capability level (unless a Cold War ends…) will seldom fluctuate all that much. However, none of this means that cutbacks are not made, and that a recession (or ‘green’ government) will not impact on defence spending. It does and they will, however, ultimately no government will jeopardise national security or sovereignty for the sake of a few million dollars during what in whole-life terms is a short-lived recession – it’s as simple as that.
Bread & Butter
Even without the burden of deployed operations and the funding priorities
Per head it costs a given amount to maintain an armed force of a given quantity to a set capability level
this creates, cutbacks resulting in defence budget trimming or even stagnation manifest themselves in many ways, and are certainly not as straightforward as cancellation of a project that’s no longer relevant to the job at hand… By way of a bread and butter example, procurement of the humble load carrying truck and light utility vehicle will be used to conclude this piece with a little muddy of the waters, and a vague conclusion… To prevent any disagreement over
figure interpretation, we will simply say that the UK’s defence budget has certainly not reduced on par with the economy’s contraction, which (depending on source) has shrunk by up to 10% in real terms throughout the current recession. However, you could suggest the recession had badly impacted truck procurement by the MoD which is currently buying around 7,300 MAN trucks, these replacing a legacy fleet of around 12,000. However, what that ‘suggestion’ fails
no matter how rose- tinted your glasses may be, it must remain clear the world is in economic recession, the overall
effects of which will be felt for years
to show is that the number bought is the number required; post Cold War the British Army has reduced in size considerably, so it is not the recession that forced numbers down, simply a reduced need.
What does happen though as funding priorities shift in the short term, and/or belts are tightened (and this is the stuff that a few statistics cannot prove or disprove, or demonstrate or not), are the selection of procurement cost-saving measures that do creep
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G4 DEFENCE
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