British Moves to Cut Their Military Budget Are Yielding Strange Results: Aircraft Carriers Without Aircraft, New $5 Billion Surveillance Aircraft Being Turned Into Razor Blades Without Performing a Single Mission

One note: I converted British pounds into U.S. dollars for this posting.

Great Britain has been slashing programs from their military budget, and it’s yielded some strange results, and some costly ones too.

Most of their front line aircraft carriers are being scrapped or sold.  Their Harrier jumpjets are being scrapped.  Their brand-new aircraft carriers won’t be online for at least five years, and they won’t have any fixed wing aircraft for the remaining or new carriers for several years after that.

The latest thing is that they spent the equivalent of $6.5 billion on a new class of spy aircraft, and now that they’re rolling off the production line they’re being retired without taking to the air.  They’re severely over budget ($1.2 billion) and nine years behind schedule.

The cancellation of the Nimrod Maritime Surveillance Aircraft (MRA4) is expected to save the British military approximately $3.1 billion over ten years.

They’re also laying off 17,000 troops and support personnel.

Is this what our military cuts will look like when they do come?