The Comprehensive Approach: Groundhog Day?

Wilton Park, England. 20 April. For the past few days I have been acting as Rapporteur for a large conference on enhancing and improving civil-military interaction in crises – the so-called Comprehensive Approach. The fifty heavy pages of notes I have before me testify to the intense nature of the debate and the challenge of writing the conference report. Over a decade of attending such conferences I have often felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day; forced to attend the same conference over and over, albeit with different people ‘discovering’ the same revealed truth and coming to the same ‘solutions’. Thankfully, that will change – either we once and for all get this stuff right or we will soon lose. And it is this focusing of minds that gives me some limited grounds for limited optimism.

The world is changing, Western influence is declining and with it a self-appointed luxury to experiment with security. Eleven or so years ago I attended a similar conference in Washington. It was prior to 911 and I remember being struck by two things. First, anything was possible – this was America’s moment, and by extension that of the West. Second, all problems looked like a nail and thus needed a sharp hammer in the form of the American military. Now, talk to capitals and nothing is possible, the end of the West is nigh and all problems look like jelly for which our militaries are useless. This shift is not just a function of relative economic (and thus power) decline but the contemporary influence in government of the counter-terrorism and/or humanitarian community who see every conflict as of a terrorism and/or humanitarian nature - jelly.

Frankly, given the world it would be stupid for Western militaries to forget about winning wars. There will be big wars in this big century and military fighting power must not be sacrificed simply to make the civil-military interface work. That would be simply fighting the last war better. What is needed rather is strategic common sense and a new balance between the two.  Indeed, as strategy gets bigger and resources fewer the need for synergy-led partnerships both between states and across the peace community will only grow.

For all that it beggars belief that ten years into the Comprehensive Approach many key people still refuse to get the vital importance of an effective civil-military interface. At the strategic level capitals and institutions (EU, NATO, UN etc.) talk endlessly about the need for ‘high-level buy in and adequate resources but never really confront the shortfalls. At the operational level there is still too much inertia behind the [US] military desire to focus only upon killing people and breaking things. In a recent planning conference in Afghanistan a friend of mine had “to start from scratch” with senior United States Marine Corps officers and explain the very basics of the Comprehensive Approach and why integrated civ-mil planning might be just be a useful thing to do. Thankfully, this does not extend to all branches of the US military nor all militaries. The British in Task Force Helmand have had the value of a real civil-military partnership knocked into them through painful experience. With the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan scheduled for end 2014 the instinct will be for many Western (particularly European) powers to hunker down rather than engage. If that happens when the West awakes not only will it find itself to have been fatally eclipsed but all the corporate memory of shared best and not so best practice across a host of civil-military operations will have been lost.

Judgment and action is therefore of the essence. NATO is critical to this and much good work is being done particularly by SHAPE (NATO’s strategic military command headquarters) to bring key civilians and military together as part of a new mechanism for interfacing with similar planning and command structures in other serious international institutions – both governmental and non-governmental. However, NATO’s Brussels headquarters needs to get its act together.  In spite of Secretary-General Rasmussen’s clear instruction to implement civil-military training across NATO HQ he has been by and large ignored. There has been neither a report on progress, nor real resources assigned to the task.  Tellingly, the project was placed in the charge of a junior official in the personnel office (of all places).

Therefore, if NATO’s May Chicago Summit is be more than another glorifed and expensive talk-fest the Secretary-General must get a grip of the Comprehensive Approach, inject real energy into NATO’s own efforts and then reach out to critical partners by once and for all by searching systematically for best practice across the civilian and military community. Only then will there be any chance of real unity of effort and purpose in Afghanistan’s transition. Any later and frankly it is too late. One place to start may be his own Copenhagen where the Danes are doing excellent, practical work. No theology; just getting the right people to do the right job irrespective of whether they wear a uniform or not.

This conference was indeed just a little different which means it could finally be the last time I attend it. A safe world needs a strong West and a strong West must champion effective civil-military partnerships.

