There has been increasing talk, recently, about what a Scottish Defence Force for an independent Scotland should look like, I thought about this over eight years ago (2012) and on re-reading the post I think it is still relevant, so I give you my thoughts from 2012:
Scotland’s sovereign people do not want Trident
nor are they too keen about Afghanistan or Iraq type adventures so in an independent Scotland
just what would our defence force look like?
The prime question is what will an Independent Scotland need to be defended against?
To take the view – nothing – is naive. Scotland has a lot of resources
that others would wish to hold as their own and would be easily
economically disadvantaged by small scale attacks let alone overwhelming
force.
To trigger development of this debate I am
going to outline what I see as the primary threats to Scotland’s
sovereignty, economy and indicate the sort of defence requirement I
suggest we need -ignoring any international commitments such as NATO or
the UN. The obvious course of action is to look north to Norway and
Iceland and look at where their priorities lie and the answer is – their
maritime interest.
Many of Scotland’s current and future
economic resources are or have a major maritime element – oil and gas,
fisheries, renewable power or HDVC power lines.
So how will an independent Scotland ensure the security of these resources and what could the Scottish Defence Force look like?
I would base a Scottish Defence Force on
the Canadian Defence Force’s ‘all arms’ structure with a common uniform,
common insignia, common central command, common logistics combined with
the ability for the serving personnel, with the compatible skills, to
mix across the three elements of maritime, air and land - if they wish.
The Maritime section would, in my opinion,
need to be the largest element because policing of our Scottish Seas
requires the presence of ships in the water. Ships are high cost defence
units, if you go for deep ocean capability, but I would argue for
Scotland’s needs the ships do not have to have deep ocean capability.
I
would foresee a maritime section made up mainly of ships like the
current Jura ‘fishery / oil rig protection’ class with a hanger and
helicopter capability but hopefully of a more stable design. They could
be kitted out with a close air defence system, such as Phalanx or its
successors, which can also be used in a surface role and carry a section
of ‘marines’ for boarding fishing vessels or other surface craft. These
vessels could also be fitted for but not necessarily with long range
anti ship or air missiles. Its ‘long range’ offensive capability would
essentially be delivered by its helicopter, using state of the art air
to surface weapons or anti-submarine torpedoes.
Using modern integrated
command systems these Jura’s, plus their helicopters and the PC3 Orions,
could be combined to be a quite potent force - if that was ever
necessary – even with out being fitted with anti ship missiles. More
importantly they would be very effective in doing what we need them for -
oil field, coastguard and fishery protection duties. The number of
ships (20) is to enable seven ships to be at sea all the time with
another seven on their way to or from patrol areas and assumes six in
port for routine or extended maintenance. In peacetime they could be run
with a crew of sixteen officers and sailors plus a section of marines.
It might make sense two split these ships into two squadrons one based
in Aberdeen, Dundee or Rosyth and the other at Stornoway, Machrihanish
or the Clyde. The decision then is essentially do you use two
traditional Naval base ports or do you invest in new port facilities
that reduce the time taken to reach patrol areas. For maintenance
considerations Rosyth makes a lot of sense as there is a core workforce
used to working on naval craft.
The Air section would clearly need a
helicopter wing in support of the maritime section which would be best
served by multirole helicopters like the Merlin which can also be used
in a rescue role in support of the Coast Guard, anti submarine role and
troop transport. To help patrol Scotland’s seas a small number of long
range multi role patrol craft would be required similar to Norway’s PC3
Orion squadron.
The question of whether Scotland actually
needs a fixed wing strike and interceptor aircraft is debateable (it is
dependent on whether you see Russia re-emerging as a threat or not) but
if it was decided that we need this capability to ensure a balanced
force capability I would suggest the maritime version of the Lockheed
JSF F35. The basic maritime variant of the F35 is superior in every way
to the Typhoon, far more flexible, better stealth characteristics,
cheaper to purchase and run, easily updateable plus, if it was ever
deployed in conjunction with NATO, it would be compatible with the Royal
Navy’s new carrier class as well as US and French Carriers. We would
need around 40 of these aircraft to enable to keep 30 in the air. If we
inherit any Tornadoes they could be converted into ‘tankers’ for the
F35’s. The question is do you then concentrate all the SDF aircraft on
one airbase such as Lossiemouth or do you spread the deployment around:
F35’s at Leuchars, PC3 Orions and Tornado tankers at Lossiemouth and
helicopters at Prestwick that will be a political decision shaped as a
force decision.
Then we turn to the thorny problem of land forces, why would an independent Scotland need them and how would they be structured?
If you follow my argument so far it is
clear that at least one of the four historic cadres that make up ‘The
Royal Regiment of Scotland’ would need to be full time to support our
needs for oil rig protection and support of the ‘Jura Class’ offshore
protection vessels. Clearly one of the famous names would need to
convert to a Marine / Special Forces Regiment but what of the other
three?
Does Scotland really need all the bits and
pieces of a standing army such as an armoured and artillery regiment,
for example, as we only have one land border and the risk is
negligible?
Again it would depend to what extent an
Independent Scotland wished to be involved in panoply and paraphernalia
of NATO or the proposed European Standing Army. But for logistical
purposes I would see each of the SDF regiments as self contained multi
role, armoured style brigades on the German model. I am not proposing
that we invest in Leopards or Challenger Mk2 tanks but armoured vehicles
that would support any deployment of the SDF in a peace keeping role.
We are talking Armoured Personnel Vehicles with a varied light weapon
fit from 0.5 calibre machine guns via ‘chain guns’ to surface to air /
anti tank missile systems in keeping with the concept of the land force
as a defence force. It makes sense that only one of these more
traditional army regiments was full time. I would see the other two run
as territorial or reserve regiments with a professional core of officers
and senior NCOs.
What we get as a defence force will be a
function of how much an Independent Scotland would wish to spend of its
GDP on this force, balanced against our politically defined needs and
commitments.
As to cost, overall defence costs are
usually stated as percentage of GDP and I would see an SDF with around
10,000 regulars and between 7,000 and 10,000 territorial style reserves.
These sorts of numbers relate more to Eire than Norway so the lowest
cost to run the SDF would be in the region of £600+ million annual cost
based on Eire’s defence spending in 2009-10. Given I am also including
F35’s and just over twice the number of patrol ships a more realistic
figure would be in the region of £1 billion based on current defence
costs of which around 60% is in pay and pensions. To run a defence force
of the size of Norway’s is in the region of £5 billion for 2010/11
which has been assessed at 4.8% of the Norwegian Government’s budget
(not the countries GDP) so if we assume the current pocket money given
to Scotland as the basis for the future independent Scottish Government
budget, defence spending on the SDF will be in the region of 1% on the
same basis.
