The British Prime Minister yesterday rejected calls from Chief of Staff Patrick Saunders to prepare to “mobilize our people” for a looming war with Russia, insisting the British Army remains a volunteer force.
so what? The general’s words were a cry for help. The British military is not only undermanned and poorly equipped; Nor will it be able to train and equip conscript troops even if needed.
Insofar as conflict between Russia and NATO is plausible, Britain is completely unprepared.
senior services. The Royal Navy has 30 ships, including the Type 23 frigate, which was due to be phased out more than a decade ago. She has two aircraft carriers, but no support ships. This means they cannot rearm or resupply without the support of allies. Maintenance problems on the aging Vanguard-class submarines on which Britain’s nuclear deterrence policy depends could mean each mission could last around six months, twice as long as planned and put a huge strain on crews. It will cost. A successor to the Dreadnought class won’t arrive for another 10 years.
On the ground. The military is about one-tenth the size of the 1950s and dangerously short on deployable hardware.
- According to the Congressional Select Committee on Defense in March 2023, it has 157 Challenger 2 tanks that have undergone “30 days of maintenance.” The Challenger 2, introduced in 1998, has never been upgraded.
- The Ajax Armored Fighting Vehicle program is based on a design used by the Spanish Army in the 1990s and has been under development since 2010, costing £688m to date without a single vehicle being fielded. It took.
- At least three similar programs have been canceled, costing billions of dollars. In March 2021, the National Defense Committee announced that “between 1997 and the end of 2020… [Ministry of Defence] Not a single new armored vehicle has been delivered. The report concluded that it would still be some four years before it would be possible to deploy ‘combat divisions’, which themselves would now be hopelessly under-equipped.’ .
American umbrella. With Donald Trump’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate now almost certain, America’s allies are having to ponder the possibility of a withdrawal of U.S. military support from NATO due to Trump’s second term as president. ing.
Could Britain spend more? Yes, but money is not a silver bullet. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said this month that Britain would increase defense spending from 2.1% of gross domestic product to 2.5% of gross domestic product “at some point in the future”. But spending money alone isn’t enough, said retired Lt. Gen. Jeremy Blackham. Entry-level workers must be brought into the defense sector to accumulate the skills needed to build and maintain a modern military. Instead, the sector is atrophying and “there is no understanding that if we want to maintain the navy and shipbuilding, we have to provide jobs.”
What about global Britain? “Britain’s military is small and shrinking,” Chatham House chief executive Bronwen Maddox said in her annual lecture this week. “Our allies are responding grievingly but graciously to this…The government’s job is not to promise too much, especially to the United States.
“I cringe when I think of British military leaders taking on Afghanistan’s Helmand province with the arrogance of saying, ‘We can do it,’ but no, we couldn’t.”
Unmet Challenges – Timeline:
Basra, 2009. Basra was a British mission in Operation Telik, as the army lacked spare parts to advance further into Iraq. Unable to capture the city, the commanders agreed to let the Mahdi militia run the city if they stopped attacking the British forces, and the British agreed to stay away from the city. In the 2009 attack, British troops remained at the base while American and Iraqi forces removed the militia.
Helmand, 2010. The British army was thinly manned and lacked equipment, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers. Surrounded by the Taliban, the army never gained strategic control. In 2010, the US Marine Corps began replacing the British military.
Bahrain, 2024. The Royal Navy mine-sweeping ship Chiddingfold, tasked with supporting U.S. forces against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, left its berth last week and backed into Bangor, blowing a gaping hole in its cabin above the waterline. Ta. “It appears that HMS Chiddingfold’s motor wiring was incorrect,” a naval official said.
Moreover: Renovating the British military will mean painful trade-offs, as the next British government will inherit the most disastrous financial legacy in 70 years (see also Capital).
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