Julian Lindley-French

When History Comes Home

Alphen, the Netherlands. 13 April. No, this is not yet another Titanic metaphor! American historian David McCullough once wrote, “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are”. The other night I had first-hand experience of McCullough’s dictum. Seated close to me on the top table of the Thirtieth Anniversary Falklands Command dinner was Field Marshal the Lord Bramall, one of Britain’s most innovative and respected soldiers. Field Marshal Bramall had played a crucial role during the Falklands Conflict alongside Admiral Fieldhouse, Commander-in-Chief Fleet, who in many ways was the key figure in winning the 1982 war. He also pioneered the Fifth Pillar arguing that there needed to be much tighter co-ordination between British foreign and defence policy and that in the field defence attachés could be used much more effectively as agents to such an end. This is the kind of innovative thinking that ‘cost-reduction at any cost’ London should be considering today.

However, it was not the Falklands Conflict or the Fifth Pillar that was the topic of our chat but rather the 1944 liberation of a small Dutch village very close to my own – Goirle (pronounced HHHorla - that Dutch ‘G’ that sounds like ‘HH’ and which still causes me grief). I hope I do not embarrass the Field Marshal by relating what happened next but it is a story modern Europe should hear and remember.

Goirle has grown somewhat since 1944 and I am sure Field Marshal Bramall would not recognise much of it. However, in October 1944 British General Dempsey’s Second Army was ordered to clear the area south of Tilburg where I live. On 25th October, 1944, led by the British 4th Armoured Brigade in the centre, and flanked by the Royal Netherlands Brigade on the right and the 1st Polish Armoured Division on the left, Second Army moved northward on the road from Turnhout close to the Belgian border, via Poppel and on towards Tilburg, Baarle-Nassau and my own village Alphen. The specific objective was to clear Goirle of Germans prior to taking Tilburg and Breda the two major towns in the area. This was an advance covering some twenty-five miles (30 kilometres) in distance.

Then Lieutenant Bramall was amongst the most forward elements of the drive north. On the edge of Goirle he met a Dutchman on a moped and asked him if there were any Germans left in the village. The Dutchman said no and bravely offered to take Lt. Bramall into the centre of Goirle to see for himself. It is possible that the Dutchman in question was part of the local Resistance as there was a very active Resistance cell south of Tilburg which played a heroic role by providing a pipeline to smuggle downed allied airmen back to Britain. The Germans had left and in effect Lt. Bramall liberated Goirle on his own, although he is far too modest to say so.

By 28th October Tilburg had been cleared as Second Army moved towards its main objective of clearing the entire south of the Netherlands below the River Maas. Towards that end, 4th Armoured Brigade first cleared the Tilburg-Breda road, whilst the Poles drove on into Breda and the Dutch move forward to the East.

It will not be long before all the veterans who took part in that great campaign of liberation are gone and the least we can do is to remember what they did for Europe. For me as an historian there is no greater thrill than to meet someone who played such a role at such a time in a place that I know well. It brings history to life and reminds all of us that have become unreasonably comfortable and complacent in the present that peace is not guaranteed. It has to be safeguarded and at times fought for. Goirle today is plump and prosperous even in the midst of the Eurozone crisis but it owes its freedom to a man I sat next to at dinner last week and many of his ilk from many a nation.

As we Europeans get tetchy with each other over the Euro and a raft of other irritations it might serve all of us to remember from time to time the many Lt. Bramall’s of this world who rendered to us the freedom we have to be openly critical of each other. It also reminds me at least that freedom can never be taken for granted even in a place as wealthy and as well-heeled as this.

History is after all who we are and why we are the way we are…and history came home to me last week.

Julian Lindley-French

War and Peace in the Middle East

Alphen, the Netherlands. 11 April. Tolstoy writes in War and Peace; “What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the wills of the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power.” What happens in Egypt and Syria these coming months will decide whether or not there is to be war or peace in the Middle East and tip the balance of power between Iran and Israel one way or another. If leaders emerge in Cairo and Damascus that are vehemently anti-Israeli then Iran will be strengthened and Israel more isolated than at any time since 1973. If leaders emerge that reject Iran’s interference, particularly that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria, then Iran will be isolated and a new buffer established between Tel Aviv and Tehran. These are the geopolitical stakes.

