We’d have a more efficient, streamlined armed forces without the air corps, says tim collins
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It was a Labour Government under Harold Wilson that perfected the ruse of taking pressure off the defence minister by setting the three Armed Services against one another. The art was encapsulated in a doctrine known as 'equal pain', in which defence cuts and savings would be imposed equally across the three services. The effect was to provoke bitter inter-service rivalry, which left the Ministry of Defence appearing as a detached and honest broker. It was also a clever and effective way to divide and rule.
One can have a certain sympathy for the Treasury however, as defence is the one public department that regularly comes in over budget - thanks largely to the disastrously inefficient way in which sub-standard equipment is procured. But salaries are also expensive and, in the face of pressure on manning the front line, we need to radically re-address how the cake is sliced.
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| There is only one service whose work can be undertaken by the other two: the RAF must go |
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With wars running out of control in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the pressure on forces elsewhere from Africa to the Balkans to who knows where next, we have to take drastic action. A conventional attack on the UK homeland is no longer conceivable because our potential enemies just do not have the reach. The defence of the UK now centres on defending our interests overseas. There is no prospect of any significant increase in the share of public money for defence, so we have to come up with a radical way for the armed forces to do what we ask of them within the budget available. I believe this can mean only one thing: we have to lose one of the services.
There is only one service whose work can be undertaken by the other two: the RAF must go.
This would allow us to concentrate the existing Defence budget on just two services and use the vast savings, on infrastructure, senior officers and staff, on the front-line.
The measure would also present us with a terrific opportunity to make savings by 
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