We will be presented with the full defence review at around 1430 today – but
already its contents are spilling out across the papers. Much of it is unsurprising: a delay
for the Trident upgrade, two new aircraft carriers, etc. But some of it is slightly more surprising: for instance, the immediate
decommissioning of both our 80-strong fleet of Harriers and the Navy’s 25 year-old flagship, the HMS Ark Royal. As Liam Fox admitted on the Today Programme earlier, those last two measures will mean that Britain loses the ability to fly jets from its carriers for up
to ten years. Ruling the waves, and even the skies, has been put on hiatus.
It’s clear that much this defence review has been shaped by compromise. The decision over Trident is the perfect example of a measure that will leave both sides neither wholly satisfied nor wholly unsatisfied.
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