Break up the RAF and stop buying British

It’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) time again, in which we follow the new custom of making all defence policy shortly after an election without debate – thereby humanely relieving ministers of any need to justify their actions.

Things are dire in the Armed Forces. The RAF is down to embarrassingly few operational bombers and has no submarine-hunting planes at all. The Army is yet again stripping itself of soldiers.

The Navy is shortly to receive aircraft carriers, but they can carry only vertical-lift jets. We used to have some of those, but we got rid of them in the last SDSR. We will have to buy the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter instead, which is new, complicated and cripplingly expensive.

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