At the beginning of the war, Britain had 60 Tomahawk missiles, each one costing £500,000, but so many have been fired in two months that more have to be ordered to keep bombing Libya in the war we were told would last "days, not weeks".
Stop the War Coalition
14 June 2011
UK Navy Tomahawk Cruise Missile: Cost £500,000
Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, says the UK navy is running out of Tomahawk cruise missiles. At the beginning of the war on Libya the navy had 60 Tomahawks, which cost £500,000 each, which means in just over two months a total of £30 million has been spent on these missiles alone.
As well as the Tomahawks, British forces have been firing salvoes of other missiles, including the Storm Shadow, which cost £800,000 each, and Hellfires used by the recently deployed Apache attack helicopters.
This is a fraction of what is being spent on the war in Libya, which we were told by chancellor George Osborne would cost "tens, not hundreds" of millions, and by President Obama that it would last "days, not weeks".
The UK navy currently has one destroyer, HMS Liverpool, the mine clearance vessel HMS Bangor, a Trafalgar class submarine and the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean off the coast of Libya. The submarine alone costs £200,000 a day to maintain.
The weekly estimate of UK expenditure on the war is around £40 million. By the time the current Nato limit of 90 days war is reached in the Autumn the total cost is likely to reach £1 billion.
But Admiral Stanhope wants more. In a none too subtle bid for a boost to defence spending, Stanhope says that the navy will not be able to sustain operations beyond these 90 days without what he calls "rebalancing", that is, an increase in the already vast amounts being spent.
Britain is now engaged in a war without end, with no discernable objective beyond regime change, which is illegal under international law and specifically excluded from the UN resolution 1973, which the US and its allies are using as a cover for their latest sordid imperialist adventure, and which is costing hundreds of millions at the same time we are told that savage cuts in public and welfare expenditure is unavoidable.
There isn't yet sign in the British parliament of the same surge of anti-war opinion now revealed in the US Congress, where last week Congressman Dennis Kucinich's one sentence resolution -- "Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove the United States Armed Forces from Libya" -- was scuppered through sly manoeuvring when there seemed a possibility it could be passed.
Which is why it is imperative that the anti-war movement maximises pressure on members of parliament to reflect reject majority opinion in Britain that opposes the war in Libya.
Stop the War Coalition has published a new statement on Libya, as follows:
We believe that the NATO military intervention constitutes a war for regime change. President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, and President Sarkozy have all made statements that there can be no political settlement of the civil war in Libya without ending the regime.
All the international peace initiatives, from Russia, the African Union and South Africa have been immediately rejected by the NATO supporting governments. These attempts to establish a ceasefire, and a peace process, represent the alternative to the escalation of war in Libya.
The rejection of these initiatives demonstrates that this is not a war to protect civilians, who are dying in ever larger numbers. The infrastructure of the country is being degraded after over ten thousand sorties from NATO bombers, with the inevitable impact on the economic development of the country.
We believe that the main aim of the NATO intervention is to place in power a government subordinate to the Western powers. We therefore call upon NATO to end its war upon Libya.
