Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, has outlined the often mentioned plan to overhaul the British Army’s combat capability, telling MPs that the Army must “double its lethality by 2027 and triple it by 2030”.
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday, Radakin admitted to MPs that the Army’s current combat power was insufficient, but said that rapid technological advances — and lessons from Ukraine — made a major uplift achievable.
“At one level, I’ve been super honest with the committee,” Radakin said.
“That’s a reflection of how low the lethality is at the moment, so we’ve got to be honest. But it’s also a reflection of the opportunities that are out there, and what we’ve learned from Ukraine.”
Radakin pointed to rapid procurements already underway, highlighting the accelerated acquisition of the Archer artillery system: “Some of them we have done already. The Archer artillery system we procured much more quickly than we would have done ordinarily.”
Discussing future capabilities, he emphasised the crucial role of unmanned and autonomous systems in transforming military effectiveness: “It’s the benefits, especially in the land domain, of what is available in terms of some of the drone technology, whether that’s in ISR terms or also in lethality terms, and how you blend that with some of your more traditional programmes. That’s where you then get that uplift in lethality.”
He stressed that General Sir Roly Walker, the new Chief of the General Staff, was driving the Army to meet these targets, “absolutely in tune with where we think the defence review will come out.” Radakin continued: “It’s also in tune with two elements of both technology and industry responding and offering these opportunities. And again, we’re seeing it in Ukraine.”
Radakin described the coming years as a “mixture of crude capabilities – the things that we would historically recognise” and new autonomous platforms. “We have an ongoing modernisation programme that is delivering. We’ve delivered all the Apaches, the Boxers are rolling off the production lines. Ajax is up to 100-odd vehicles now. We’ve got the first Challenger 3 rolling out.”
However, he said the real shift would come through integrating low-cost, disposable systems with traditional forces: “The real lethality shift comes from when you have treatable and disposable capability. What do I mean by that? It’s when you take programmes like Tiquila, that’s adding drone capability on top of those, so we can see farther and further and be more effective and hit more.”
Radakin added that the UK was learning directly from its support to Ukraine: “We’re adding one-way effectors, which are low-cost cruise missiles in layperson’s terms, that we’ve done very effectively for Ukraine, and we’re rolling those out into the UK Army.”
Summing up the transformation underway, Radakin said: “The combination of traditional crude equipment with that autonomous capability laid over the top transforms the lethality of our military.”
I thought it was triple, oh well toned down already thats crap start
Did you not read the headline?
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More money and manpower would be a start .Not sure to laugh or cry .
Manpower is the big elephant in the room. Surely. Ukraine war has clearly shown that manpower is the most important before all technology as a rough rule. There is apparently 14 applicants for every 1 vacancy in the armed forces but buy the time private recruitment company , medicals , length of time to to start training etc the numbers are not enough. A big rethink on reserves would be useful
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Can’t do that when we are naive with defence
His artillery claim seems a bit weak.
Paul, yes, I agree. We had 179 AS-90 brought into service after the Cold War to meet the post-Cold War requirement. The fleet was largely unmodified over the years and the very important BRAVEHEART upgrade was cancelled. Then 40% were mothballed by Cameron in 2010. Numbers continued to reduce in the active fleet and then we gift about 56 or so to Ukraine. I think we have less than 30 left. Still, never mind – we have got 14 Archer, and the distant promise of Boxer RCH-155 (a choice forced on the army by Sunak so the army was denied the chance to competitively evaluate a number of options). Contract not yet signed and development work is still required and for the production to be dovetailed in with other Boxer orders.
Not much good cheer there.
Paul, yes, I agree. We had 179 AS-90 brought into service after the Cold War to meet the post-Cold War requirement. The fleet was largely unmodified over the years and the very important BRAVEHEART upgrade was cancelled. Then 40% were mothballed by Cameron in 2010. Numbers continued to reduce in the active fleet and then we gift about 56 or so to Ukraine. I think we have less than 30 left. Still, never mind – we have got 14 Archer, and the distant promise of Boxer RCH-155 (a choice forced on the army by Sunak so the army was denied the chance to competitively evaluate a number of options). Contract not yet signed and development work is still required and for the production to be dovetailed in with other Boxer orders.
Not much good cheer there.
I don’t think any are left. The last few were piped put of Larkhill months ago. Cabrit uses Archer only now I think?
Watchkeeper surprisingly is still out there.
Very lofty aims. Has anyone asked, “Can you define lethality and state your starting point please?”. Although however its defined lethality per unit is not in itself a replacement for mass, mass which we know has been massively reduced.
AH-64E is more capable than an AH1, but are 50 AH-64E ever going to be 3x more lethal than 67 AH1?
or 386 CH2 vs 148 CH3
or Ajax vs various predecessors (maybe even include the loss of Warrior due to the budget choices made)
and on and on and on.
1 T-42 vs 1 T-45 you’ve managed it, 1 F-35B vs 1 Harrier yep.
Are the Dreadnoughts, despite being more advanced, even 2x more lethal than the Vanguards (warheads numbers being equal)?
Never mind, the answer is magic accounting and weighting, it’s always the answer.
Yea, all the talk about bringing in more capable platforms, trying to justify reductions in numbers, seem to miss the blindingly obvious point that all of our potential enemies are also modernising (sometimes faster than us) and increasing their lethality too; and in many cases also increasing their numbers.
Our capability should be judged against our potential adversaries, not our own capability yesterday. We’re never going to be fighting yesterday’s British military, we’re going to be fighting tomorrow’s Russian / Chinese / Iranian military.
Boxer is not increasing the lethality of the British Army its reducing it… turning warrior mounted Armoured infantry into boxer mounted MEC infantry is a significant reduction in lethality at section level.
Shhh, you weren’t supposed to notice that, headlines over reality.
You cannot escape the simple fact 10 infantry persons firing their guns are twice as lethal as 5. All this lethality is just blether and when psycho North Koreans are running at you across a field, better have 10 than 5 guns blasting them.. Radakin is utterly delusional.
And all the talk of increasing lethality by however many times, well our potential adversaries will likely do the same too and more! Where’s the advantage then? Why not a bit more uptake in tanks, helicopters, IFVs platforms too, for projection of and protection from lethality? .
How can tech and autonomous compensate for mass and Kinetic effect?
Just seems more of the same old twaddle. 14 Archer? That is all the 155mm left. They “replace” 6 Regiments worth of 155mm AS90.
Would the powers that be be considering ordering another batch of Archer as a quick and good value top up of stocks pre arrival of the RCH155 especially if the lead time blows out? They’re upping the production of 155mm shells even producing the M777 again in the UK, seems odd that the Army wouldn’t get any benefits of all this going on?
It is astonishing really that the MOD thinks it can get away with this sort of fictitious waffle about increasing lethality.
We have no 155mm artillery left and the gunners are sharing a small pool of elderly 105mm field guns, which would be completely outclassed on a modern mechanised battlefield. Purchasing 14 second-hand Archers does not even begin to fill the gap, it only equips 2 of the 8 field batterys that 3 Division needs. What a strange thing for the CDS to lead on and boast about.
Equally fallacious is this lethality claim. We are going to get some backpack and local area drones, great. But the army is so deficient in modern kit that our lethality is actually going backwards. A miniscule number of tanks being upgraded to CR3, a great gap in field artillery, a wheeled battlefield taxi without a cannon, this odd-looking RCH 155mm howitzer, which is years away, a token number of Sky Sabre, far fewer than the measly number of Rapiers they are replacing, the list of glaring deficiencies goes on and on. Some backpack and local area drones will only plug one of the many gaps in the inventory.
So the MOD concocts this displacement story about ‘lethality’ to distract from the sobering reality of an army that is now far too small and very inadequately equipped. Gen Walker and Adm Radakin need to chuck the MOD’s briefing notes in the bin and not let themselves be made the mouthpieces for this kind of drivel and spin.
The immediate and medium term future is unmanned – drones, counter drones. Manpower and armour is going to be redundant unless these can be countered. Mass AI driven drones are going to annihilate current ORBATs (ground and maritime). To triple lethality means focus on this domain above all else now as Russia/NK/China are learning very quickly.