Senior defence officials have told MPs that the UK must learn lessons from Ukraine’s war without assuming Britain would fight in the same way, stressing NATO integration, supply chains and rapid readiness rather than replicating Ukraine’s battlefield model.
Giving evidence to the Defence Committee, Lieutenant General Anna-Lee Reilly said comparisons with Ukraine needed to be treated carefully, warning against drawing the wrong conclusions from a conflict fought under very different conditions.
“You always hear that we talk of not fighting the last war and preparing for the next war,” she said. “It is important to say that, as laid out in the strategic defence review, we operate in the UK under the NATO umbrella and there is a NATO first philosophy.”
Reilly told MPs that Ukraine’s armed forces were fighting an existential war in circumstances that do not translate directly to how the UK and its allies would operate.
“We would fight in a very different way from the Ukrainians,” she said. “They are fighting an existential war and do not operate in the same way that we would if we were fighting. We need to be careful to learn the right lessons.”
That distinction, she argued, shaped how the British Army should be structured, balancing high-end capabilities with systems that can be produced and replaced at scale.
“That brings us back to the way the Army will be structured, with the exquisite capabilities and then the more disposable capabilities off the back end of it,” Reilly said.
Pressed by MP Fred Thomas on concerns that the UK would struggle in a peer-on-peer land war similar to Ukraine’s, Reilly framed the issue less as doctrine and more as industrial capacity. “From my perspective, sitting where I do, this is about supply chains,” she said, quoting a warning from her US counterpart after Russia’s invasion. “‘Our supply chains are at war. We just don’t know it yet.’ Our procurement agencies are as well.”
She linked that assessment directly to current defence planning. “That is what you see with the strategy on munitions, what you saw in the strategic defence review, and what you will see in the defence investment plan. It is about being ready as quickly as possible and being able to respond.”
The session also touched on readiness beyond weapons and munitions, including equipment for serving women. Reilly said progress had been made on combat clothing but acknowledged ongoing shortcomings. “Women are not small men, as it turns out,” she said, adding that the most difficult challenge remained body armour, particularly ballistic plates.
She highlighted work with NP Aerospace, which is developing female-specific armour plates now being tested for use by Ukrainian forces. “If they pass the testing, this will be a global game-changer,” Reilly said, noting that success could ultimately feed back into UK procurement.
Do I think the U.K. army is ready to fight a war even as a NATO member , absolutely NOT. One clear lesson from Ukraine which does apply is that artillery is king. We just give Ukraine all of our AS90s , where are we in procuring a replacement , other than a pitful 14 Archers , errr we are thinking about it, really hard HONEST.
Where are we in making 155mm shells, we have narrowed the new factory down to four location , still thinking about it Really Hard. The Challenger 2 has been remarkably successful in Ukraine , shrugging off hits that destroy Russians tanks, status getting there at a snails pace, storm Shadow FINALLY restarted building more. F35 procurement .
Fleet subs stuck in port due to lack of dry dock resource.
There is absolutely ZERO URGENCY . Our supply chain is already at war supplying Ukraine while rearming ourselves.
Its utterly depressing. Whats the point in increasing the defence budget if its just goingto go to more projects that will be shelved and countless meetings?
They keep telling us we need to prepare for a war in at least Europe, maybe the Pacific within three to five years. But what is the MoD doing about it, to sum it up, they are thinking about it “ Really hard”
Yup, I’d hate to be a high-ranking officer in the military. Trying to improve the military with both hands tied behind your back.
I would be happier if the person giving evidence had knowledge of commanding frontline troops and had come up through the infantry or armoured regiments.. I don’t believe that the army is capable of much anymore, more’s the pity. Infantry decimated, no arillery to speak of and a couple of undersized armoured brigades with old tanks. We would be hard pressed to fight on the beaches and in the hills……
Please, do tell about the Army structure, Lt General Reilly.
We’re establishing Divisions that have 2 manoeuvre Brigades, ( 12,20 and 7,4 ) where’s before they had 3, each also with a DRS Bde and the usual logistics Bde. ( 3 DRS,101 and 1 DRS,102 )
We’ve established a second Deep Recc Strike Brigade by stealing some of the assets of the original one. That’s not expansion, it makes the Army look bigger on an orbat diagram with a “new” Brigade.
Reported on X, which I follow closely, there is currently a lot of deck chair shuffling going on in the CS and CSS areas of the army, with little publicity. Regiments and sub units of said Regiments are apparently being shuffled about to try and give the impression the CSS exists to support the army we have, which clearly isn’t the case. 1 RLC has reportedly been moved from it’s Armoured Brigade to the 3 DRS Brigade, which has never had any regular CSS formation since its inception beyond 6 REME. In BAOR days, the Corps and Divisional Artillery had Regiments of the RCT to carry the ammunition. 3 DRS Bde had nothing until this change beyond a CSSG from reservists. Why?
