Letter: Letters: Defence drain

From MARTIN MORREY

I was very interested to read Michael Kenward’s article ‘How the West could
lose the peace’ (8 May). May I suggest that his understanding of the
situation is exactly wrong. He appears to be claiming that massive national
investment in defence-related research and development has been of great
benefit to the British and US economies. Rather surprising then that the
two most industrially successful countries during the cold war have been
Japan and Germany, both prevented by their constitutions from developing
large collections of military hardware.

Michael Kenward provides a couple of minor examples of defence
technologies, which have contributed to the development of commercial
devices. This is like trying to justify the cost of the Apollo Moon
programme on the basis that it gave us nonstick frying pans.

Recently, our hallowed leaders were extolling the virtues of spending tens
of billions on the new Euro-fighter, in order to preserve a few thousand
defence jobs for another five years. The sums simply don’t add up. If the
money spent developing Nimrod, Trident, etc, had been invested in things
which were actually useful, Britain could still have been a major industrial
nation.

What we are left with is the pathetic sight of some of Britain’s
potentially most important technological companies – GEC, Plessey, British
Aerospace, and the like – almost wholly reliant on contracts from the
Minist ry of Defence. As for selling fighter aircraft, and myriads of other
weapons systems, to Middle Eastern and developing nations, well, we all know
how beneficial that is.

Martin Morrey
Loughborough, Leicestershire