In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to emerge as the strongest political force. By far the best organised of the political parties now contesting the 23-24 May presidential elections the Muslim Brotherhood has said that in government it will honour all of Egypt’s international agreements. Equally, the mantra of the Brotherhood is decidedly Islamist in flavour, “God is our objective; the Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations”. Particularly strong in conservative rural areas there is little to suggest the Brotherhood are natural democrats. And, in spite of its Sunni roots there are also signs of improving relations between the Brotherhood and Shia Persian Iran on the basis that ‘my enemy’s (Israel) enemy is my friend (Iran)’. If that is indeed the case a Cairo regime controlled by the Brotherhood would rub uncomfortably against Israel’s southern border.

In Syria the situation is of course far more messy and far more deadly for the Syrian people who are dying daily in droves. With the Annan Peace Plan about to fail (and it will) and the UN Security Council profoundly split along the new fissure lines of grand politics Iran will be encouraged in its efforts to prop up the Assad regime. The Syrian opposition and the 40,000 strong Free Syrian Army are receiving at best verbal support from the West but little else. A mixture of the new geopolitics, US presidential elections, European strategic ineptitude, stabilisation fatigue and a tendency now to see all conflicts as either a) humanitarian; and/or b) terrorism-generators (or both) rather than strategic calculation have led both America and Europe to miss the point - leaders therein are obsessed with the technology and have missed the strategy. Iran cares nothing for the fate of the regime or the Syrian people but if it can establish a puppet government in Damascus and change Egypt’s foreign and security policy orientation then Israel will again be surrounded by enemies and anti-Israeli proxies such as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas will be immeasurably strengthened. If that should happen (and it is still an ‘if’) expect Iran to start working to undermine the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan and an already instable Lebanese government.

The bottom-line is this; the West is missing the point of Iranian strategy. It is not to seek a direct nuclear confrontation with Israel but rather to divert the Arab Spring into a new anti-Israeli coalition which shifts the correlation of forces in Tehran’s favour and then work to foment a new Arab-Israeli war from which Persian Iran gains. Iranian nukes would simply provide a guarantee that Iran itself would not be attacked.

If Iran succeeds war in the Middle East will become almost inevitable and likely sometime after the Egyptian and US presidential elections but before Iran begins to weaponise its nuclear programme. Tel Aviv is fully aware of Iran’s ‘grand proxy war’ plan and will not permit Iran to simply dictate the pace, nature and direction of an anti-Israeli coalition.

The so-called EU 3+3 (Britain, France and Germany plus China, Russia and the US) will meet shortly to see if they can overcome their deep differences over how to dissuade Iran from its nuclear programme. Little progress can be expected. However, they should at least consider the wider power context of Iran’s regional-strategic ambitions and what it could mean for war and peace in the Middle East. If not then the US and its European allies need to come together and consider their own actions.

As Tolstoy once said, “In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity”.

Julian Lindley-French

In Honour of the Falklands Victory

Pangbourne College, England. 7 April. “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the Union Jack once again flies over Stanley. God save the Queen". Those famous words of Brigadier-General Moore resonated last night as I was accorded the singular honour of giving the keynote address at the Thirtieth Anniversary Falklands Command dinner before Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff and the officers and men who had led Britain to victory in 1982. This blog remembers Britain’s stunning victory in the South Atlantic and the defence of freedom through the use of legitimate military power that was its driving force.

My specific purpose was to pay tribute not just to the living but to the 252 British servicemen who did not return from the campaign and the 775 who were wounded in a campaign with I am intimately acquainted. This was not a cost-free conflict. They never are and the Argentinians who fought and died for their country were ever present in my mind and I honour them as well.

However, I also spelt out a warning to Britain’s leaders; the aura of power which Britain will need in what is going to be a big and dangerous century is itself in danger of being lost. London is daily retreating from sound national strategy into a ‘recognise only as much threat as we can afford’ view of the world. Given that warning what was achieved back in 1982 is as relevant to today’s Britain as past Britain.

My theme was British élan - the determined pursuit of a just strategic goal with a style and assurance that is itself power. Élan is something more than men and kit. It is a strategic brand that can change things even before a bullet is fired. 1982 saw a Britain that like today had retreated into a muddled foreign and security policy with strategy made elsewhere. 1982 saw a country in conflict with itself with many of the same doubts and tensions as today. And yet somehow the British armed forces defied the all-pervading sense of national decline of the time and lifted the country above the management of decline so beloved of so much of the political and bureaucratic elite.

