DEFENCE IN 1935

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 10

DEFENCE IN 1935

LAND, SEA, AND AIR

IS MONEY BEING WASTED?

DIVIDED CONTROL

In an article published in the "Sunday Express," London, just prior to the announcement -to the British Parliament of the £10,000,000 addition to the Navy, Army, and Air Force Estimates, Captain Russell Kennedy, who is editor of the "Army, Navy, and Air Force Gazette," and who is a man whose life is spent in examining facts of fighting forces in all parts of the world, has asked pointedly whether Great Britain is not largely wasting the huge sums spent on defence through still maintaining divided control on sea, land, and air. We are already spending some 1 £114,000,000 on the three services. The addition of £10,000,000 will raise the "total to £124,000,000, the article begins. Thus almost one-sixth of our total budgetary expenditure will be devoted to this particular method of insurance. It is an enormous proportion.1 We ought, therefore, to make quite sure that we are, in reality, obtaining the security for which we are making such a great sacrifice. Before the Great War in 1913-14, we spent only some £77,000,0000n defence, but for that sum we did get security in*that it enabled us to have a Navy capable of providing us with protection long enough to allow us to organise to meet any form of war. For the much larger sum we are now spending we get no similar protection. For the still larger sum with which the Estimates are about to saddle us we shall still get no adequate protection. Why is this? It is largely because we are at- , tempting to solve modern problems by out-of-date methods. We are adding a little to our Navy, a little to our Army, and, with all our vaunted expansion of the Air Force, the five-year plan for its increase means only that at the 2nd of the five years it will be as strong as our most powerful neighbour is today. But by that time that neighbour may be twice as strong. A CHEAPER WAY. It is an uncomfortable fact that were we to double our Navy and our Army, instead of merely patching them as is proposed, we should be no nearer security. And we should then be spending a further £90,000,000 a year. Obviously we must seek another way, and, curiously enough, there is another way, and it is a cheaper way; so much cheaper, in fact, that instead of irtcreasing our estimates we could reduce them considerably from their present level. . Before the war the Navy and the Army had little to draw them together. One fought on the sea and the other fought on land. Even when they combined for operations their functions remained separate and very clearly defined, and, provided the senior officers of the two services did not quarrel (as they frequently did), an expedition was not in any way handicapped by complications of command. Capable of acting both on land, at sea, and in addition in the air, air power has completely changed this old aspect of "individual" war. 'For shore-based aircraft can attack navies, and seaborne aircraft can attack armies. SHUTTING THEIR EYES. The attempt of the older services to chain air power. to their old conception of separate land and sea warfare was bound to fail, but since air power has achieved its separate existence they merely shut their eyes to its effects on their old theories and look upon it as a new form of warfare, a third form. It is obvious that the air must be able to assume some of the functions of the older services both on land and at sea, and, therefore, that if the air estimates are increased those of the other.services should be decreased in direct, or almost direct, proportion, and this, the logical conclusion, is also the correct conclusion. The older services have been irresistibly brought together by air power, and are now held together as surely as are the fronfwheels of a car by the axle, but as they continue to claim a separate political and technical existence, no steering wheel can be fitted, and so we have to pay for three ways to fight a war instead of one. And the trouble is that far from numbers constituting safety in this case, they are a definite danger. The two old Ministries, the War Office and the Admiralty, still exist, and a third has been added. The Navy has kept its old form. It still claims that it can protect our commerce, though it is difficult to see how it can even protect itself. Even if protection can be given on the high seas, how can it be given in the narrows through which pur commerce must pass? That is the power that the air ■gives us today, and in harbour, to which it must come, surely the Navy will require so much protection that it will be a liability and not an.asset. The ; v 'Nelson lying helpless for a day on a Portsmouth bank, and the Hood and the Ken own having to stagger a thousand miles to find a dry dock big enough.to accommodate them, and taking more than a month to repair, are sinister warnings that this may be so. AIR ATTACK RISKS. The Army is still training on the old theories. Our tank strength and our knowledge of its handling are practically where they were ten years ago. .Neither service has fundamentally altered either to be able to co-operate with or act against or in spite of air power. We alone among the Great Powers have taken no steps to provide for the protection of our population against air attack. It is clear that if we cannot ward off the first blow as in the days when naval supremacy achieved this, our security is not provided for. How can we remedy the situation? Firstly ihere can be no wise spending while there are three departments each boosting its own type of warfare. While these exist we shall evoke no doctrine for directing the whole strength of our forces towards a knockout blow. I believe that, as there is no protection against the air attack, while both military and naval attack have been shown to be costly and indecisive, we should now look upon the air arm as our main attack arm. The older services would then assume an auxiliary role, the providing of secure bases from which the air attacks could be launched. THE WRITER'S CONCLUSION, At present the Navy takes some £57,000,000, the Army some £40,000,000, and the Air Force some £17,000,000. To double the Air Force would cost just about as much as the proposed increase in the separate Estimates, but we should then have an Air Force as formidable as any in the world, To treble it would give us an air supremacy which might well replace or former naval supremacy and we should still be spending on the Air Force less than on either of the older services. As, however, their role would become defensive, their cost could be cut down to a fraction of its present dimensions. There can be little doubt ] that if the services were reorganised on these lines we should be spending today, as we did before the war, less than £100,000,000 and we should have what security is possible under modern , conditions. .