PPRuNe Forums - MOD to be cut by 25%: Coalition says. (2024)

All the services need to become more flexible employers in the labour market, and facilitate career transition between regular/reserve/civilian.

The services are very inflexible employers with an over-rigid career structure at present. If you don't join before your mid twenties, you are excluded for life, whatever qualifications and experience you may acquire after an arbitrary date. Why?

Reserves can have more operational experience than some regulars, but cannot transition to full-time service if they wish to do so. Why?

The services have become more flexible as employers in recent years, but still they do not make best use of the labour market.

Because the Services are not an employer. Their primary purpose is to deliver extreme violence and destruction upon the enmy using the most effective means possible. If you are fortunate enough to gain some useful civilian type skills along the way, then all well and good, but that is not the "purpose" of the Services. It is and always has been a young people's game, some reasonable career progression allows you to remain serving while getting older, but the sharp end is firmly the domain of young people for some obvious reasons.

Some interesting thoughts and comments on here as usual. Much talk of MOD cuts, as of course one might expect as we need savings. Often seems to me that the numbers of Squadron Leaders and above need to be radically reduced to reflect today's manning levels plus the lower levels we seem to be heading towards. We still have several hundred Group Captains and over 1000 Wing Co's last time I looked at some figures.

I chatted to a couple of young hopefuls recently who were aiming for a career in the RAF and wondered how they might fare given today's uncertainty. Then I remembered my son's perilous position in a civvie engineering job where 75% have been laid off. Good luck to all serving personnel in the uncertain times we face, sadly we need to save money. My sole gripe would be the number of officers as I've outlined above.

Just a personal observation and happy to be shot down if you feel so inclined !

Torygraph: 21 July: Liam Fox: Senior officers face the axe

The senior ranks of the Armed Forces will be thinned out to save money, Liam Fox has signalled.

The Defence Secretary told MPs that the ratio of senior officers to junior personnel is being reassessed as part of a wider review of Britain’s defences. That means some Army brigadiers, Royal Navy admirals and RAF air commodores could lose their jobs.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee, Dr Fox accepted that the proportion of senior officers to rank-and-file personnel is “out of kilter” and signalled that senior personnel are likely to be cut. “Budgetary restraint has to be exercised at all levels of the Armed Forces,” he said. “We do have to look at the rank structure – that will be looked at.

Ministry of Defence figures show there are 47 officers of three-star rank – lieutenants general, vice admirals and air marshal. Their combined salary bill is £6.8 million a year. According to a study published in 2008, the Royal Navy now has more admiral-rank officers than active warships.

The number of more junior “star rank” officers has risen steadily too. Since 1997, the number of Army Brigadiers has risen from 170 to 190. The number of Royal Navy commodores rose from 82 to 84. But the number of RAF air commodores has fallen from 95 to 90.

The previous Labour government began work on cutting the number of senior officers, and the Coalition is continuing that work as part of its strategic defence review...........

ORAC,

be interested in seeing what their pensions and redundancy payments would be in comparison to the pay bill. Even if they dont renew their contracts at the termination of their current tour, I cant imagine them saving more than 40% on the salary due to the terms of their pensions.

I refer you to my previous post on 25th June.... :cool:

The Times: Tornado or Harrier fast jet fleets to be axed by National Security Council

The Royal Air Force and the Navy are locked in a dogfight to save their fast jets after a decision by the National Security Council to scrap either the RAF’s Tornado fleet or the Navy’s Harriers.

The decision to sharply reduce Britain’s 215 aircraft fleet was one of several made at an “Away Day” meeting of the security council on Saturday as part of the Strategic Defence Review. It is expected that the review will cut between 10 and 20 per cent of Britain’s defence capability.

“It has come down to either Harrier or Tornado,” a Ministry of Defence source said, insisting that “no decision on which will go has yet been made”.

Another senior source said: “The issue is this: one fast jet fleet has to be taken out of service ASAP, full stop.”

Ministers are also expected to consider the long-term storage of tanks and artillery, the closure of several bases, the sale of Ministry of Defence housing assets, and cuts of up to 25,000 servicemen across the three services to recoup billions of pounds by 2015.

Scrapping the RAF’s 132-strong Tornado fleet, seven squadrons, could claw back up to £3 billion. The aircraft, which were designed in the early 1970s, are due to remain in service, with service-life-extension upgrades, until 2025.