Thirty years ago through valour and sacrifice three invaluable victories were won. First, a fundamental principle was defended which was far bigger than the islands or the Islanders – the right of self-determination and the use of great power to that end. Second, ally and adversary alike was shown that the spirit of Britain pertained and that an old great country still understood how to exercise strategic influence. My friend Professor Gwyn Prins told me that when he was in the Advisory Group to former Soviet President Gorbachev back in 1990 Gorbachev told him that it was the Falklands campaign that in part convinced him that the Soviet Union could never win the Cold War. Gwyn also told me of a senior Russian who recently remarked that, “the things we once admired about Britain are today the things that you despise”. Third, a tired and fractious British people at the end of a long, tired and fractious decade were reminded that Britain was more than a place, it was an idea in which still to believe. No post-imperial basket-case but a powerful modern country that could when push came to shove distinguish between values and interests; principles and parochialism.

Where next for British influence? Today a very new idea is needed; an all-national unity of effort and purpose. That will mean inviting all in these islands to be British, rather than trying to turn Britain into what my old friend Lord Glasman calls a mini-United Nations. This is mission critical as we sink ever deeper into the swamp of political correctness that is eating government and society from within with self-doubt.

Strategically and militarily, as Britain move towards a 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review ‘strategy’ will need to be put back into ‘strategic’. For Britain’s armed forces that will mean a modest but nevertheless global role alongside a maritime-strategic America, those Europeans still able and willing to face up to their security responsibilities and the rebuilding of old relationships in the Commonwealth. Central but by no means exclusive to British influence will be the creation of truly joined-up armed forces in which no one service owns land, sea or air and which are themselves part of truly joined-up security policy led by a national strategy worthy of the name. State-of-the art armed forces that are projectable, deployable and sustainable built of a tight concept of fighting power for which the British armed forces are renowned.

Above all, Britain’s leaders must hold their nerve, just like Margaret Thatcher back in 1982; all the basic components are in place for a powerful modern navy, army and air force. This century is not going to get any easier and like it or not whatever happens in there is no hiding place for Britain. Britain will need its capable armed forces.

Thirty years ago the mission was not simply to rescue the Falkland Islanders from a brutal dictatorship, critical though it was. It was to save Britain from a visionless self and to make a proud people feel again the right to be proud by being on the just side of right.

As Europe crumbles and America stumbles Britain is thus faced with a choice: to retreat into irrelevance and put up with whatever an unjust world throws at it; or to galvanise itself as back in 1982 and set out to shape the world for the better. “For God’s sake, act like Britain”, former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk once demanded of George Brown. In 1982 Britain’s armed forces did just that and showed the world a great country that could rise above the daily grind of party game and blame to which today the British people are too often subject.

There is no greater honour I have ever been or will ever be accorded.

Julian Lindley-French

Joint Strike Fighter II: The Best is the Enemy of the Good?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 April. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the 1982 Argentine invasion of the Falklands about which I will say more later in the week. Last week I wrote a piece about the spiralling out of control costs of the ‘Fifth Generation’ F-35 Lightning II all-singing, all-dancing multirole combat aircraft. A long supporter of the F-35 I have become profoundly concerned that the ‘balance’ between cost, value, capability and delivery is now so adverse for the non-American members of the US-led consortium that alternatives must be considered. My focus in the last piece was on F-35B and F-35C, the navalised versions of the aircraft, but my concerns apply across the range. Not surprisingly I received a fairly heavy carpet-bombing from the airmen of several nations supported by their allies in certain defence companies. Therefore, in the interests of fairness I went back and did more research and confirmed a simple truth; the unit cost of each F-35 has now reached astronomical and quite frankly indefensible levels.

The research was further encouraged by comments from two very senior military people whom I respect and like enormously. One is a very senior British ex-naval officer and the other a senior Dutch ex-air force officer. The Royal Navy man expressed real concern to me as to whether some twenty years into the project the short and vertical take-off (STOVL) F-35B will ever work. The Dutch air force officer recalled the time in the late 1990s when he was the Dutch Defence Attaché in Paris and was acquainted with a study into the relative costs of the F-35 compared with the French Dassault Rafale fighter. At the time the Dutch could have bought 85 F-35s for the price of 58 Rafales.

