Defence

Is Britain’s growing national debt a matter of national security? In a speech this morning, Liam Fox said so. Sure, he said, you can protest at the defence cuts — but strength comes from having a strong economy and strong national accounts. “Those who are arguing for a fundamental reassessment of the Defence Review are really arguing for increased defence  pending. But they fail to spell out the  inevitable result — more borrowing, more tax rises, or more cuts elsewhere. The bottom line is that a strong economy is a national security requirement and an affordable Defence programme is the only responsible way to support our Armed Forces in the long term.” In

I suppose you could call it an O-turn. First, the Prime Minister declared, in a speech aboard HMS Ark Royal last year, that a new military covenant would be enshrined “into the law of our land.” Then, there seemed to be a U-turn, with the government committing only to review the covenant annually, not to lend it legal force. Yet, now, a U-turn on the U-turn, with the news that it will be etched into the staute books after all. The defence minister Andrew Robathan tells today’s Telegraph that, “we are putting the military covenant on a statutory basis for the first time.” The formal announcement is expected in the

It is hard to feel anything but nauseous when reading the Guardian’s continuing special report on Guantanamo Bay, which started yesterday. The paper has released hundreds of classified files which were obtained last year by Wikileaks, including detainee assessments prepared between 2002 and 2009 to summarise what the government knew about each detainee — and they do not paint a pretty picture. Some detainees are clearly guilty as sin. But others seem to have been caught in the crosshairs of conflict. One example seems to be Abdul Badr Mannan, who was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to US forces in the belief that he was affiliated with al-Qaeda. According

The Ministry of Defence is Whitehall’s last monolith. Charged with the nation’s defence, it is powerful enough to challenge the Treasury. As Pete notes, there are signs that it’s trying to defer (if not avoid) the cuts laid out the punishing strategic defence and security review. It has many ways of doing this. Obviously it can use political pressure because troops are deployed in Afghanistan and Libya. But there’s also a neat accounting step that allows the MoD can transfer costs directly to the Treasury. You may recall that the Budget contained a £700m increase for ‘single use military expenditure’ (SUME) in 2011-2012. SUME does not appear as capital spending

The MoD has released its plan for redundancies. The numbers and plan were leaked at the weekend, but here are some details: 1) There will be 17,000 redundancies – 7,000 from the army and 5,000 each from navy and RAF. The first tranche will be notified by commanding officers in September 2011. 2) Some of the reductions are expected to be achieved through not filling vacancies and slowing recruitment, but it is estimated that 11,000 jobs will be lost by April 2015. 3) This is a compulsory programme, but the MoD hopes that the majority of losses can be met through volunteers. Volunteers will serve a 6-month notice period, non-volunteers

With NATO planes circling above Libya, Saudi troops quashing protests in Bahrain, and troops killing civilians in Syria and Yemen, there has been little attention paid to Israel. But Israel has recently been the victim of a series of violent attacks. More than 30 people were injured in a bombing in Jerusalem, and Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigade, has fired mortars and rockets into Israel for days on end. The attacks suggest that Hamas is, once again, struggling to rein in other terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad. Some IDF commanders fear a descent into chaos in Gaza. In the face of the onslaught, however, the Israeli government has