Mason on Labour and Defence

my reply to Paul Mason

Paul Mason has an article up, Labour conference: Defence issues facing the UK government. This is my response to that article.

Paul (for it seems right for me to use first names when describing fellow Substackers) starts by pointing out that Labour don't think much about defence:

There are around 300 scheduled fringe meetings in and around Labour's annual conference in Liverpool, which starts tomorrow. Of these, I've managed to find six on the topic of Defence. [...] let's put it this way: national security is not top of the agenda for those paying top dollar to influence Britain's new ruling party.

This is true. Defence isn't something Labour activists think about much. Nor Tory activists or activists of any other party. Nor most of the media.

But defence is nevertheless important, because:

How will Labour achieve its [...] targets? The obvious answer [...] is: by avoiding catastrophic defeat by Russia in a war that shatters NATO

National security is important. If Putin conquers Ukraine, it doesn't mean Britain is conquered the next day. But it does mean the decline and loss of power of European civilisation of which Britain is a part. It weakens us, and makes it more likely that 20, 30, 40 years down the road we'll be dominated by Russia or China.

But it's very hard to get the politicians or the ecosystem of businesses, lobbyists and NGOs surrounding them, to focus on this problem. National security, and the factors undermining it, are the great unspoken.

Indeed. Britain (and Europe) are largely unserious about defence. Exceptions include Finland, the Baltic states and Poland, all of which have a border with Russia, which no doubt concentrates minds.

As for detailed debates - land vs maritime, nuclear vs conventional, the F-35B vs the F-35A... you'll have to forage hard around the Albert Dock to find them openly addressed.

Most political activists don't know enough about the issues to have sensible opinions on any of these subjects. They aren't well-enough informed.

The UK [...] is spending around £2.5bn a year on arms and material support to Ukraine,

£2.5bn is only 0.1% of UK GDP. Britain could be doing a lot more. For example, bump it up to 0.5% of GDP. Spend most of that on ammo, including building factories to produce artillery and mortar ammo in large quantities.

£1bn a year should be spend long long range suicide drones. If they cost £20k each, then £1bn is 50,000 of them, or 1000 every week. Imagine 1000 long range drones, each with a 20-50kg warhead, targetting the Kremlin in a single attack. That going up in flames would convince the Russian public that they're losing the war. Other possible targets include electricity generation, Russia's oil infrastructure and Russian railways. Or regime security targets such as FSB, GRU and Rosgvardia bases. Russia's a big country, there are lots of possible targets and Russia can't put AA defences everywhere.

[UK] is - reading between the lines - clearly trying to gain Ukraine permission to strike deep Russian targets using the Storm Shadow missile (which, it turns out, can only do precision strike with US supplied data, giving Washington a veto on the idea).

I'd like to know whether this is true, and if so, precisely what data the US needs to supply, and how easy it would be to create a European alternative.

This really highlights the need for Europe to be self-sufficient in defence: to build all our own weapons, and not depend on anything from the USA or anyone else. But the strategic issue for the UK is this: how much of its budget, intelligence command know-how and diplomatic capital is it prepared to expend not simply on Ukrainian survival but on Ukrainian victory - that is, the expulsion of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory, combined with crippling sanctions and offensive non-military actions to disrupt and disorientate a country that has declared itself our enemy? [my emphasis]

The important question. Well said.

I am pretty certain the government does want to do this, just as the previous government did. I am equally certain that the electorate and the vast majority of MPs have no clue as to the cost and effort this entails.

I agree on the second point.

In the end, the SDR needs to function as the Wanless Report (2002) did for the Blair/Brown government, mandating a clear uplift in the percentage of GDP we spend

And spend it more effectively. UK spends a good deal more on defence than South Korea, yet they have an army 10-20 times as big as us.

But beyond all the secondary issues - migration, border security, INTERPOL - etc there is one over-arching question: can the UK get into, or align with, the European Defence Industrial Strategy? Or will it be frozen out. Getting into EDIS means aligning the current bilateral projects - with France on complex weapons and Germany potentially on land equipment - with the new European strictures which mandate buying European kit and promoting mil-tech sovereignty.

The best answer would be for UK to rejoin EU. We should never have left. I imagine Starmer finds that politically unacceptable.

GCAP [...] will give the UK a 6th generation combat aircraft that the Americans cannot pull the plug on (presuming we can arm it with weapons we can target ourselves).

But GCAP is coming up to a milestone - the workshare agreement between Italy and Japan - and there are differing conceptions of what it is for. Japan wants it as an alternative to buying the F-35, and therefore needs it by 2035. Inside UK Defence circles there's a tendency to say: what's the rush? If this is a platform for the mid-century, and may be up against a Chinese rather than a Russian adversary, let's make it as futuristic as possible.

And that means, potentially, making it even more stealthy, soundless and potentially autonomous - just as China intends for its own 6G aircraft. And thus, if necessary, delivering it a bit later.

I very much hope GCAP doesn't go down that path. The more highly specced and gold plated it is, the more likely it will be an expensive failure.

Instead it should be a good aircraft, but not ambitiously specced. By all means plan for a mid-life upgrade, giving it better sensors, automation and electronics. But the base aircraft needs to be delivered on time, at an affordable price (both of which will facilitate export orders).