Compare that figure with those of today. The 2012 fly away costs for each Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 are as follows: Rafale $90.5 million; Eurofighter Typhoon $104 million; F-35A $197 million; F-35B $237.7 million; and F-35C $236.8 million. The F-35 will also incur in-life costs of over $1 trillion over a life-cycle that was conveniently stretched out some time ago from a conventional thirty to a highly suspect fifty years. What technology today enjoys such a lifespan even if one can separate the platform from the systems on board?

To be fair the alternative I suggested for the British and their two new super-carriers was to buy FA-18s off-the-shelf but this option would also involve cost. Indeed, whilst the 2012 fly-away costs for the FA-18 would be some $66.9 million that would be balanced out by the likelihood that the plane would be obsolescent within twenty years.

The causes of this procurement mess are themselves telling and reveal (not for the first time) original cost and performance estimates that never stacked up. Moreover, as a precedent for revolutionary US-led multinational procurement co-operation of a cutting edge ‘big ticket’ aircraft F-35 is a sorry tale.  A March 2012 Forbes article by US defence industry insider Loren Thomson offers six US reasons for the F-35 procurement prang which shakes my British/European confidence in the project to the core. First, whilst the F-35 was to be procured on a plan to hold down costs the plan has been simply ignored with the economies of scale central to the plan based on massively inflated numbers. Second, cost estimates for the F-35 were issued that no-one understood. In 2011 the Pentagon gave figures to the US Congress that the politicians could not understand and which actually undersold the aircraft. Third, whilst Lockheed Martin, F-35’s prime contractor, has been repeatedly blamed by the US Government for cost increases the bulk of such cost increases have been caused by the US Government. Specifically, Washington has changed the way it calculates support costs (whatever that means) and then blamed Lockheed Martin. Fourth, F-35 costs were never put into a meaningful competitor context, such as a detailed cost breakdown of alternatives. Fifth, the long-term consequences of delaying the F-35 programme have never been spelt out, nor indeed the impact of the F-35s rising costs on other key defence programmes. This is particularly important for the non-US members of the consortium. Sixth, the US has routinely sent the wrong signals to domestic and foreign audiences about Washington’s commitment to the F-35. Pentagon insiders attack the project on an almost daily basis.

Four things come out of Thomson’s study. First, the US has little understanding of what multinational procurement co-operation really means. Second, this is what happens when project engineers and their military counterparts operate beyond proper management. Third, what oversight has been forthcoming from Washington has too often come in the form of competing requirements from different services.  Fourth, there is always a price to be paid by partner taxpayers for investment without influence. Indeed, this is a mess made almost entirely in America.  Thompson offers a stark warning. F-35 “...is the story of what happens to major technology programs in a balkanized, distracted political system when there is no danger to push them forward. Bureaucratic and personal agendas fill the fill the vacuum once occupied by the threat, and so programs seldom stay on track”.

Now, as a European taxpayer I am still prepared to fund this aircraft if I can be convinced that it will give European forces the tools to do their respective jobs at reasonable cost and risk over the fifty years claimed. However, that is not at all clear from either the airmen or the defence-industry people telling me I am wrong.  Indeed, I fear I am being sold a pup. So, just please tell what am I really going to get for my money, when and for how long?

The aim of F-35 was a military super-Ferrari on the cheap. However, as one senior officer put it to me, “we have ended up with a cross between a Ferrari and a Fiat”. That is one very expensive Fiat!

F-35: the best is the enemy of the good?

Julian Lindley-French

Bradford: The Coming Crisis of European Democracy

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 March. Strange week this. I have just emerged form hospital after an operation on my right eye. So, this piece is even more ‘one-eyed’ than normal. My wife thinks I am mad even writing this. However, a political earthquake took place last night in the city of Bradford, in my home county of Yorkshire, that is relevant not only to Britain but could well signal a coming crisis of European democracy – the revolt of the people against the professional political caste. The defeat of the long-incumbent Labour Party by George Galloway, a populist, self-promoting left-winger long used to conning the politically gullible, is quite simply stunning.

