Dodgy tanks, outdated warships: how can we trust UK defence chiefs to spend our billions wisely? | Richard Norton-Taylor

R.Days after the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, met in Sandingham Estate, King Charles was photographed on the HMS Prince of Wales Bridge. It was a smart step by the great copper of the navy to call it. They know that the aircraft carrier, her sister, HMS Elizabeth Queen, is interrogated because British women can carry. It is completely inappropriate for modern war. As if recognition of the point, while the defense heads are struggling to find weapons that are urgently needed by Ukraine, including the basic ammunition, they send the Prince of Wales to “science flying” in Southeast Asia.

Transportation companies, the largest warships built for the navy, cost more than 6 billion pounds, much higher than the original estimate of less than 4 billion pounds. Preserving and repairing ships, which reach serious mechanical problems over their short life, already cost nearly one billion pounds.

Soon after he retired as head of defense employees, General (Lord Now) described David Richards, transport companies to me as “non -allergic metal cans.” He said they were “giant.” The transport companies were considered vulnerable to the attack that the navy last year advised not to publish them in the Red Sea Protecting merchant ships from Houthi missiles.

The navy does not have enough sailors for the vessels necessary to protect and supply tankers. The number of F-35 fighters available to travel from transport companies is also much lower than the capacity of ships. We are now facing the extraordinary situation as it will become the most expensive marine ships, designed to carry the most expensive warplanes in the world, a base for drones: drones that can cost at least a few thousand, even a few hundred pounds, and prove that they are the most fatal weapons in Ukraine.

For a very long time, the British Defense Corporation has been allowed to stay away from buying the most related military equipment with past wars, and has turned into increasing evidence of the basic changes in the nature of the military conflict. For years, I asked a senior official about the mistakes Ministry of Defense It was made, what was ignoring. He gave me an answer from one word: “Cyber”. To thwart intelligence agencies, the Ministry of Defense was slow to recognize the increasing threat of electronic materials. Russian defense heads have already admitted that their country was unable to overcome the West by force alone, despite Vladimir Putin’s speech, indicating that “non-military” tactics-intentional burning, sabotage and sabotage, including attacks on non-low communication cables-can be more effective than traditional war.

Year after a year, the National Office for Auditing, supported by the General Accounts Committee of Commons, collects the Ministry of Defense for its failure to learn from previous mistakes. British taxpayers spend more than 5 billion pounds on the Ajax Armored for the army, and now finally exists Delivery of eight years laterAfter the tests revealed serious design errors, with soldiers’ disease of vibration and noise. The serious problems also set plans for the new army communication system, the submarine of the smart attack in the navy, and the 45th fleet.

Meanwhile, Britain spends more than its military budget on nuclear weapons than any other country, research Through the international campaign to cancel nuclear weapons shows. The annual spending on British nuclear weapons has doubled more than weakness since 2012, and Defense Eye I mentioned. The Ministry of Defense has allocated uncertainty about the cost of the British nuclear weapons program as one of the reasons why it failed to spread its spending plans.

In 2023, NAO referred to a 16.9 billion pounds black hole in the British Defense Equipment Program. Now, for the second year in a row, the Ministry of Defense has failed to publish an annual report on its equipment program. NAO has not been able to make an independent evaluation of government weapons purchase plans.

Earlier this year, the chairs of defense committees and public accounts books To the oldest officials in the Ministry of Defense express their “deep frustration” in “an unacceptable loss of transparency … they strongly undermine the ability of both committees to check the money of the taxpayer of 300 billion pounds estimated to spend on the defense equipment over the next decade.”

In a recent and timely book, which is the retreat of the strategy, which he participated in his authorship with defense academics, Julian Lindley-Franch, Lord Richards warns of “nostalgia to the past”, with an inactive “British defense policy”, with a slight relationship between the strategic strategic ends, roads and means. “The final recommendations are studied to review the strategic defense of George Robertson, the former defense minister, By the government. By the end of June, it will be the most important test of how to learn the government from its previous mistakes.