U.K. high-tech sector worried about defense budget cuts

The U.K. defense industry has warned the government it risks undermining the U.K.’s high-tech economy and its security if it imposes cuts in an effort to curtail soaring national debt. The government is planning to review spending on Ministry of Defense projects next year and defense spending has been highlighted by some as a prime source of overall savings.

Ian Godden, chief executive of the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC), said Britain’s defense industry makes up 10 percent of the U.K.’s manufacturing and engineering economy. “If you cut it by 10 percent you will cut two to three per cent out of the engineering and skill base — the very thing the government says we should be increasing,” he said.

Godden added that the defense sector is a net export-based industry. “So cutting here versus some other places will have a major drag effect on the economy,” he said. “This is going to reduce the ability of Britain to come out of the recession and to become an export-led recovery.”

Siobhan Wagner reports that according to the Treasury, defense spending as a percentage of GDP has been cut in half compared to twenty years ago. The SBAC believes increasing defense spending by £1-2 billion a year would be enough to support major defense projects, such as aircraft carriers and the Trident nuclear deterrent, as well as more frontline troops and more equipment for them.

The Trident program, which has an estimated lifetime cost of £20 billion, has received criticism from both anti-war activists and budget hawks. A new report released through the liberal think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research proposed axing the Trident program to save defense costs. The authors of the report included Lord Guthrie, former head of the British Army, Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Lord Robertson, former secretary-general of NATO.

Godden said the cost of Trident is not as dramatic as some believe. “Trident will cost £20 billion but that’s over a long period of time, not over one year,” he added. Godden said funding projects such as Trident is the only way to ensure the United Kingdom is ready for future warfare. “There is this wonderful assumption that the next generation of warfare is going to be like Afghanistan,” he said. “We’ve fallen in this trap before by trying to project what our warfare will be in 10 years’ time based on what we’re currently fighting. The assumption that we will not have some larger-scale defense requirement for the country or a substantial expeditionary force of the type we had in the Falklands in the future is a brave assumption and in my opinion dangerous.”

Godden added that the funding is the only way to fully prepare the United Kingdom for current threats. “Threats don’t go away in recessions,” he said. “If anything they might increase during economic difficulty and therefore the demand is probably as great as it ever was before this recession.”