With a large Asian community the anti-war stance of Galloway’s Respect Party on both Iraq and Afghanistan was always going to appeal. However, the sheer scale of Labour’s defeat and the collapse of both the Conservative and Liberal-Democrat vote heralds something much more profound. Quite simply Bradford showed an electorate not apathetic as the mainstream parties like to claim, but actively hostile to mainstream political parties and politicians. It is a phenomenon evident across Europe, not least here in the Netherlands where right-wing populist Geert Wilders represents a growing disillusionment with cosy elites and a move towards more extreme politics.

Why is this happening? Regular readers will recall that I have often warned about the European democratic deficit and the rise of a Euro-Aristocracy. However, the professional political caste is not only limited to ‘Brussels’, but is evident across all European countries. My own country, England, is a case in point as its political leaders show all the signs of becoming just such a caste. Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Milliband belong to this caste. They went straight from university politics into a special advisor position with a minister and then onto a safe elected seat which was set up for them to win by their respective party establishments prior to then being fast-tracked into a ministerial position. Neither of them have any real-life experience of the world outside the rarefied world of high politics. According to the House of Commons in 1982 the number of such people in Parliament was some 4%, in 2001 it was 14% and today it is 25% with almost all of them either in Government or the Shadow Cabinet (leadership group for the opposition).

The result is a new layer of influence between the governing and the governed. This has encouraged the rise of political lobbyists, single-issue special interest groups and think-tanks who seek to exert influence over the caste often at the expense of the people. Politics is thus seen by the caste as a narrow ideological game played out between small Westminster elites with lobbyists and activists acting as both seconds and the only constituencies of note. Politics beyond Westminster has thus become irrelevant to the point of being pointless. Indeed, the people are seen only as the distant objects of political and media management with their representatives in Parliament reduced to being merely the window-dressing of democracy, with little or no influence over the caste.

The most obvious example of this was how both the two leading parties not only failed to deal with hyper-immigration, but in Labour’s case actively encouraged it. The English people have always rightly been open to a reasonable level of immigration. However, according to a leaked secret Labour Party report what happened from 2000 onwards was the deliberate attempt by Downing Street political advisors to change England forever by a deliberate policy of mass migration so as to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”. It was an ideological war between and within a small Westminster political caste with no regard as to the social and cultural consequences on ordinary English people who have had to live with the consequences. Indeed, such is England’s unhappiness that the caste must now resort to the use of draconian anti-racism laws to suppress the anger of a people who believe they have been conspired against by the caste to take their country away from them. Go to my home town of Sheffield if you do not believe me. The only way forward is for ordinary decent people of all creeds, cultures and colours to find a way to live together but the signs are not encouraging. The politicians caused this mess; they will not fix it.

Fast forward England’s unhappiness to Brussels, which has always been the home to a professional political caste. Every time I go the European Parliament I am shocked by the number of Members of European Parliament (MEPs) who are the ‘sons, daughters, family members of’ or at least well-connected to, national political elites across Europe. With the pressure now mounting for more power to be given to ‘Europe’ i.e. Brussels, the growth in influence of Europe’s political caste is likely to match the growing distance between Europe’s governing and governed. The abyss which already exists between the European citizen and Europe’s elite is not only a recipe for political corruption on a grand scale but could well herald the coming crisis of European democracy.

In both and England and the wider Europe there is a pressing need to get more real-life politicians into power who know what it is like to struggle to balance the weekly budget, to deal daily with unyielding bureaucracies, to confront discrimination and prejudice, who have known unemployment, and to face the reality of fractured societies in which mistrust, fear and even hatred stalk the streets.

If mainstream politicians do not move to reconnect with ordinary people there will be more Bradfords and more George Galloways and Geert Wilders across Europe. This is a dangerous political moment and our leaders need to start treating the rest of us with the respect we deserve.

Now I will go back to bed.

