It was a sweet and sour Strategic Defence and Security Review this week.
We saw the welcome return of maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) but a 40% cut in the number of Type 26 Global Combat Ships to be ordered a major blow to Clyde ship workers.
This is in spite of people in Scotland being told during the referendum that 13 Type 26 vessels would be built if they voted No.
In “a separate Scotland… there will only be scraps from the UK table,” a No campaign advert declared. Scotland voted No and we are still being served scraps.
The return of the MPA is a welcome U-turn and great news for RAF Lossiemouth after Nimrods were scrapped in 2010 throwing away £4 billion of taxpayer investment but we still have a major maritime capability gap.
The UK does not station a single ocean-going conventional patrol vessel anywhere apart from the south coast of England. And there are no major surface vessels based in Scotland, despite it having the majority share of waters to defend.
Ironically the Ministry of Defence stations the necessary vessels on the south coast of England while keeping the Trident submarines that are so widely opposed in Scotland at Faslane on the Clyde.
It’s been so bad, the UK has turned to Scottish fishing vessels to report on Russian submarine activity.
On Monday the Government also revealed the total cost of renewing Trident has risen by £6bn to £31bn and could consume up to 50% of the UK’s total military procurement budget.
“Trident is not a military weapon, Trident is a political weapon,” SNP defence spokesman Brendan O’Hara told MPs. “And it is a political weapon that can never and will never be used.”
The UK Government’s costly Trident obsession is against a backdrop of underspend and disproportionate defence cuts to units and manpower in Scotland.
Tory promises to address this have been broken
This is no union dividend. Instead of an out-of-date, costly Trident obsession we need a defence capability fit for the challenges of today and tomorrow, not the past.