TNR asks defence analysts Who Won and Who Lost in Bob Gates’s realignment of Pentagon spending priorities? One party that doesn’t get a mention is the Royal Navy, yet the curtailment of the F-22 fighter programme and the allocation of increased resources to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter must be considered good news for the Navy and the Royal Air Force.
Given the (intolerable) pressures on the MoD budget the sooner (and the cheaper) the F-35 is developed past a point of no return, the better. Granted, it seems unlikely (in the present climate) that Britain will really buy as many as 150 of the aircraft, but the development of the JSF remains essential to Britain’s future defence capability. Without it the new carriers – the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales – won’t have any planes to fly and without the planes there’s obviously not much use in having the carriers.
No new carriers in turn dramatically reduces the UK’s ability to project force.
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