Our Army is at its smallest since Waterloo – more cuts will kill it
According to recently retired and current defence chiefs, 8 years of military cuts have damaged our military. One says we would struggle to deal with Russia on the battlefield
DEFENCE is once again a monumental mess.
Nearly eight years since the Conservatives came into government, we have self-inflicted a strategic loss of fighting power and reputation.
We are facing another serious black hole in the defence equipment programme. What is going on?
Some recently retired defence chiefs, traditionally the only ones allowed to speak the brutal truth in public, have been scathing about the impact of year-upon-year cutbacks.
General Sir Richard Barrons assesses that our Forces are not fit for purpose and that the Army is 20 years out of date in terms of serious war-fighting capability.
Admiral Sir George Zambellas worries we are in danger of becoming a Third World nation in military terms and says the Navy is hollowed out.
Then yesterday, in an extremely rare public admonishment from a serving general, current Army chief Sir Nick Carter declared the country would struggle to deal with Russia on the battlefield.
If more money is not found and cuts to frontline forces go ahead, we risk losing two vital components of our national security: The critical mass and corporate morale of our Armed Forces.
Our Armed Forces are part insurance policy, part deterrent, and they deliver considerable soft power.
Their core and defining role is hard power — all the way to last-resort aggressive homeland defence.
Thus the critical mass of armed forces is about fighting power. This consists of mainly young people, weapons systems, logistics and networks integrated into highly trained and tuned teams.
The physical component of military power is highly visible and measurable. More important, though, is the invisible moral component.
This fighting spirit and determination to win depends upon quality recruitment, high standards of training, leadership and unit spirit.
Here is the rub. We have already dropped beneath critical mass. Any further frontline cuts will take us significantly beneath it.
Defence corporate morale, which has been fragile for some time, would take a body blow. Cutting today’s 78,000- strong Army (last this size post-Waterloo) and reducing our one Royal Marines brigade and some of its specialist shipping, as proposed, will break the camel’s back.
Other departments of state reaching crisis point can be turned around relatively quickly. Not so defence. The timelines for procuring equipment, recruiting and developing trained personnel and units are much longer.
The lasting impact of failure in the meantime can be catastrophic.
We already face a serious problem recruiting and retaining servicemen. Tommy Atkins’ parents are not encouraging Tommy to join up, and Tommy is not signing up in anything like the numbers required. An atmosphere of near-permanent decline has taken root.
We have sacrificed too much in terms of size and numbers to pay for some top- of-the-range “exquisite” weapon platforms and have much less resilience than we need.
We have just 19 destroyers and frigates. No matter how capable the ships, they cannot be in two places at once. Ships forced to leave post for mechanical reasons have not been replaced.
In the age of drone and missile swarm attacks, overall size and numbers have a quality of their own.
Our Army does not have the vehicles that enabled the French army to conduct a brilliant campaign in Mali in 2013. It is years behind French armoured force capability.
Comparisons of some key equipment and formation-level training are embarrassing.
The hopeless and facile Government response to all this has been to trumpet our standing as the world’s fifth-highest defence spender, and to point to some of our world-class defence assets.
The claim that we are one of few allies that meets the Nato two per cent defence expenditure target convinces few serious commentators. It is based on very creative accounting. Nevertheless, we spend a lot on other elements of national security, including GCHQ, intelligence services, cyber, border force and police.
With the NHS needing £4billion (King’s Fund charity estimate), and housing, prisons and transport high priorities, is it realistic to expect defence to get an extra £2billion?
YES, for the reasons outlined. Further frontline cuts would imperil our national security, alienate a significant number of voters, including 2.5million ex-servicemen, and ruin another Conservative core brand and competence.
So what would be the smart things for the PM to do?
She should announce that there will be no more frontline cuts, trigger a formal defence review and an informal, quicker report on defence availability, sustainability and resilience.
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She should further shake up the defence procurement system to include adjustment of the wasteful and bureaucratic annual defence costings exercise to every three or five years.
She should call for options for part use of the aid budget for “dual use” of defence personnel and assets.
Finally, she should do what Tony Blair concluded but never applied, solve the recurring defence elephant in the room issue by creating a separate budget for Trident.
• Nigel Hall is a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London and a Brigadier and former Commanding Officer for Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. This article first appeared on website reaction.life.
