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 LIONS, DONKEYS AND DINOSAURS Lewis Page, Random House, 356 pages.

Ex- soldier Jim Matthews takes stock of Lewis Page's tract against wastage of money and resources in the military. This is a polemical work which campaigns to get a better deal for servicemen and women, especially those at the front. It's a very clear agenda: Stop squandering money and resources on those who don't need it and start spending more on those who do, so that they can do their job of protecting you. The introduction begins with a slightly nagging, self-righteous tone. I sensed I was in for a few "home truths" from the military man to the pampered civilian, who knows nothing of the hardships of war (nor the perils). Fortunately it is not representative of the rest of the book, which is an interesting if not always entertaining study. I don't share his level of support for the military, but like many soldiers with an axe to grind, he argues with cogency and backs it up with experience; some of which resonates with my own. I have also witnessed gross wastage in the forces (as has anyone who's served), and like him I went through the All Arms Commando Course in the 90's with a rifle which required more maintenance than a supermodel's lifestyle. Starting at the proper start, in a chapter unambiguously titled "Men with Guns" he first strips down and lays bare, minutely, the SA80 assault rifle - the much maligned standard personal weapon of British troops - in all it's inadequacy of design and function. He explains what consequences this has had in theatre and what has been done about it. Why did Britain buy it in the first place? Why has the taxpayer spent as much on rebuilding it as it would have cost to buy better, proven weapons elsewhere? Because of a deal with British Aerospace (BAE) systems, basically. "You'll be hearing their name again," he says, and means it. "What the SA80 is to rifles," he goes on, "The Tornado F3 is to fighter jets…an industrial subsidy poorly disguised as a weapons system". Its disastrous conversion from a bomber was another favour to BAE and many, many more are brought to light in a chapter which tracks BAE's progress from a floundering aerospace provider in the 70's to its current status as Britain's only show in town for weapons production of any kind: "BAE will [now] decide what gets bought and for how much, regardless of what the armed forces or even the government want." And what gets bought, Page makes clear, is "expensive rubbish" - lots of it. His righteous anger at the gay abandon with which successive governments have fattened BAE on our cash, to this dangerous position of monopoly, has something of the firebrand and is certainly engaging if not particularly funny. Helicopters, artillery, warships and submarines get the same rigorous critical scrutiny in separate sections, as do the organisational structures of the army, navy and air- force. Page finds incompetence, obsolescence and wastage all round. Military top brass who came up during the cold war are still running things according to envisioned battle scenarios of yesteryear. "Rear Echelons" also get a drubbing, for diverting money from the front to their own shiny-arsed concerns. Meticulous on detail, Page always takes the long way round to establish his points, leaving few stones unturned. It's a thorough thesis. If you want an entertaining read, however, you had better share his interest in the minutiae of military affairs at every level. That we could have bought the American AWACS, but instead wasted a billion on developing the unusable Nimrod (guess why), is clear and pointed enough. But elsewhere one might just miss, for instance, the fact that the new A400Ms (transport planes) will have a maximum lift of 750 tons, and why this should matter. I often felt that I'd got the idea and wished he'd just get to the punchline, or at least vary the tone a bit. Part of the problem is in the preface, unfortunately; Harold Evans (wrongly) calls Page a satirist and so one expects satire. There are many moments of wit, certainly, but they are still spread pretty thinly over such a bulky tome. Some readers may be uncomfortable with where several of the utilitarian arguments inevitably lead - for instance when Page implicitly advocates one arms manufacturer over another. But the sheer amount of concrete information, relatively digestible, makes this a valuable contribution to the ongoing public "de-cloaking" of the sale and use of weapons, and a good companion to Mark Thomas' anti-arms trade work "As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela".