Having last week commented on the excellence of evidence provided to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee which is currently reviewing the UK’s Armed Forces Readiness given by the former Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) Lord (Nick) Houghton of Richmond it is only right that I should also review what his successor, General Sir Nick Carter, provided in evidence on the following day.
Clarity is never a word that I have associated with General Sir Nick Carter and I am not about to do so now. Yes, this was what politicians would be accused of as being a U-Turn in expressed views but once again, it probably left the issue more confused than it started.
Before moving on I should say that never once during General Carter’s term as Chief of the Defence Staff can I recall him being critical of Government policy toward defence. Where possible from the time he was appointed as CDS in June 2018 and that was within his remit, he also ensured that the most senior posts in the military – those of First Sea Lord, Chief of the General Staff and Chief of the Air Staff – were filled by individuals who would, to use the colloquial term, ‘understand the politics’ and thus not be critical of government and MOD strategy and policy.
Nowhere was the above to be more apparent to me than in his leaning heavily on defence politicians to ensure that the immediate predecessor to the current newly appointed Chief of the Air Staff would be someone who would not cause trouble or answer back! If one needed further evidence to what I refer then one only has to look back to the last quite appalling appearance of that now former Chief of the Air Staff in front of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee on February 1st this year when the Committee was looking at the work of the Chief of the Air Staff to better understand what I mean!
So be it – nothing new that politicians along with senior civil servants in the MOD don’t want criticism from those charged with responsibility for running the military or the important parts of it. Neither it seems, does the most senior military leader in defence want criticism from any high ranking but subordinate service chief.
And thereby hangs a problem because those in the military charged with running their specific service should discuss, debate and agree what it is that they think they need to do the job. If the Chief of Defence Staff ensures that those around him will always say ‘yes’ and agree then the nation as a hole is weakened. And they should also remember that the public looks up to them to ensure that politicians are properly advised and hopefully make the right decision.
Please allow me one further slight digression, one that in this case also provides a degree of necessary balance. One of my best remembered examples of how the Secretary of State for Defence should and in this case, certainly did, work with his senior military chiefs occurred in 1997/8. The Strategic Defence Review published in 1998 was in large part based on a plan to build two new aircraft carriers for the rebuilding of what we now call ‘Carrier Strike’ – each being up to 40,000 tons. The ultimate decisions relating to numbers of and the size of vessels followed agreement that had very sensibly been sought by the George – now Lord Robertson of Port Ellen who was at the time the much respected Secretary of State for Defence, from the then First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jock Slater and the then Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Johns. Without their complete agreement on all matters relating to the revival of ‘Carrier Strike’ there would probably have been none! And so, agreement between these two highly respected senior military officers was for two ships to be built of between 30,000 to 40,000 tons each. The decision relating to size as taken in 1997/8 was, if I recall correctly, tailored to meet the strategic defence priorities later fully outlined in what many including myself regard to have been an excellent Strategic Defence Review.
For an explanation of how the carrier design eventually increased in size to 65,000 tonnes in the years that followed we need to recall the ‘obsession’ that a later First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West of Spithead and who was later a Labour Government Minister, had with the need for the carriers to conduct ‘deep strike’ capability but which from the very start appeared to ignore that the STOVL version of the Joint Strike Fighter that the UK was seeking to purchase did not have sufficient range to achieve the necessary ‘depth’ required and thus, ‘Carrier Strike’ would need to be supported by RAF tanker refuelling.
Digression over and back to the issue in hand – former Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter to HCDC last week.
The General Carter giving evidence today was a very different General Carter who for three years had been the most responsible officer in the UK military. He was quick to sound the alarm on a potentially catastrophic gap in Britain’s defenses and presented a view that the UK’s military services are critically undermanned and the Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyers stand as Britain’s solitary bulwark against a barrage of missiles akin to those Russia has deployed against Ukraine. He also cautioned that should Britain find herself embroiled in a protracted state-on-state conflict, victory could prove elusive.
The former Chief of the Defence Staff made it clear that he was deeply concerned about the shrinking size of Britain’s Armed Forces and pointed to recent figures that put the headcount of Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force regulars at just over 143,560. Our armed forces have shrunk too much he said but why is it that he said nothing like this during his three years tenure as CDS or better still, why did he not fight for an increase or resign on principle?
Rightly I suspect, General Carter’s underlying concern was lack of resilience of our armed forces as a whole and if I got it right, he suggested:
If we were to face a peer-on-peer war, I’m not sure we’d have any capability left after the first few months of engagement.”
He also sounded the alarm on UK’s air defense system, highlighting its potential susceptibility to multiple missile assaults, the likes of which Russia has been launching on Ukraine. The threat, he suggested, was real and significant for Britain suggesting: “
The potency of our counter-missile system is up for debate. Arguably, our only line of defense against such a threat is the Type 45 destroyer.”
He further explained that a “counter-missile defense akin to the US Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar) system which is currently in service in the US, Netherlands, Germany and now deployed in Kyiv, is what we in the UK need. It’s that level of capability we should aspire to.”
He suggested that Britain’s naval prowess is embodied in its fleet of six Type 45 Destroyers. These warships, he suggested, hailed as being some of the most advanced ever constructed, are armed with the Sea Viper missile. They are considered the backbone of Britain’s naval fleet and their only defense against Russian-style multiple missile attacks. No former CDS they are not, brilliant that Type 45 capability certainly is, until Type 26 and 31 supersede, it is Type 23 that is the backbone of what little capability the Royal Navy has.
General Carter went on to talk about his new found concerns about the defence budget and he made some rather stupid assertion that the Royal Navy nuclear submarine programme was consuming an enormous chunk of our resources that it threatened to diminish conventional deterrence capabilities.
Allow me to correct the former CDS – in 2021/2 Trident Operational costs were £3.2 billion for a defence budget of £513.1bn. The total cost allocated to the replacement of the four Vanguard class submarines by the Dreadnought programme is £31bn spread over as long as twenty years. There is also a £10bn contingency.
For further detail of the UK nuclear submarine Dreadnought programme and relevant history of nuclear deterrence programmes I recommend reading of:
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8166/CBP-8166.pdf
In summing up the former CDS attempted to criticise government in relation to there being glaring holes in Armed Forces readiness. And just what did the former CDS do about it in the over three years that he was Head of the UK’s Armed Forces?
You may think that but I couldn’t possibly say!
(Commentary will next appear on Thursday)
CHW (London -27th June 2023)
Howard Wheeldon FRAeS
Wheeldon Strategic Advisory Ltd,
M: +44 7710 779785
Skype: chwheeldon
@AirSeaRescue