By Stuart Crawford
Two aspects of Britain’s defence infrastructure have been worth a mention over the past couple of days. The first is the planned shake-up of the Ministry of Defence following Lord Levene’s review. His recommendations seem likely to see reform of a structure which has been both top-heavy and hidebound since at least the end of the second world war, and arguably even before then.
The British armed services have always been over-officered compared to their US and continental-European equivalents. This is sometimes attributed to our colonial heritage, when young officers were expected on occasion to set out into the unknown with a few soldiers and annex vast swathes of territory for the Empire. Independent command and decision-making was the order of the day. More recently, the need to maintain an appropriate career path for officer progression has been the excuse of choice.
Britain’s colossal officer casualties in the first world war can be at least partially attributed to the fact that in every infantry company of approximately 100 men or so there might be up to six or seven officers. The equivalent German figure was two or three.
Whatever the real truth of the matter, any attempt to increase the “other rank” to officer ratio is to be welcomed, as the financial burden of maintaining a large officer corps in all three services – more brigadiers than brigades, more air marshals than RAF squadrons, more admirals than Royal Navy ships – is clearly unsustainable in these straitened times. It might also allow us to pay the lower ranks more – and they above all else deserve it.
The other major aspect of Lord Levene’s report is the long-awaited reform of the MoD’s equipment procurement process. This has seen a litany of expensive and over-budget procurement fiascos over many years. Just think of TSR-2, Nimrod, the Bowman radio project, the aircraft carriers and so on. Amazingly, no one seems ever to be held accountable for these disasters, and I dare say there are officers now of senior rank who would have been sacked years ago had they worked in a civilian commercial organisation. So we can only hope that, at long last, this is going to be sorted out.
Not directly related to the above, but still staying with defence, it is interesting to note that the MoD is apparently looking at the possibility of establishing a major military training area in the Scottish Borders – a sort of Caledonian Salisbury Plain, if you like. Whilst the military is decidedly tight-lipped over the rumours at present, there would appear to be more than a grain of truth in the reports carried in the mainstream press.
Whether or not Scotland should welcome such a suggestion is a moot point. On the one hand, it would undoubtedly bring jobs and economic opportunity to Scotland’s forgotten region. Considerable investment would be required, and then of course it would provide a suitable and appropriate training area, one would hope, for Scotland’s promised mobile brigade which is to be constituted from troops returning from Germany.
On the other hand, if you have seen Salisbury Plain close up, you will know that it’s not all good news. Troops on training areas inevitably mean noise and dust, pollution of both the human and technological kind, and it is likely to require a considerable area – Salisbury Plain encompasses 150 square miles in all. There will be nothing subtle or particularly eco-friendly in columns of armoured vehicles stravaiging across the Southern Uplands, for example.
With involvement in Afghanistan now entering, we hope, its end phase, and with the prospect of British troops returning home from both there and from Germany, it may just be that the Scottish population is going to see more of its military than it has for the last 100 years.
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