Security or Defence: Why the Military Feels Misunderstood

Another day, another bad headline about defense. An irate coroner here, an indiscreet MoD memo there, tired and overstretched forces everywhere. This week defense ministers and officials will also have to grapple with a familiar problem: the latest squeeze on ship, aircraft and weapons budgets for the next three years.

Just one meeting among many to stretch funds available from the 2008-10 comprehensive spending review, though it may explain some of the hostile headlines. Officials and retired generals mutter that Britain's much-admired armed forces are slowly falling apart under the strain of overseas expeditions, from Kosovo and Sierra Leone to Iraq and Afghanistan, which have cumulatively lasted longer than the second world war.

Nothing new there. Some old defense hands think Gordon Brown's new government is roughly where Margaret Thatcher's was when it cut spending in the late 1970s. Military commitments were left out of step with capability until the Falklands war shook complacency.

Since the end of the cold war gave a "peace dividend" respite, the military's "non-discretionary tasks" were reduced to Northern Ireland, Germany, nuclear deterrence and defense of the UK.

But ministers did not bargain for such protracted "discretionary" tasks after 9/11 which show little real sign of ending. The US is impatient enough with not-fit-for-purpose Nato allies without Britain making it worse.

The £2bn annual cost of such "urgent operational requirements" is funded from the reserves, not the MoD's £34bn budget - higher every year under labor, but never high enough. "It lags half to one billion behind the spending curve," says one insider.

And the Treasury always tries to claw the extra money back, even if the guns or helicopters have long since been destroyed. Hence this Thursday's ministerial search to cut the Astute nuclear subs and Type 45 destroyer programs, to sell some Euro fighters (ordered but irrelevant) to the Saudis.

The army's new multi-purpose vehicle is probably safe from a Navy-RAF pincer movement. So are those two carriers: Rosyth dockyard is in the PM's constituency. But defense contractors may be told to "sort it out yourselves".

The defense secretary, Des Browne, seems to be well enough liked by the forces, though they fear he is more interested in operational matters than in strategic thinking. More worrying, others echo the complaint that they have a prime minister who (unlike Tony Blair) neither likes nor understands defense.

"He thinks people in uniform are fools," they say. So it is personal. More than that, they fear that Brown's instinct is to spend on anti-terrorism at home, and stress economic development and aid abroad, rather than on wider defense, let alone military intervention. Many civilian voters would endorse that, further enhancing the military's sense of being misunderstood. Brown's allies deny he will choose security over defence. But everyone is tired. At least in the second world war the whole country was focused on the forces.