Economize & Modernize

GREAT BRITAIN

Economize & Modernize

In the past ten years, Britain has had nine Defense Ministers. Despite the heavy turnover and some hard tries by able men, Britain's defense efforts have been more expensive than the nation can afford, and less successful than most military men would like. Last week Prime Minister Harold Macmillan granted sweeping powers to his new Defense Minister, red-haired Duncan Sandys (pronounced sands), 49, to carry out "substantial reduction in expenditure and manpower."

Before he could even get his feet under the desk, Sandys flew off to Washington, the first ranking member of the new British government to visit the U.S. His mission: to talk with Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson about sharing the cost and the knowledge on guided missiles, which is where Sandys plans to concentrate Britain's new defense efforts. A missiles buff since he commanded Britain's first experimental AA rocket regiment in World War II, and later the man who sold his father-in-law, Winston Churchill, on wiping out the German V-2 factory at Peenemuende, Sandys feels that Britain can be made secure only if it takes a bold stride into the rocket age. But his problem is the crushing cost of research development, and he hopes to widen the exchange agreement that he negotiated as Supply Minister with Wilson in 1954.

Already the new Macmillan government has reduced the annual army re serve call-up by 120,000, disbanded R.A.F. and naval air reserve squadrons of "weekend flyers," and canceled orders for 100 new Hawker Hunter jet fighters (for the nation that pioneered the jet, postwar plane development has been a continuing disappointment: the Hunter is becoming obsolete just as its bugs are being eliminated, and one of Britain's top aircraft designers declared recently that the eight-jet Boeing B-52 is "five years ahead of any bomber we have").

Sandys is now mulling over the idea of replacing conscription with U.S.-style selective service. He is also preparing to reduce Britain's NATO forces in Germany. With British forces gone from Iraq, going from Ceylon, and practically expelled from their last two bases in Jordan, experts are advising him to bring all remaining colonial garrisons home, at least from Asia. Sandys is prepared to go far, but not so far as British Military Expert Captain Basil Liddell Hart, who last week urged Britain to put all its reliance on nuclear weapons, and chop its defense budget by nearly 50%--"which would bring it into fairer relationship with what a majority of our NATO neighbors are spending."

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