I have been meaning to write about this issue for sometime, but in the past ten days we have seen ten snapshots of ten grinning, young, newly dead soldiers on the evening news and sensed the brutal, life-shattering grief of ten young army families. The last ten days provide some all too real perspective on what I mean to say.

I have previously written about my concern that the strategic objectives in Afghanistan have long been dangerously loose and ill-defined. Obama has gone some way to making-up for the incompetence of his predecessor by authorising an ‘Afghan-surge’ and by sacking and replacing the ineffective US Commander, General David McKiernan. Indeed 4,000 US marines have flooded into Helmand Province in an effort bring the wild and restive province back under the control of the Afghan Government. Although, in my view, the strategic aims of the Afghan mission remain dangerously vague, I am satisfied that with extra troops and the command of McKiernan’s replacement, General McChrystal and CENTCOM commander General Petraeus there is a chance that the strategic stalemate may be broken.

Despite the lack of clear strategy the Government, and the opposition, still consider that the war in Afghanistan is worth the fight, and the increasingly heavy cost. I’m inclined to say, that on balance, they may well be right. The crucial point is that the decision to fight a war is the most important decision that a Government can make, and in my view it should be at the very top of even the most pressing priorities.

This week I wrote about the pressing need to reduce Government spending. I firmly believe that this is the case, even if it means reducing education, health and international development funding. However, I also firmly believe that it is time to increase the defence budget, which has been steadily reduced since the end of the Cold War. If a Government decides that a cause is worth taking lives and sacrificing the lives of its own citizens, then there can be no priority more important. Everything should be done to ensure that the armed forces have the right equipment and manpower to do the job. Furthermore, if a Government decides that its citizen soldiers should risk life and limb, then it has a responsibility to provide them with the best equipment available to the job and the best care available should they be wounded. Clearly, despite the platitudes of Blair, Brown and numerous Defence Secretaries, the Government has failed on both counts.

Even when the Government has spent money on the armed forces it has been wasted on white elephants or projects aimed at safeguarding British jobs rather than providig useful equipment. For example the UK has committed to buying 183 Eurofighter Typhoons at £30 million each and two super-aircraft carriers at a total cost of £5 billion. The fact is that aircraft carriers are unlikely to be needed unless the Falkland Islands are re-invaded. Britain is unlikely to become involved in a future interstate conflict unless the US is involved, and the US has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world put together, several times over. In the same way the Typhoon is only likely to be used in a future interstate war that would involve NATO allies, and again the US has the materiel to guarantee total air supremacy against almost any foe.

Following the break-up of the Soviet Empire and the rise of Islamism and failed states, the armed forces are likely to spend the next 20 years engaged in small-scale guerrilla conflicts such as in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. In these wars the navy and air force has little or no role to play; the army takes the lionshare of the risks and the fatalities. And for this role the army is chronically undermanned and underequipped. It is no exaggeration to say that Army landrovers are barely more armoured than their civilian equivalents. After suffering massively from IEDs in Iraq the US Army brought out a new generation of Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles, which are impervious to all but the biggest IEDs. The MOD has bought some of these off-the-shelf vehicles but they have still failed to ensure that all frontline troops have access to these vehicles. The 9,000 or so British troops in Helmand have access to no more than a handful of helicopters, while the 4,000 Marines recently deployed to Helmand have more than 150.

If the Government believes we should fight for what we believe is right then it should bear the financial cost of doing so, which is only fair since it asks its citizen soldiers to make the ultimate sacrifice. Furthermore the MOD should move away from purchasing aircraft carriers and fighter jets in order to safeguard British jobs. Instead it should invest in better weaponry, MRAP vehicles, attack helicopters, transport helicopters, surveillance drones, more troops and better pay and conditions. Of course, in a system in which the MP representing the ship building town of Barrow-in-Furness can be made Defence Secretary, personal priorities may take precedence.