Coalition torpedoes defence budget

19th Oct 2010 15:40

Britain has "punched above its weight" militarily, Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament today as he axed a number of high profile defence projects to help slash the record budget deficit.In the first government strategic defence and security review for a dozen years, the Lib-Con coalition has confirmed the defence budget will fall by 8% in real terms over the next four years.Spending will rise in cash terms and it will increase in real terms next year before being reduced. The UK will still meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP on defence. There will be 42,000 job losses in the Ministry of Defence by 2015 following the government's defence and security review. Most of these will be civilians but the army will be reduced by 7,000 to 95,500, the navy by 5,000 to 30,000 and the RAF by 5,000 to 33,000. The iconic aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal will also be decommissioned four years early as widely predicted over the past few days.Eighty Harrier jump jets, which made a name for themselves in the successful Falklands war in 1982, are also to be scrapped, leaving Britain unable to launch fighter jets at sea until 2019.Both of the new aircraft carriers will be built but the second will be mothballed. Six type 45 destroyers will be completed. By 2020 the number of frigates and destroyers will be reduced from 23 to 19. The Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft programme has been cancelled. RAF Kinloss is under review because of this. RAF Lossiemouth also has an uncertain future. It is suggested that some surplus RAF bases will be used to house the 20,000 troops returning from Germany - one-half will return by 2015 and the rest by 2020. The government has also announced the termination of the Defence Training Rationalisation project in Wales because it believes that it is unaffordable. The Metrix consortium, headed by QinetiQ and Sodexho, was appointed preferred bidder in January 2007. QinetiQ says that it has incurred costs of £37m on the project. The costs have been capitalised and will be written down in its next figures.