Britain's beleaguered Armed Forces are in danger of being turned by the Government into a "tinpot gendarmerie" incapable of defending UK interests, according to one of the country's top military figures.
Defence cuts and financial infighting at the Ministry of Defence are threatening Britain's status as a world power, said Admiral Sir Alan West in a blistering attack on Labour's defence policy.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he said the Government was risking the future security of British interests by reshaping the armed forces to wage long-term "anti-terror" campaigns in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sir Alan, 58, said the MoD was behaving "like these tinpot countries" that fail to invest in major equipment programmes, and spend defence budgets on running rather than developing their armed forces. "That way is a recipe for disaster for a defence force that has to do all the things that Britain may have to do in the next 50 years," he said.
In 10 years' time, the threat facing the UK could be something "far more dangerous than terrorism in central Asia". He added: "All we could be left with is an Armed Forces that is effectively a gendarmerie. And I suppose we would retire to our island and hope that no one gets to us."
Sir Alan's comments follow recent criticisms of Government treatment of the Army from General Sir Richard Dannatt and General Sir Mike Jackson, the present and former heads of the Army respectively.
The latest attack comes amid speculation that the MoD is about to delay or even cancel its "Carrier Strike" programme to build two aircraft carriers by 2015.
Sir Alan, who retired as head of the Royal Navy this year, said he now feared that the £3.5 billion he had ring-fenced for the project was under threat from MoD officials trying to "undermine the programme" so that the money could be used elsewhere in the cash-strapped department.
He said: "The carrier programme is the jewel in the crown of the strategic defence review. Yet there are officials within the MoD who are casting lascivious looks at it. There is no doubt that the rats are out there having a nibble. If Britain wants to remain a world power and to operate with a deal of freedom around the world, these two carriers are vital."
Sir Alan also criticised the Army for not "going through the pain" of addressing its own financial problems in the way the Navy had done over the past few years. He described the Army's attitude towards cost-cutting as "atrocious" and accused senior officers of attempting to "raid" the Forces' overall equipment budget in an effort to solve its own financial problems. |