Ignore the detail of the leaked letter from Fox to Cameron regarding the sorry state of the SDSR, the single most important conclusion to draw is that once again a British government is endangering the Armed Forces by creating a new strategic direction and then refusing to fund Defence at a level sufficient to drive the vision.
This is not helped by differences of opinion in how an “Adaptable” Armed Forces should be configured. Continue reading
The first article was hosted by this blog on the 13th of March 2010, just over six months ago, and there have now been fifty-seven such posts; nineteen politics, nineteen military, and nineteen technology, so what have I learnt during this period?
First, that it has not been possible to keep up my early pace of publishing, there have actually been slightly less articles in this period despite it being twice the length of time, but it remains thoroughly rewarding and enjoyable regardless, and second, that as far as hits are concerned the trend is upwards, so Jedibeeftrix is continueing to carve a niche for itself.
Having just released a lot of architectural information about the Bobcat based netbook APU AMD would appear to be on a roll, so it would be a real downer for them if Intel pre-announced an intention to directly compete in this market segment, however there is more than one Bobcat based APU planned and this blog questions whether Intel is able to challenge both.
With what do they intend to bridge the 5W to 18W divide?
Early in this year the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre of the MOD produced a paper titled The Future Character of Conflict, an exploration of the threats Britain is likely to face in the next twenty years, in order to inform a future security and defence review. The document focuses on the changes in strategic priorities and capabilities of nations and non-state-actors, and how Britain might react to them. It is an extensive tract broken down into a series of disaggregated bullet points, so for the purpose of this post the most interesting themes have been collated for comment.
What follows is not an analysis of the of the text itself, rather a discussion of how those themes directly impact on the assumptions of the coming Defence review.
In May 2011 there will be a referendum in Britain to answer the question; should the electoral system be reformed from First Past the Post (FPTP) to Alternative Vote (AV), this being the price the Conservatives paid to bring the Lib-Dems into government with them as a coalition. The Lib-Dems want a proportional electoral system rather than a variation of the plurality method currently employed, so they aren’t exactly delighted with the choice on offer, but are at least willing to campaign for a change in order to break the stasis of electoral subjugation that they believe FPTP imposes. However, Lib-Dem members and activists are ideologically a lot further left than Clegg’s merry band of orange-book reformers, and are unhappy be seen as ‘collaborators’ even if it brings power, so there is suggestion that a failure to win the AV plebiscite could result in rebellion or even split the party, and in doing so dissolve the coalition before its time. This eventuality is unlikely, the Lib-Dem’s are after all in the process of convincing the electorate that they are a serious party of government, the problem with AV however is that no-one really wants it, but perhaps that is the point…..
Is the referendum merely a vehicle to enable proportional reform that his party can win?
