The Council on Geostrategy has warned that the UK’s approach to High North defence is too narrowly focused on the Royal Navy and RAF, with the British Army almost entirely absent from planning for a region where land forces could prove decisive, in written evidence to the Defence Committee’s Defence in the High North inquiry.
The submission, authored by Research Fellow William Freer, Adjunct Fellow Charlotte Kleberg and former British Army officer Matthew Palmer, argues that the High North represents arguably the UK’s primary security interest, describing it as the most likely axis of attack from which a peer threat against the home islands would emerge.
The Russian Northern Fleet is composed of at least 11 large surface combatants and 25 submarines with a combined offensive capacity of potentially over 800 missiles, with Russia continuing to invest heavily in basing infrastructure in the region “despite the burden of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
On the absence of the Army from High North planning, the submission is direct, saying the current strategy is the focus of the Royal Navy, alongside deep involvement from the RAF, and “extremely limited involvement from the third” branch. The High North is described as a littoral environment of islands and fjords where the ability to project and sustain land forces should play an important part in the Atlantic Shield, Strike and Bastion concepts, but the “decline of Britain’s amphibious force undermines the ability to do this at the scale needed” with the Commando Force currently limited by the retirement of the Albion-class amphibious warfare ships and no confirmed procurement of the successor Multi-Role Strike Ship, which is not expected to enter service until the mid-2030s. The submission is clear that “as useful as ‘raiding’ by commando forces can be, they are not a substitute for the ability to seize, hold, and reinforce key terrain.”
The submission suggests equipping an element of the Commando Force, such as 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, with long-range missiles capable of striking both land and sea targets, and calls for 16 Air Assault Brigade to receive greater cold weather warfare training alongside Nordic allies given the likelihood of the High North featuring as an area of operations in a crisis scenario. It concludes that the UK’s military approach to the High North should be “a more concerted effort – even a national defence priority – cohered around the Shield/Strike/Bastion concepts” and that “a greater level of top-down political direction to direct the branches of the military is needed.”
On logistics, the submission identifies four critical challenges: resupplying land forces, keeping ships at sea, keeping aircraft in the air and doing all of this under contested conditions. Britain’s strategic sealift capacity is described as “significantly constrained by inadequate strategic sealift capacity, currently relying on an ageing, four-vessel Ro-Ro fleet” with the submission warning that even when new initiatives come to fruition in the 2030s, “total capacity will still fall short of surge demand.” The submission calls for peacetime contracts with commercial shipowners, saying “traditional requisitioning – i.e., Ships Taken Up From Trade – no longer ensures access to usable ships, crews, or expertise.”
The RAF’s ability to sustain operations in the High North is also questioned, with the submission noting that with only three E-7 Wedgetail and nine P-8 Poseidon aircraft, keeping these platforms on station over long distances will prove challenging, “worsened by the fact that the RAF’s current fleet of Voyager tankers cannot refuel either platform, as they are not fitted with a boom refuelling capability.”
On the Joint Expeditionary Force, the submission calls for significant reform, including establishing JEF Headquarters as a permanent independent entity, giving the JEF “a long-term, permanent campaign to operate” rather than time-bound reactive activities, and formalising the relationship between NATO and the JEF on division of responsibilities and crisis response. The submission cautions that “expansion should not be seen as universally good for the organisation” given that its strength lies in its flexibility and compact number of like-minded partners.
Once again Army looking for relevance.
It is a RN and RAF place and both these Services need more assets, not wasting them on the Army. In the end as an island, history shows we work well with a small army.
After all, we can only afford the expense of a decent RN and RAF at the expense of an Army….
The Army has had an outsized role during the 20th Century and it will be very hard for supporters of the Army to accept a reversion to its earlier status as a significantly junior partner to other Services.
However, that move would be the logical development given our reduced economic and global status, and the fact that all our European allies are largely land-based and so already have a focus on land warfare.
That said, the Army would benefit from having a key mission on which to focus its efforts but, to me at least, it already appears to have one: the defence of Estonia and the Baltic states. That is surely already a big enough role for what would be a smaller (i.e. more appropriately sized!) Army to properly fulfill.
I read it as the Army is highly relevant and has been left out of the planning.
Why has it been left out of the planning? Because it doesn’t have the mass it needs to sustain an Arctic and a Baltic commitment to NATO. ie the Army is highly relevant to all NATO scenarios and needs more mass, because at it’s current levels, it can’t be in two connected theatres concurrently.
All three domains will fail without securing the others.
Wow big surprise, Former Army officers think army needs more money.
Not sure if the former army officers have noticed but there is not a lot of land in the high north.