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THERE is a hint from Boris Johnson in a story looking ahead to today’s Integrated Defence Review announcement that science and technology pioneered in Cornwall could have a significant part to play in protecting Britain in the future.
As the potential shape of warfare changes and “hard power” is replaced by something much more difficult to pin down, science and technology will count as much as military muscle in terms of numbers or firepower.
That, at least, is the suggestion coming from what we know so far about the way the Prime Minister and his ministers and advisers are thinking as they ponder how best to prepare Britain for the threats from other nations and terror attacks that may be to come.
As a result, Mr Johnson has already name-checked Cornwall and its great potential as a producer of lithium – the metal vital in high-tech applications including modern batteries – in his preview of what is likely to emerge today and in the days and weeks ahead.
That news will clearly go down well. The investment in lithium production in Cornwall is growing apace on the back of demand from the electric car industry. If defence applications follow, the benefits, in terms of jobs and wealth, for the Duchy could be significant. A new cleaner and greener age of Cornish mining could be about to emerge.
But the Westcountry is about hard military power, too, and while the boffins rub their hands in anticipation of great strides being taken in the area of cyber warfare, others with a more traditional take on military might are worried.
On the Forces.net website recently, Professor Michael Clarke, Visiting Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London and former Director General at the Royal United Services Institute, points out that transformation of a nation’s defence capabilities does not come cheap, warning “it cannot be funded only by defence cost-cutting elsewhere.”
He goes on: “Nor is transformation quick, so the ambition to create ‘the leading integrated force in the world’ will have to be sustained with political commitment through more than one government over the next few years.”
He concludes: “Unless the economy bounces back very robustly from Brexit and Covid, and finally gets above the levels of 2008 when it all began to go wrong, this could be asking a lot.”
History is littered with reviews and revisions of Britain’s defence capabilities which promised much, yet turned out to amount to cuts in hardware and manpower seldom made up for in science and technology. Royal Navy ports like Plymouth and Royal Marine bases across the Westcountry have felt the force of those cuts many times before.
Let’s hope that, this time, the politicians and the military leaders are on the same page; that we get a review which does improve our defensive strengths, not weaken them, and that the hard power still vital in an unstable world is not sacrificed for an untried and untested series of measures that leaves the nation vulnerable in the years ahead.