Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)According to the author, Britain's armed forces are structured for the wrong wars, beset by inter-service and intra-service tribal jealousies, and saddled with inappropriate and hideously expensive equipment purchased with a view to illusory political and industrial benefits rather than either value for money or operational effectiveness. The author's arguments are made in a clear and entertaining fashion and, in broad terms, his interpretation of what is wrong with British defence policy is fairly robust, if my experience with the British Army and Royal Marines is anything to go by (and most of the general issues he highlights can be applied to my own country as well). His broad analysis of the relative expense associated with different capabilities (the way to really waste money is to try to build your own fighter aircraft, apparently) is pretty sound, as is his argument that the benefits of the British arms industry and exports are meagre at best.
The author does however appear to have relied far too much on his own service experience (and the occasional anecdote from a dubious source) to evaluate the relative worth of various capabilities - not to mention a tendency to base his assessment on the last headline. By way of example, the author assures us that artillery is pretty much useless based on a few days of British operations in Iraq in 2003 (never mind what the US Army and Marines were doing not far away - or what the British Army had to do in Helmand at the time of publication and onwards) and an assurance that jet fighters can do the job much better - only to remind us a few chapters later that jet fighters are useless because they bombed a lot of decoys instead of real targets in Kosovo in 1999. Combined with a tendency to criticise any defence member employed in a capability he doesn't approve of as a war-dodging waste of taxpayers money (usually not long after he has denounced somebody else's tribalism), in many cases the authors detailed arguments about capability lack rigour(as opposed to his denouncements of individual projects or equipment which are generally well founded).
So is it worth reading? Well, sort of. It is certainly entertaining and the general themes of the book are undoubtedly correct - but just because the author didn't see the need for a capability in last week's news or hasn't used it himself, it doesn't mean that it isn't useful in another context.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Military
This irreverent and provocative study exposes the scandalous state of contemporary armed forces as well as the politicians, top brass, and practices who keep these numerous flaws under wraps. Topics addressed include the terrible armaments provided to British soldiers; the huge financial costs incurred by financing useless weapons and systems; the extreme waste in funds throughout the modern military system.
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