Don't Cancel the Big Ticket Programmes

The next public spending round is going to be very difficult.  Although Macavity will be keen to offer new popular spending promises to the electorate  prior to the election so he can portray the Tories as dire takersaway, Treasury will not be amused and will insist that he cuts other things to pay for the handouts.
Against this background Defence will be particularly vulnerable.  Britain is currently locked in mortal combat with an enemy who understands and applies the principles of asymmetric warfare to devastating effect.  The outlook is bleak, the policy objectives muddy and the duration uncertain but long.  Despite all this Macavity will be keen to make swingeing cuts in the high value items of the MoD's budget and that almost certainly means the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and Future Aircraft Carrier (CVF), already reduced to only one (what happens during necessary refits is anyone's guess).  Both of these programmes are multi-billion pound tickets and because the current conflict in Afghanistan is all about helicopters, protection and boots on the ground will be cut or worse terminated without much public reaction.
This would be utterly disastrous.  We must not forget that the Afghanistan campaign is being conducted in an environment of total air dominance by ISAF - the Taliban does not have a single aircraft let alone a credible counter-air capability.  Pakistan, on the other hand, does. Macavity will not understand about commanding the air to win the ground battle and so will see no military risk in cutting the JSF programme and doing away with the remaining CVF.  Let us hope that Service Chiefs will be able to persuade him of the foolishness of such a course of action.
Were they to fail we must then reconcile ourselves to forever give up the notion of "punching above our weight" and so pursue a similar military strategy to Denmark.

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