The RAF is understood to be strongly in favour of shelving the much smaller “Joint Force Harrier”. This includes 36 RAF and Navy Fleet Air Arm Harrier GR9 aircraft, in three frontline squadrons and one training squadron. Scrapping the Harriers would save approximately £1 billion but would leave Britain without any aircraft-carrier-borne capability.

With the two services battling to retain cherished assets, senior naval sources accuse the RAF of providing misleading data on the success of the Tornado since the aircraft took over from the Harrier in Afghanistan last year. They also claim that the aircraft has been less durable in harsh Afghan conditions, with two Tornados lost to systems failures in the past year.

“We are well versed in the Harrier guys’ arguments,” a senior RAF source said. “The feedback we are getting is that the Tornado is performing better than the Harrier did in Afghanistan and this is leaving the Harriers feeling particularly vulnerable.”

The RAF has been keen to claim success for the Tornado in a reconnaissance role in Afghanistan, where it has been fitted with the Raptor surveillance pod. Another well-placed source told The Times that scrapping the Tornado was “finding favour” with ministers. The RAF is expected to seek to redevelop the Eurofighter Typhoon jet to provide a ground-attack capability from 2015 onwards. This would occupy some of the space left if the Tornado were scrapped.

As I mentioned here, or elsewhere, Dannatt was in favour of sidelining the tanks and MLRS although mothballing was not mentioned.

I also suggested that the Tonka, purely from a financial aspect, was the better of the two FJ types to withdraw.

Far more aircrew, more groundcrew and two major bases. Removing the entire FJ navigator cadre would enable withdrawal of all FJ elements of the nav trg regime - Hawks and Tucano - the former could be mothballed for the Red Arrows. The financial benefits will be most attractive.

WSO(Nav) training could be colocated with the RN Observer training with the MRA4 force benefiting immediately from maritime indoctrination. Indeed it may finally give the RN the leverage to acquire the LRMPA that is has covetted for years. This may even be essential as the light blue WSO(Nav) gene pool would be too small. The only other aircraft that will have WSO(Nav) in the future would, I think, be the E3. That seat, if retained could be filled by a dark blue observer or maybe a P3 (cheaper than a navigation school).

Much as I would be sad to see navigators go (OK we changed the name years ago) it would make much more financial sense to chop GR4 and WSO(N). One question would remain: what about flying pay for the few Navs not transferred to UAV or made redundant?

BWord, remember I kept mentioning the FINANCIAL argument, nothing about effectiveness. When you mention deep strike you of course predicate that HMG will want a deep strike option.

Regarding the LRMP, true it would come off the AIR budget but that was not my argument. My argument in this case was a military one. The WSO(N) Gene pool for RAF MPA would be just too small to justify an air navigation training system followed by on-sqn training. The RN O pool is probably not very large either. Combining the two would produce an economy of scale and justify the retention of some Dominie too.

So what I am really saying, and you are agreeing, is that the Tonka is the more attractive target and thus is the one that needs defending more vigorously.

thebword,

My you are active at the moment!

Please do not read more into RN subterfuge and aspirations.....they simply do not exist as all of our time is spent fighting off an insecure RAF.

I do not understand your comment on RAF growth plan via the GR4 force when the FJs of the future are all single seat and mumbers are in a decline mode anyway, much better to grow JCA pilots through Typhoon and GR9 (and the USN), than the GR4 route. And the only reason JFH is becoming non-viable is because the RAF engineered its decline to achieve such a result...no Defence interest came into it. Getting GR4 into Afgh was a sop to the failure to get Typhoon there (to justify its retention); GR9 was perfectly capable in theatre and not broken. If the RN had had an ability to have an equal say in the deployment pattern of JFH, maintaining an embarked capability would have been relatively easy. GR4 is vastly more manpower and logistics expensive in theatre than GR9, not to mention its footprint.

Of course GR4 is doing a fantastic job, one would expect nothing less, but is it the best and cheapest option and did it actually need to deploy. The answer is no on all counts.

Re loss of embarked capability/relying on partner nations to provide a discretionary (for them) capability, you clearly do not understand the inherent risks in gapping a major sea-based aviation capability (of which the aircraft and aircrew are just part - a point the RAF have singularly failed to appreciate and accept since 1918).

If one makes an assumption (whatever one's view) that at least one carrier will survive the cuts then one should accept that continuity of a maritime based FW component will have to be assured to provide the

our Government requires.

Bismark, I agree with your last post and the sentiments that you express, and I am ex light blue, not dark.....