Julian Lindley-French

Joint Strike Fighter: How Not to Build an Aircraft

Alphen, the Netherlands. 26 March. F-35 Lightning II is a name to conjure with. Otherwise known as Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) ten countries are collaborating under US leadership to build a fifth generation multirole fighter that can apparently do everything and not be seen doing it – whatever it is it does. Last week BaE systems announced the opening of a $175m plant in Lancashire, England to build the things. Being a Yorkshireman this is a bad mistake in and of itself as nothing good has come out of Lancashire since the fifteenth century Wars of the Roses (which was not very good either). Suspiciously this announcement comes hot on the heels of news that the British Government is having yet another wobble over whether to buy the F-35B STOVL (Short Take-Off or Vertical Landing) version or the F-35C conventional aircraft-carrier version for the two mythical British super-carriers HMS Not at All Sure We Can Afford This After All and HMS We Can Afford Either the Ship or the Plane but Not Both.

Now, the reason I was compelled to pen this blog is entirely the fault of my Dutch wife, Corine (brave woman bless her). In her infinite, supreme commander way she decided that I needed to be compelled to stop thinking quite so much about work. Having heard me drone on about the models I used to build as a kid she bought me an Airfix kit (I think you call it Revelle in Yankdom) of HMS Iron Duke (known affectionately by its crew as the Iron Duck due to a tendency to waddle), the flagship of the grandest fleet of the greatest navy ever to sail the seven seas. It sat accusingly in its box for a year or so until no longer able to bear the shame I last week took the myriad of tiny pieces out of the box and began to ‘build’ it.

Unfortunately, I had failed to tell my wife of two important failings that had slipped between the cracks of nostalgia. First, as a shipbuilder I was complete rubbish. Second, my childhood purchases were invariably models of the German battleship Bismarck which with a firework inserted inside (a ‘banger’ in English vernacular) invariably and rapidly met a watery demise in the stream outside my house. It was a happy 1970s childhood. Entirely in keeping with past efforts some hours into the project both the glue and the paint seemed to have gotten everywhere except where intended. This project was clearly going to take far longer, cost more and become a real mess. Just like the F-35 Lighting II.

To mix my metaphors the F-35 is fast flying into a tipping point. Estimated at $237.7m per F-35B and $236.8m per F-35C costs have doubled since the original estimates of its manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Moreover, the plane will not now see service until sometime “after 2016”. Last month the Japanese warned they would cancel the contract if prices inflated further and Italy cut its order by 30%. This month the Pentagon announced that it was delaying an order for 179 F-35s which surprise, surprise will push up the price further. Having made a decision in 2010 to re-design the carriers for F-35C, the potential British flip-flop back to the F-35B (which has half the range and can carry half the weapons of the F-35C) threatens to destabilise an already precarious British defence strategy. The Dutch? The savagery with which they are cutting their defence budget and the rate of climb of F-35 costs means that they will probably only be able to afford one F-35 and only if they scrap the Dutch Army and Navy.

What has gone wrong? Essentially the F-35 suffers from what is known as the 80-20 problem; expecting a system to do too much too soon given the available and untried technologies being built into it on the budgets available. This has been compounded by the savage cuts to defence budgets that have taken place in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Moreover, the project management of Lockheed and its government partners has left much to be desired, further complicated by American concerns about technology transfers and the shifting needs of clients. The only saving grace is that it has made Europe’s incompetent weapons-makers look positively nimble by comparison.

What to do? For the Europeans there are two options – scrap or pool. Take the British as an example. In London’s position I would reconsider F-35 not simply in terms of cost but defence strategy. It is evident that with the US shifting towards a maritime strategy and with a main aim of British defence policy to have sufficient deployable military power on call to influence Washington the two aircraft carriers are more important than the F-35 per se. In such circumstances it would make far more sense to buy a proven system off the shelf, such as the US F-18 or French Rafale, and equip them with the latest avionics and weapons systems.

By adopting such an approach the British could afford a full fifty aircraft wing for the carriers, including airborne early warning. Striking such balances is one function of sound defence strategy. Alternatively, all the European F-35 end users (Britain, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Turkey) could pool their respective efforts and look for economies of scale and maybe invite Australia, Canada, Israel and Japan to form a new end-users group to exert more control over the bloated US-led procurement process.

If not I suspect F-35 will suffer the same fate as my Duck - it too will probably never be completed.

Julian Lindley-French