HMS Ark Royal sunk by ConDem spending cuts
The publication of today’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) will see the axing of the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and its fleet of Harrier jets scrapped “with immediate effect”.
The Defence Review identifies four “tier one” threats to Britain: terrorism, attacks in cyberspace, a large accident or hazard and a military crisis – the only one relating to a conventional emergency that would involve other states. Accordingly (and in keeping with the presumption for drastic spending cuts), there’s a shift away from expensive military hardware towards investment in countering cyber warfare.
There’s a growing sense that the strategic review displays little by way of strategy, but is politically driven by expedience and spending cuts. There’s a partial U-turn on Trident, which has been placed on hold for five years (hats off to the lib-dems), and the scrapping of the Harriers means that the UK will not have the ability to launch fighter jets at sea until at least 2019. Meanwhile £500m has been earmarked for fighting cyber attacks.