That the Parliament notes the article in The Independent of 13 February 2016, which reports that the UK has had to rely on aircraft from allies over 20 times in the last year; further notes that aircraft have apparently had to be called from the US, Germany, Canada and France to protect Scottish waters due to a lack of maritime patrol aircraft that, among other uses, can detect and track Russian and other submarines; understands that the need for such support stems directly from the decision taken by the Ministry of Defence to cut the Nimrod patrol aircraft supposedly due to a deficit of £38 billion in the military budget; believes that if cuts are to be made in the defence budget they should take the form of scrapping the Trident nuclear submarines, which it considers make no sense either on moral, economic or strategic grounds, and considers that Trident is prioritised due to politicians in the UK Parliament clinging on to a false sense of Britain’s importance in the world and that this has led to real gaps in the conventional abilities of the armed forces thereby compromising the security of Scotland.