Because the Army was happily cutting CSS elements all the way up to Strike 2015, while preserving Infantry Battalions.
In doing this, it seems that we now have an Armoured Brigade with no CSS as it’s been nicked to cover elsewhere.
I hope in due course a CS Regiment will be provided for it.
How about Lt General that the Army stop the smoke and mirrors can do bullshit, talking of disposable effectors as you’re doing and actually DETAIL the orbat for study and organise enough CSS to support what little we have?
Because till then, it’s spin of the higgest order just as the RN example concentrating on toy boats to deflect attention from the facts that there are too few real warfighting ships, subs, planes, and helicopters.
With talk of expanded recruitment, I hope to see our formations fully supported by CSS and CS RA Regiments in due course, because at the moment there are gaps all over the place and one Brigade doesn’t even have Artillery, Royal Engineers, or RLC regulars supporting it, yet it’s part of 1 UK Division.
Other nations would move to amend this idiocy, why is it ok for the British Army to put up with it?
Hi Daniele, this govt obviously keeps its cards close to its chest. Watching the media speculation feeding frenzy around the budget I have some sympathy. I do believe there is a plan and process: strategy first then equipment requirements > supplier selection > budget funding> orders and orbat. In other words, they won’t say anything about orbat until the budget for the equipment is approved and the deals for with suppliers are in place e.g. Babcock land and building a plant to assemble Patria 6×6 in Sherford. An awful lot of ducks have already been lined up. Ditto for Nurol Makina in Leamington Spa and the additional Babcock hall in Rosyth. So I reckon that come Jan 5th when the DIP is published they will hang the orbat decisions on the back of the equipment plan. We will know what future equipment is planned for each unit.
Hi Paul.
I always appreciate your posts, for your positivity.
Yes, I concede, stuff has ans is happening on that side.
My cynicism suggests the budget doesn’t exist for what HMG themselves accepted in the SDR.
Leaving the Army playing it’s never ending shell game, which I see through easily enough.
Well, Daniele, I admire your mastery of the Army structure and capabilities. I agree that the budget is likely to be insufficient to fund an ideal implementation of the SDR. We have to hope it is enough to deter aggression. The Army has the biggest problem. It’s going to be interesting to say the least what they come up with.
If UKR had been rerun from t=0 then Russia would have faced an overwhelming UK/NATO response and the tank parade phase would have been mashed up by air power.
What happens when the high tech munitions run out and it turns back into trench warfare is something else entirely. Although it can be assumed the UK NATO would own top cover level what is going on at low level with MANPADs is a different story.
My concerns are more around the second part of this.
I totally believe that UK alone could degrade the Russian Air Force to such an extent that it no longer presented a threat.
I also believe that RN/RAF could deal with the Russian surface fleet.
My doubts are around Russian submarines and attritional long term warfare.
Of course we would fight different, it would last about 3 days and we would have lost! Ok a little tongue in cheek, but our only real strength now lies in the membership of NATO. As that member of NATO, we are now mostly relying on our hard earned reputation as opposed to our real time current capabilities. Yes we have a few niche platforms and capabilities but they are few and far between and like the rest of the military have absolutely no depth whatsoever. Nothing will be done, certainly for the next few years, aside from soundbites, bullshit and lies. These clowns in Government don’t really care about the UK, they are international no borders Socialist and defending and supporting your own country is not in their DNA or mindset. Also the Parliamentary Labour party are currently running the Government not the cabinet, and they mostly are more concerned with their tiny majorities, mostly held up by minority voting groups, who have their own off shore agendas!
Exactly.
The problem is The Ten Year Rule
The British government, first adopted in August 1919, that the armed forces should draft their estimates “on the assumption that the Britain would not be engaged in any war during the next ten years”. Unfortunately this has not been rescinded, especially in the Treasury and the Admiralty.
“nobody could say that from any one moment war was an impossibility for the next ten years. We could not rest in a state of unpreparedness on such an assumption by anybody. To suggest that we could be nine and a half years away from preparedness would be a most dangerous suggestion.
In 2010, the Royal Navy decided to retire HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s only aircraft carrier, in 2011. This was five years earlier than previously planned and up to ten years before the planned entry into service of the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. A group of retired admirals criticized the decision, calling it a new “10-year rule”. “No it the same one.”
You could not steam HMS Queen Elizabeth to Berlin in 1939, and today you still cannot send HMS Queen Elizabeth to Berlin, or Moscow or even Kyiv.
They counter this by saying on “Paper Britain has two War Fighting Divisions” “On Paper” they are not very good on Paper
We need two War Fighting Divisions on the GROUND, full manned and equipped to fight a peer adversary.