So what can we take away from this?
A surprise to see railguns and high-energy weapons get a special mention in the future threats diagram but no textual enlightenment at all on what the threat is and how to counter them.
No mention of the increased nuclear stockpile other than to confirm the warheads will be a UK design, more or less says read the waffly policy paper and don't ask us any details.
The whole justification for defence spending now seems to the Indo-Pacific Region and the paper waffles at length about the region and our links there but not actually much sign that the powers there (India, Australia, Malaysia, Japan) actually wants us to poke our noses in. For example India want to be top dog in their own region, they have nuclear capabilities, probably a larger Navy and extensive armed forces of their own. The whole paper seems to be a massive stress on global commitments, its probably the most pro East of Suez command paper since 1966.
Certainly the Navy gets the lion's share of the growth and presumably the Admirals can only justfiy their building programmes by pointing east. The Army gets to base its troops in the Med/Middle East while the RAF has a few Lightnings in the game and shuttle flights with Voyagers and Globemasters.
An admission that soon South Korea will outstrip the UK's defence spending, a sceptic might point to the broad global role the paper highlights how we can police the entire world with a global network of bases spending less than South Korea does more to provide adequate defence from its two regional neighbours?
Navy
Type 31 looks to be earmarked specifically for overseas roles alongside (and ultimately replacing) the River-class OPvs overseas. Type 31 now makes more sense seen in this context, in essence a beefed up OPV for overseas patrols, something like the Type 81 Tribals of the 60s-80s (or you could say a 21st Century analogue of the interwar sloop classes). By extension the Type 26s will be closely wedded to the carrier strike group.
Type 32 - was it a fluffed line from the PM's Office? Haha, if you look on Page 52 there is the Type 32 typo again! "Type 32 frigates and Multi Role Support Ships in build" instead of Type 31!
Yet on Page 54, 7.26 mentions "Type 31 and Type 32 frigates" and page 55 confirms what I suspected, "Type 32 frigates, designed to protect territorial waters, provide persistent presence overseas and support our Littoral Response Groups." Sounds like a Type 31 with more land-attack capability, but the glossary simply refers to it as "A new class of surface warship."
The paper does not confirm Type 32 hull numbers, only 8 Type 26 and 5 Type 31 which we already know, and its not on the RN 2030 graphic, which tends to suggest the Type 32s will follow the current frigate orders during the 2030s.
Type 45 to be upgraded. Type 83 to replace the Type 45s from the late 2030s.
Retirement of all the minehunters in favour of UUVs, to be developed with France. Presumably a few hulls would be left as UUV control ships/ transports.
The Future Commando Force sounds snappy. Not actually any new amphibious warfare ships for it, but thankfully no cuts either.
One Bay-class to be refitted with a littoral strike capability - whatever that might be. Cost of refit £50mil.
Littoral Response Group, to be formed in 2023 and sounds like it will rotate with the Carrier Strike Group or perhaps sit alongside it when its in the Indo-Pacific region. Presumably it will be centred around the converted Bay with the Type 32 frigates.
Work to begin on Astute successor post Dreadnought programme.
"We will also develop a new Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance capability to safeguard the critical undersea national infrastructure on which our prosperity depends." Sounds like a satellite capability, but not mentioned in relation to Space Command.
RAF
Seems to imply more than 48 F-35s, though no timescale. My guess is the MoD is waiting to see if future Lot prices fall. Open to interpretation if they will be Bs or As though.
£2bn for FCAS development over next 4 years, including drones and swarming drones. Very little detail and almost no mention of Tempest and seems to heavily stress the unmanned and optionally-manned aspects.
Tranche 1 Typhoon is a sad loss (see my post above), Hawk T.1 we knew about. C-130 likewise is no surprise but money should never have been wasted reversing the 2010 SDR decision.
Hmmmm, what fills the gap between Sentry in 2021 and Wedgie in 2023?
Only 3 Wedgetails and not the original 5. Presumably the two ex-civil airframe conversions were cut?
Unsurprising to see them co-located with the Poseidons.
MLH is in the graphic but not the text. Still unsure if the Puma replacement will be RAF or whether the AAC will actually operate them, given most of the types being replaced are legacy AAC platforms and it would make no sense leaving the AAC with just Apache and Watchkeeper.
Overall the RAF seems to lose the least and gain the least, more or less status quo.
Army
New Ranger Regiment with £120M of equipment.
A new Security Force Assistance Brigade for overseas security use.
6th (UK) Division for cyber and EW.
Reduction to 72,500 troops with most of the cuts in the tail end "logistics, REME and medical).
148 Challenger III upgrades. Bye bye Warrior.
Artillery gets a boost with £250M for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System upgrade and £800m for the automated Mobile Fires Platform.
AA gets a boost too with new short-range systems (including drones) and medium-range systems.
So lots of emphasis on the pointy end.
Cyber and Space
NCF still feels like its duplicating GCHQ but its good to see there are links there. I'm not sure how the Defence Centre of Artificial Intelligence will pan out. AI feels something more likely to grow from academic and commercial imperatives than military R&D. The aims feel a little fuzzy and management-speak, almost every AI centre in world would probably cite the same aims.
Space Command, still not sure what these folks are meant to be doing? Skynet 6 is hardly going to need a special Command all to itself. Presumably they might oversee the OneWeb GPS system? It mentions coordination of commerical space activity but I thought that was currently a Department of Business job to decide strategy with the UK Space Agency increasingly sidelined for criticising the OneWeb deal.
Still not clear how we intend to track space objects unless we are getting access to US data (Fylingdales?).
50,000 jobs seems chickenfeed compared to the 200,000+ sustained by F-35 contracts in the UK.
www.c4isrnet.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.naval-technology.com
www.thedefensepost.com
www.bbc.com
www.defensenews.com
thinpinstripedline.blogspot.com
www.thedrive.com
www.imdb.com
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
