Conservatives and now Labour continue to show their total lack of understanding of defence spend.
They talk about spending 2.5% of GDP – what absolute stupidity. And it is so simple!
You decide what you need to win whatever fight you are in and/or to defend us against aggressors Then you make or buy that equipment as cost effectively as you can
Winston Churchill set the standard motivating huge manufacturing concerns like Vickers and Rolls-Royce and the shipyards, coal mines and steel works to raise productivity and for men and women in all factories to work all the hours available. The output of these manufacturing companies was out performing Hitlers Germany and helped Churchill to bring America into the war
After the war the UK concentrated manufacturing on rebuilding the economy but by the Seventies Mrs Thatcher could see we needed to strengthen our defence capability. People of like mind, I was one, voted for her. Unfortunately a couple of years after she was elected she decided we were spending too much on defence and issued a moratorium on defence spending! This was a major contribution to the de-industrialisation policy that has seen the destruction of the UK’s coal, steel, power generation, automotive, rail, aeroplane and machine tool industries, industries that we were world leaders in
The result is we are reliant on nuclear weaponry, mostly American, and spend most of our budgets on warships or submarines to carry them. We make small missiles but these factories are owned by the French
Russia now produces huge glide bombs in vast numbers. Ukraine is facing a massive threat from these
Vickers produced the Chieftain tank and then the Challenger tank in the 1980’s. Read about the Challenger in Wikipedia. In 2005 it was recognised that major technical upgrades, real modernisation was necessary and it would become Challenger 3, supposed to be better than any other tanks in the field. Challenger 3 may be under test in 2026 and available generally in 2030. Unbelievable – 25 years.
Our politicians posture spitting out big words but I believe three leaders of countries we should be very wary of laugh at us. In a conventional war they would overwhelm us. They out number us in people and weapons and we still continue to reduce our fighting force numbers. We may already be in the position where the only way we can a fight is nuclear
80 years ago we won a war because of our leader and our manufacturing capability. Today we have no leader and very little manufacturing capability and capacity
We cannot afford to fall out with NATO, especially America
Keep your fingers crossed that America keeps control of their designs and manufacturing capability of high level semi conductors (chips). 24 years ago the UK gave away a world leading designer and producer of chips based in Cambridge. It went to the Americans but cooperation has spread to other nations, hopefully not to backfire on us
I think less than 10% of the nonsensical billions spent on nonsensical HS2 would have enabled us to reinstate and develop our own defence industry
29th July 2024
There will be a lot more to say about defence policy – one of the biggest c*ck ups by governments for decades
I believe very strongly that the UK should be able to defend itself and its allies. In the early 80’s one of my companies was making major gun turret components for the Chieftain tank (left photo). The Chieftain’s replacement, the Challenger 1 was not a great upgrade and Vickers started producing Challenger 2 (right photo) in the mid 90’s and I am very proud that Vickers bought one of my machines to produce the sprocket carriers holding the sprockets to the axles – hidden behind the sprocket wheels in the bottom photo but you can see the bolts holing them on
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