A timeline of MOD waste that brought Israeli death factories to UK; now Labour has slashed aid budget to squander more on war
Keir Starmer’s UK government has rightly been slammed for its decision to slash its international aid budget to just 0.3% of national income – from the previous 0.5% that was already a breach of UK law requiring 0.7% and of Starmer’s pre-general election promise to return to that level – in order to increase UK military (called ‘defence’, but it really isn’t) spending to 2.6%.
The promise comes as a combination of craven brown-nosing to US fascist president Donald Trump, who has demanded that European nations increase their spending because the US wants to reduce its own, and of Starmer’s evident lust for war and UK militarism, including collaboration in an effective colonisation of Ukraine to ‘protect the peace’ if it reaches a peace deal with Russia, setting the UK on a path to potential direct conflict with Putin’s nuclear-armed military.
The decision occurs as the UK government briefs media that forced military service is a likely option for the future:
But a look at waste by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) on an Israeli weapon system that not only did almost none of the things it was supposedly bought for, but also brought hated Israeli weapons factories to the UK, gives an insight into both the scale of cash that UK governments squander on arms with barely a blink and the futility of throwing away yet more money on military tech that rapidly becomes obsolete – especially when it means starving the people of countries that are, for the most part, poor because of colonial exploitation by the UK and other imperial powers.
The woeful tale around the Watchkeeper WK450 military drone begins a quarter of a century ago, during the early years of the Blair New Labour government and ends not far off two decades before its supposed obsolescence – with a billion pounds or more ‘spaffed up the wall’, as woeful Tory Boris Johnson might have put it:
2000
Racal Defence Electronics conducts a 12-month assessment phase to ‘spec out’ a military drone system. A tender process is launched.
2004/5:
A contract for £700 million is signed for the development and production of the system; Israeli weapons firm Elbit’s share will be £300m and Elbit will set up UK subsidiaries to meet MOD requirements for UK manufacturing:
2007
MOD leases Elbit Hermes 450 (the base model for the Watchkeeper WK450 development) at extra cost for urgent use in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of Blair’s support for US military operations.
The cost of the Watchkeeper project increases to £800 million and ‘will’ deliver only 54 Watchkeepers at a cost of around £15m each – a cost that the MOD at first tried to hide.
2010
The WK450 makes its first UK flight, a 20-minute jaunt in west Wales. The manufacturer hails this step as ‘momentous’, but the programme goes on to experience numerous delays.
2014
Three Wk450s are trialled in Afghanistan late in the year, before the system has been officially certified.
2015
A parliamentary question reveals that thirty-seven drones have been delivered so far to the British Army – but only for training purposes. The system has still not been certified.
2017
The WK450 has cost, to this point, £1.08 billion; each of the drones delivered has flown, so far, only 63 hours on average – with only 146 hours on actual operations in total – all of them in Afghanistan in late 2014, almost three years earlier.
Four have crashed during these meagre hours because of “a series of faults, flaws and crew cockups” – two of them falling mysteriously into the sea off the coast of Wales, with the crashes only revealed accidentally by the MOD. Five other drones are strangely unaccounted for, leaving the MOD with only forty-five. The MOD says it is working towards achieving ‘full operating capability’ later in the year.
SNP MP Martin Docherty-Hughes described the WK450 as probably the most expensive aircraft in history per hour flown:
[W]e heard that the F-35 was the most expensive aircraft in history: it would seem from these answers that Watchkeeper might have beaten even that per hour flown.
2018
The MK450 finally achieves full operational capability 2 (FOC 2) certification from the army on 30 November – but is not formally released to service (RTS) certification.
2019
The drone receives full clearance to service in April.
2023
Tory defence minister James Cartlidge says the WK450 has cost £1.351bn. The number to have crashed is now eight, leading the Telegraph to conclude that the programme had raised questions about all army technology.
2024
Keir Starmer’s Defence Secretary John Healey announces in November that the entire fleet of Watchkeeper WK450 Mk1 drones, would be retired early, by March 2025, as part of a scrapping of ‘old military equipment’.
‘Early’ means seventeen years before its originally-planned 2042 obsolescence, after only five years of actual service – if the paltry hours it flew can be described as ‘service’.
The UK Defence Journal said that the scrappage:
reflects the rapid pace of technological advancements in unmanned aerial systems.
Healey, however, has clearly not learned the lesson of the rapid obsolescence of extremely expensive tech, announcing immediately that the MOD will now spend a fortune on another, no doubt exorbitantly expensive, military trinket:
the Army will rapidly switch to a new advanced capability
None of this means the Starmer government can’t afford to spend on actual good stuff like, say, feeding the starving of nations the UK got rich by exploiting, or rebuilding the NHS, social safety nets, infrastructure and other vital things at home – a nation with its own independent currency can find or create the money whenever it likes, as Starmer’s ability to find another 3 billion here or there for war when it suits him shows.
But the reality of the waste and errors in the contracts of the UK armed forces expose and destroy even the false narrative that says good things have to be cut because ‘defence’. The real ‘tough choice’ facing the UK is whether a government will ever stop penalising the poor and vulnerable and stand up to those whose wealth and greed destroy the fabric of our society and put us all in danger.
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Every choice this govt makes is the wrong one. That’s the one thing you can rely on. Their priorities give them away. This one illuminates Dr Samuel Johnson’s eternal truth about flag-shagging patriots. They are a cabinet of scoundrels!
Sod International aid.
Sod pensioners
Sod kids
Sod the sick & unemployed
Sod the homeless
Sod the poor.
Kiss the arses of the corporates, the royals, the zionists, and most of all that fluorescent imbecile across the pond.
Farage says that Starmer’s 40% reduction in Britain’s international aid budget to better afford more ‘defence’ spending is simply Labour enacting a Reform GE24 election manifesto pledge. This is furiously contested by Starmer and Labour. “Sir Keir has never honoured a Pledge in his life. The mere suggestion of it is deceitful misinformation.”
The Downing Street spokes-person went on to add, “we have to pretend it was a ‘difficult decision’ for the prime minister who much-prefers easy ones like not returning rail, mail, water and energy to public control despite promising it to Labour members to acquire leadership of his party”.
The spokes person could have pointed out that increasing defence spending was – technically, at least – never a ‘decision’ at all, as it was always Starmer and Healey’s surest, most certain intention.
“Farage is – as usual – talking pure crap. Farage is riding OUR coat tail, not us his,” the spokesman said.
Pennycook on tv:
The welfare system is unfair to employers
Really? All those corporates subsidised to the hilt, allowing them to underpay their employees so they have their wages topped up by the taxpayer through tax credits?
Oh, and increasing employer NI payments is doing wonders to get people back into work, innit?
He also went on about fhe incapacity benefit increases.
Well…it isn’t their fault that a shitload of them are still on waiting lists for operations that might remove their need for incapacity benefits, is it? Why punish them for that?
We’ve gone off topic, but Skwawkbox reported on drastic cuts to NHS England recently which as far as I know was not covered in the MSM. This morning in The Guardian (I know, I know but they don’t get any money off me!) :
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/10/nhs-england-cut-workforce-half-streeting-restructures
“The changes will give Wes Streeting, the health secretary, far more control over the organisation that is responsible for the operational performance of the health service in England.”
That bodes well, not.