A suitably bulls**t bingo way of saying "here's what I've got planned for the near future".
And that would be three things, assuming that something incredibly interesting and new doesn't pop up to distract me. First, as part of Think Defence's call to arms to fellow bloggers to weigh in on their thoughts about what they'd like to see SDSR 2015 produce, I'm going to take a look at just that and present my current musings on the subject, what I'd like to see etc.
Secondly, I've been doing some work/research off and on for about the last year on the subject of the relative value of defence spending domestically vs overseas. One of the arguments in favour of buying domestically is that it protects British jobs and that some of the money spent is clawed back through taxes etc. I'm now ready to put forward a tentative article on that subject and some of the key arguments and assumptions that underpin in it.
Finally, after producing the first of my "Devil's advocate" series I got a request for a subject matter for the next one. The subject: the dissolution of the RAF. So as soon as I've collected some more material for that, including some ideas offered up by the person interested, I'll have a crack at that one. Having learnt something from that first post on Special Forces, I'm also going to add a conclusions section to the end, to better explain my own thinking on the subject in question.
If you want to suggest an idea for a Devil's Advocate post, or indeed any subject you'd like to see covered, you can either leave a comment in the box below or you can e-mail me at; defencewithac@live.co.uk
You can also follow me on Twitter; @defencewithac, although by my own admission I don't tweet much right now.
On getting rid of the RAF, one option would be to get rid of it but create a third service, the Royal Logistics Auxiliary Force, by merging the RFA, RLC and the support elements of the RAF. If nothing else it would allow the kind of integration of MoD logistics that would eg save £m's by stopping the significant (10-15%? if memory serves) amount of Herrick materiel that ended up in a plane just because it ended up in the pipeline to a warehouse at Brize, which could have been routed via Marchwood and sent much more cheaply by sea. At the moment, one doesn't seem to have that end-user perspective.
ReplyDeleteThe main argument against seems to be that noone joins the Forces to be a warehouse manager, and the current system allows people to "fall into" logistics more easily than making them a race apart. Would make a great target for reservists from Tesco and Amazon though...
Having split off Voyager, you could then join Typhoon and Sentry/Sentinel into the AAC as an integrated "Main Force" for invading Iraq etc and F-35/MPA with the FAA as an integrated "Expeditionary Force" for Sierra Leone-type ops.
Personally, I would call it HM Logistics, part fund it from DfID, and set it up anyhow.
ReplyDeleteThe weakness with the RAF proposal is air defence of and deep strike from GB/ BOTs/friendly airspace...although it is by no means insuperable.
aka GNB
'The subject: the dissolution of the RAF'
ReplyDeleteI'll look forward to when you do me out job ;)