressing this concern, but industry leaders have felt frustrated that, while the aims of the DIS were good, the resources available to translate it into practice have been lacking.
A balanced and affordable equipment programme, which gave greater confidence to industry and which was better able to invest in emerging technologies, could therefore benefit industry, even if the adjustment from the current position were difficult.
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2 The Boundary Commissions are required to conduct a general review of constituency boundaries "not less than eight or more than twelve years" (Parliamentary Constituencies Act of 1986, as amended by Boundary Commissions Act of 1992)