SECRET UK EYES A
Options
9. This has been a very wide-ranging Review;
we examined
various radical solutions involving the re-allocation of
resources from one sphere of defence activity to another, for
example:
the placing of half our anti-submarine forces in
reserve;
the reduction, or even the cancellation, of our share
of the large collaborative programme for the European
multi-role combat aircraft;
the abandonment of the whole of our specialist
reinforcement capability;
and the major reduction in our land forces in
Germany, making good by reinforcement from the
UK.
10. There were serious drawbacks to all these options and to
the others we considered. If I enlarge on that involving the British Army in Germany, perhaps this will give you a feel,
however superficially, for the kind of analysis we went through. We knew from experience that the redeployment of regular formations from Germany to the UK yielded no real financial
savings and had serious operational penalties, as reinforcement forces take much longer to deploy and are not familiar with the
terrain. To reduce expenditure significantly, it would be
4
SECRET UK EYES A