Part of 627 vehicles ordered from Force Protection since 2006, the UK MoD has received 157 Cougar 4x4 vehicles which have been modified here in the UK and are now known as Ridgback. Photo credit Shaun Connors
here though, and to far lesser degrees similar applies to Australia, Canada, Italy, the UK and others, all of which (proportionate to the overall size of their armed forces) have sizeable overseas missions commitments. Many who state categorically defence budgets are recession proof ignore/overlook the fact that without such overseas missions, and the additional funds they demand, in real terms defence expenditure of the aforementioned countries (and others) would certainly fall, or fall further. It is not even debateable, these countries simply would not be channelling the additional expenditure of current overseas missions into mainstream defence budgets during such difficult financial times. However, and assuming you could even calculate the true cost of such operations, would a defence budget fall be equal to the full cost of those operations? The answer has to be “no” as in a ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ situation, in addition to supplemental funding, even a cursory study of recent military procurement/expenditure
will clearly show that ‘green Army’ cutbacks are regularly made to help fund overseas missions. Taking the US as an example, $159 billion may be required for OCO during fiscal 2011, but amidst that and a $549 base budget, Obama’s Pentagon is looking to continue a process that during fiscal 2010 has already cut $330 billion of proposed defence expenditure with further savings.
But how do such defence spending
increases, or decreases, really affect industry and would those and other US budget butchering cutbacks have been made had OCO and its expense not been in place? The answer is probably not to the same extent, as right now (for example) Peter is being robbed of what he doesn’t need ($160 billion Future Combat System (FCS)) to buy Paul what he does need (protected trucks, body armour, MRAPs etc etc…). What does remain a certainty though, is that given the severity of the current financial crisis, something would have given somewhere, and irrespective of whatever level it were at in a world
devoid of OIF/OEF, US defence spending would have dipped, and this would have had a significant global impact.
Per head it costs a given amount to maintain an armed force of a given quantity to a set capability level; it’s as simple as that. Yes, you can make short term cuts, you can trim here and there, but ultimately a capability has a cost and the only way to significantly reduce defence expenditure is to reduce capability. Excluding a few paranoid examples, most armed forces maintain a capability level believed necessary to defend their sovereignty and security, be that at home or abroad, and in reality that
the MoD which is currently buying around 7,300 MAN trucks, these replacing a legacy fleet of around 12,000
G4 DEFENCE
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