AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/MARCH 30-APRIL 12, 2015 35
Tony Osborne London
Percentage Points
Britain urge s allies to meet NATO defense
spending targets, but struggles with them itself
W
hen the U.K. hosted the NATO
Summit in Newport, Wales
last September, British Prime
Minister David Cameron was instru-
mental in urging alliance members to
step up and halt their declines in de-
fense budgets.
Britain is one of just a handful of
NATO member states that maintain
their defense spending above NATO’s
target of 2% of gross domestic product
(GDP), but possibly not for much longer.
With a general election just weeks
away on May 7, senior politicians within
the Conservative Party that currently
governs in coalition with the Liberal
Democrats have refused to say wheth-
er they will maintain British defense
spending at NATO’s 2% target in 2016.
The Conservatives have vowed even
more cuts in public spending if they get
back into government, in a bid to cut the
country’s public spending defi cit—cur-
rently running at 10%. Defense is seen
as an easy target for further cuts, and
one that is unlikely to bother voters,
compared to health or social welfare.
Yet the concern about defense
spending is beginning to generate sig-
nifi cant traction, particularly as NATO
fi nds itself facing new threats it never
imagined two years ago. An embold-
ened Russia is throwing its weight
around on NATO’s eastern frontiers,
and in the south—just over the Turk-
ish border—the threat from Islamic
State (IS) insurgents has prompted a
major buildup of air power.
The U.K. is contributing to the U.S.-
led coalition against IS with combat
aircraft, unmanned air systems and
other intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance aircraft. But Britain’s
contingent to the operation against
IS—long hailed as being the second-
largest in the coalition—has quietly
fallen into third place behind France.
The U.K. also has its own defense
challenges. Reports suggest that the
British Army could be hit especially
hard in the next Strategic Defense and
Security Review (SDSR) expected to be
published this summer, with signifi cant
cuts in troop numbers being mooted.
It has been hinted that further cuts
could hurt the U.K.’s special military re-
lationship with the U.S. In an interview
with the Daily Telegraph newspaper,
Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staf of the
U.S. Army, said: “I would be lying to you
if I did not say that I am very concerned
about the GDP investment in the U.K.,”
while President Barack Obama has re-
portedly told David Cameron that re-ducing spending below the 2% thresh-
old could undermine the NATO alliance.
Government ministers were so anx-
ious about the 2% target it was suggest-
ed that funding for Britain’s intelligence
agencies—such as the Government
Communications HQ (GCHQ)—could
be added to the defense budget in a bid
to pad it to hit the 2% requirement.
A report by Professor Malcolm
Chalmers, director of research at the
London-based Royal United Services
Institute , finds the U.K. will spend
1.95% of its GDP on defense in 2015-16
(£37.3 billion, or $55.3 billion), excluding
spending on operations, but there is no
sign that the major political parties will
exempt defense from austerity.
Having studied various models of fu-
ture defense spending, the report says
that in either scenario—pessimistic oroptimistic—there would be a “remark-
ably sharp reduction in the footprint of
defense in U.K. society over a decade.”
“Even in the optimistic scenario, de-
fense’s share of GDP will have fallen
by a third: from 2.6% of GDP in 2010
to around 1.75% by 2019; and the MoD
[defense ministry] workforce (service
and civilian) will have fallen by around
30%, from 265,740 to 184,000 by 2019,”
the report states.
Plans for spending on equipment—
which NATO insists must represent a
fi fth of that 2% minimum—would also
be af ected, Chalmers states, particu-
larly if the U.K. proceeds with its larg-
est program, replacing its fl eet of bal-
listic missile submarines. Britain also
faces other major decisions, includinga push to invest in an anti-ballistic
missile capability, perhaps using its
Type 45 anti-air destroyers and the
reinstatement of its airborne maritime
patrol capability, lost in 2010 with the
cancellation of the Nimrod MRA4 pro-
gram. That decision has faced recent
criticism, following a story by this pub-
lication about sightings of Russian sub-
marines in British waters.
The British Parliament’s defense se-
lect committee has also called for the
government to commit to the 2% target,
adding that the U.K.’s current defense
assumptions are not suf cient for the
new unstable environment, and that the
nation “must rebuild its conventional
capacities eroded since the Cold War,”
and “simultaneously develop the capac-
ity to respond to an expanding series of
challenges outside Europe.” cCROWN COPYRIGHT/ARRON HOAREPrime Minister David Cameron (left) and his Conservatives haven’t fi rmly com-
mitted to NATO’s 2% spending goal if they remain in government after May 7.