Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace is, according to an article published in the Times on Saturday, planning to “resist pressure from senior generals and push ahead with cuts to the army as part of an overhaul of the armed forces”. And yet, in the very same article another source is suggesting that “the Army is going to be [protected from cuts!
Confused? Well on one hand you should be because the article makes a rather strange reference to “ministers believing that Britain is not under significant pressure from its allies.”. This is nonsense.
Whilst I can hardly believe that the source of the last comment can be considered reliable – no minister of sound mind, one who has bothered to speak privately to anyone senior within the military and the remotest understanding that Governments primary duty to the people of our nation is defence of the realm – would dare to suggest that our NATO allies are content to see the UK slashing spending on specialist areas of defence that we have long been recognised for providing without absolute evidence and or, if change is to occur, our ensuring that we first put something else in place.
If there is any truth in the suggestion that Mr. Wallace is still under pressure from the Treasury to cut Army personnel numbers, he may rest assured that it will be fought tooth and nail by defence analysts. That is not to suggest that anyone believes the Army could not be made to be more efficient in respect of how it operates but I will not rule out relevance in the article, I am bound to see the whole exercise as being one of testing the water in order to gauge wider press and social media opinion
Sometime in June Mr. Wallace and his team at the MOD are expected to publish what is formally referred to as the ‘Defence Command Paper’ and which, as a follow up to the so-called ’Integrated Review Refresh’ published in March will contain specific detail and numbers of what the government’s long-term ambitions are for the UK military.
Although, given the amount of debate amongst the defence analyst community, academia and on social media, we cannot be absolutely sure about the level of intention in regard of potential Army based rebalancing of numbers, the belief as portrayed in the article that “we have too much infantry” and that instead “we need more artillery” any form of sensible coherence, support evidence or detail. Frankly such comments beggar belief but they also do what they are intended to do, damage the relationship that the public has in respect of defence. One look at what continues to be occurring in Ukraine tells you why you need to maintain adequate levels of artillery – including Main Battle Tanks.
For all that, we are talking here about an article full of speculation rather than one of informed comment. Rather than encourage – and with absolutely no knowledge of how the detail of how the details of this article were obtained or whether there is an ounce of truth in any of it – I would like to see Mr. Wallace make a statement in order to set the record straight.
While listening to those in uniform who have far greater knowledge about the work they do and what they may need in respect of artillery and other support in order to do their potentially difficult work that they do when deployed, it would be hugely disappointing to believe that those working in the MOD Ivory Tower have chosen to think more of the potential bow they might handle further cuts from a PR perspective.
In the so-called ‘Integrated Review of 2021’ and which was all but out of date before the ink was dry, it is true that Mr. Wallace announced plans to reduce the number of Challenger 2 tanks from 227 to 148 and worse, to further allow the Army to shrink to 73,000 personnel.
It is not my job to defend the retention of any specific numbers of Army personnel but it is my job to call for a more rationale plan to emerge and to hopefully, ensure that issues are properly looked at before being leaked to the press. That we are short of defence capability and capacity can hardly be argued and having paired UK defence to the bone we must redouble efforts to ensure that we do not make another round of rash, unwarranted or dangerous decisions.
I am not exactly sure of the existing number of Army personnel numbers (The Times article suggests that there are 75,710 full-time and fully trained troops in the Army, and that Mr. Wallace previously admitted that it [the Army] is unable to deploy a war-fighting division.) If true, that is probably because only between one quarter and one third of Army personnel are fully trained and battle ready. The other factor that can never be ignored is the low morale of our military personnel, retention and the ability to get new people to join. Please prove me wrong on this?
Unsurprisingly and as I mentioned last week, our NATO allies are indeed losing patience with us and late last year the US commander of NATO forces in Europe openly warned that the British Army was no longer to be regarded as a tier-one fighting force. Others are very happy to talk privately in similar vain.
Meanwhile, the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has in the past suggested that pursuing further cuts in Army personnel numbers particular at a time when Russia is posing a much wider threat would be perverse. But he has not said anything on the subject of late and I am bound to wonder whether he has been silenced.
By the way, the Times article makes reference to the UK’s NATO allies including Poland, Germany and Finland (to that in respect of defence as a whole, I would add France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Norway and (hopefully as a member of NATO soon, Sweden) increasing spending on their land armies. Despite the £5bn extra promised in March, we in Britain continue to be left fearing more capability and manpower cuts. No wonder morale is so low but those in charge of the military continue to say little or nothing.
That the MoD is facing difficult decisions if it is not to build up yet another black hole in defence spending budget – a reference to spending more than the Treasury and Cabinet Office having been allocated an extra £5bn spread over two years and that was announced as part of the Integrated Review Refresh.
However, this was only around half of what Mr. Wallace and others had been fighting the Treasury for and the majority of what has been allocated will go on replenishing seriously run down stocks of complex weapons used in Iraq and Syria by the Royal Air Force and other weapon stocks for the Army including £2bn required to replenish stocks of weapons and equipment donated by the British Government to Ukraine.
As you hear me say regularly in ‘Commentary’, defence is a political choice but we in Britain need to wake up to realities around us and question why it is that our NATO allies are rising to the greater threats we face and acknowledging that the price for peace and stability has gone up exponentially since Russia invaded Ukraine. WE simply cannot keep cutting back.
Of course, I readily acknowledge that we cannot do everything and that there has to be some kind of balance in relation to defence and all other government spending. The Royal Navy is quite rightly having a fleet of Type 26 and Type 31 ships being built, the remaining Astute class nuclear powered submarines plus the four Dreadnought class nuclear deterrent submarines.
Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force is getting a fleet of Protector unmanned aerial vehicles to replace Reaper, eventually more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and in respect of Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) just three E7 Wedgetail aircraft rather than the five originally planned in order to replace a fleet of what had once been eight Sentry E3-D aircraft. I do accept that the RAF has a new fleet of P8 Poseidon aircraft and Shadow R1’s. Eventually, there will be a fleet of three E7 Wedgetail aircraft meaning that at the very least one can actually be airborne!
And yes, I also accept that the Army will eventually get a large fleet (623 vehicles) of the already proven in service Boxer fully digitised wheeled armoured vehicles and at some point, in the years to come, a tracked wheeled vehicle known as Ajax. Warrior which has served the Army well will go as a result and on top of this, the Army will be getting 148 Challenger 3 conversions currently under reconstruction in Telford from existing Challenger 2 Main Battle Tanks.
Last but not least, I was pretty enraged when I read in the Times article that ‘Senior figures in the MoD believe the war in Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability of tanks to shoulder-launched weapons such as Nlaws and Javelins, justifying the original decision in 2021 to upgrade only 148 Challenger 2s to Challenger 3’s . To that all I will say is that ‘Main Battle Tanks’ can and do a brilliant job when deployed and to whoever made such comments, they ignored the most important element of MBT’s in respect of maintaining strong defence – that they act as a crucial deterrent capability.
As said earlier, in an age of uncertainty, that UK defence seriously lacks capacity, capability and mass and that rather than accept the current very visible weaknesses we prefer to keep on pretending that we have most of what we need, is a not only a lie but a betrayal of the trust of all those who serve.
CHW (London – 15th May 2023)
Howard Wheeldon FRAeS
Wheeldon Strategic Advisory Ltd,
M: +44 7710 779785
Skype: chwheeldon
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