Tim Ripley: Cuts of this scale will always mean limiting military's abilities

WE'VE got to the stage when the UK government is considering axing such things as either the navy's Harriers or the RAF's Tornado fleet as part of the country's changing face of defence.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox openly talks about cuts of between 20 per cent and 25 per cent, so it's not surprising that this sort of thing is being looked at.

Getting rid of one of them is certainly not out of the ball park and the cuts we're seeing will have a major impact on the defence capability of the UK.

If there is less defence capability then there are fewer things that the military can do.

It's a no brainer when we're looking at cuts on this scale that there will be some big changes, and Scotland certainly won't escape from any of this.

Scotland doesn't have many army bases, so any cuts are more likely to impact on Scottish units that are not based in Scotland. This could include the Royal Regiment of Scotland, which has five battalions.

There will also be some impact on air bases in Scotland - we could see a closure or some functions of them merged.

The UK government has yet to articulate its vision in terms of what it wants the armed forces to do, but it's pretty obvious that the armed forces are going to have fewer people and less time to spend overseas.

The country will have to punch at a weight slightly below the level it does at the moment, whereas in the past people have always said the UK punches above its weight.

An obvious implication of this is that UK forces won't be able to spend as long being involved in conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan that have gone on for years.

What's more likely in the future is that we'll see the UK involved in the first wave of conflicts, but that the country's forces won't be able to hang around for as long as happens at the moment.

It's an inevitable consequence of reducing defence expenditure and the big defence spending reductions are likely to affect many other areas too.

l Tim Ripley is a defence analyst with Jane's Defence Weekly