The real issue in this whole debate is down to funding. HMG decides both on the size of "loaf" and the amount of "butter" it gives us. We all like our bread spread with lots of butter but successive cutbacks in butter have left us all very thinly spread. Now we can't butter the whole loaf.

The simple choice is give the armed forces more "butter" OR reduce the size of "loaf". The problem though is that the threats we as a nation face won't go away, nor can we predict when and where these threats will happen.....

Politically, the government (of all hues) have neglected defence spending for 20 plus years (remember Options for Change?) in spite of various conflicts like the Balkans, GW1, GW2 and now Afg. There are more votes to be won spending taxpayers money on the NHS, Education, Welfare and Social Security and the MOD's budget is seen as a soft target. (The armed forces aren't union-dominated and servicemen (women) can be moved, or encouraged to leave (either voluntarily or otherwise:sad:) by fair means and foul.

The end-result just provokes in-fighting between the Services as we fight for diminishing funds and lip service is paid by successive Secretaries of State who fail to stand up and fight the Treasury to resource Defence properly. We compound things by our can-do attitude which leaves the impression that we can still get the job done when the reality is that we have lost various core capabilities years ago.

The polititians still want to portray the UK as being able to take our seat at "the top table" (UN, NATO, G7, Security Council etc. etc.) but like a onece heavy-weight boxer, we have been on starvation rations for so long we are now only able to compete against fly-weight opponents.:( Soon we will only be able to watch the "match" as spectators as the world gets more dangerous and unstable........
MB

Bword,

You are still missing my points.

1. Cancellation of the GR4 is by far the most attractive financially. I am not arguing for its cancellation but highlighting its vulnerability.

2. MRA4 and maritime - there is no way that Air could cut it from the RAF budget and expect the RN to pick it up and pay for it. Air thought that was true of the AWRs when DTE took them over. They simply deleted the budget lines. A year down the line they discovered that any changes that they required DTE to make had to be funded by Air.

Now, ignoring the GR4 issue as we are on the same side, how would you address the MRA4 issue? The saving from switching the ownership of the MRA4 comes from the simplified training system. Of course that simplified system is predicated on the cancellation of the GR4. Retain the GR4 and you need a FJ Nav training regime with Domine, Tucano and Hawk but boy, are they an attractive short term budget saving.

PN,

Whilst I am not advocating kepings WSOs I think your comments on the cost savings associated with getting rid of them are oversimplistic.

Take such comments as "...making savings by withdrawing the Hawks used for FJ Nav training and the Dominies.....". Well aren't they going anyway. I thought all the original Hawks were going in the next few years to be replaced by some 30 odd new Hawks type. As for the Dominies, they have been around since 1966, surely they are up for the chop soon.

Were does MFTS fit into this, surely a contract has been agreed based on training a certain number of WSOs per year, and breaking it by MOD will incur costs?

As I said, I am not advocating retaining WSOs for their own sake. I simply believe that, like most things in life, the savings from getting rid of them will not be as easy to predict as you seem to imply!

Several years ago the relevant desk officer wrote a paper about only needing a 100 or so WSOs by 2020ish. Given the planned out of service date for GR4, post 2025 you will only be looking at WSOs on MRA4 (all 9 of them) and E-3D (E-3D planned OSD??). Many of those will either already be in the system, or entering it now......

Biggus

We don't drive capability on the basis on contracts for training, its excatly the reverse. Since no MFTS contract has been signed for EFT, BFT or AJT current numbers are irrelevant. MFTS ISD is 2015/16 well to the right of these savings options so in reality, and as has been said before, everything is on the table.

Additionally all need to remember the industrial element in any decision. There is still a requirement (political) to retain an aerospace (fixed and rotary wing), shipbuilding and high tech defence electronics industry. Any measure that affected the viability of each of these would likely not be taken.

MD

thebword,

No emotion on my part I am afraid. The RN know all about critical mass requirements for force generation and transfer to new types and the Harrier Force was quite capable of generating the JCA requirement. The RN needed to build to about 80 pilots and the system, without hindrances, was perfectly capable of delivery. Unlike the RAF at the time the RN had a very clear understanding of the critical elements of success from initial selection to joining the trained strength. Unfortunately the RAF hierarchy at the time was determined to prevent such success and hence the RN approach to the USN - ie remove the cause of the blockage from any control over RN gains to the trained strength. The final attempt was the reduction of Force Elements of JFH (albeit they were on the RAF strength not RN). It is interesting to note that the once elite RAF Harrier boys feel totally abandoned by their top of the shop - sad.