UK plans to sink its navy

Sunday Telegraph:

Ministers have drawn up confidential proposals to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

The expected reductions follow a fierce row between Service chiefs and the Treasury over defence spending.

The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy's capability to the level where it could carry out only "one small-scale operation".

Separate documentation from inside the department suggests that the total number of ships in the Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary could fall from the present level of 103 to 76 in 2017 and only 50 in 2027 — a reduction of more than half.

The information has been supplied in an email from a whistleblowing official inside the MoD, who has given details of a row between senior officials in the department and Andy Burnham, the Treasury Chief Secretary, over the allocation of money to the MoD over the next three years.

...

The email reads: "The Chief Sec directed that no further money from the CSR would be allocated to Defence and to maintain force levels the Dept must find the savings/cuts.

"For the RN [Royal Navy], the poor CSR deal and the commitment to 2 carriers is such that a proposal for the immediate decommissioning of 5 ships (frigates and destroyers) from April next year has been considered.

"This would reduce the RN's capabilities to just one small scale operation and that is it."

Sources said that under the plan the Navy, once the pride of the Armed Forces, would be unable to provide anything like the 1982 Falklands task force.

In what is likely to be a "worst-case" scenario, with no further commissioning of ships, total numbers of what the MoD terms "platforms" is slated to fall steadily from 103 to 50 within 20 years.

...

The Brits have wasted their treasure in the sinkhole investment of social programs like socialized medicine that rationed health care and sucks funds out of defending the country. With Labor in charge of the government, there appears little hope of changing the direction. They have just given Argentina an invitation to retake the Falkland Islands.

If the Democrats had their way, the US would be facing the same dilemma.

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