General Sir Jim Hockenhull, as part of a speech at the UKStratCom Conference, has outlined three lessons learned in Ukraine.
The speech was delivered on the 23rd of March, 2023.
- The first is that learning and adaptation are crucial for success, and Ukrainians have excelled in this area with support from Western military and commercial companies, while Russian forces have failed to learn and adapt.
- The second theme is the importance of digitisation and advanced technology in military operations, which can provide an advantage and compensate for limited capabilities.
- The third theme is the significance of partnerships, particularly with Ukraine, and the focus on people as the key to success in achieving the desired future force.
You can read the relevant excerpt from General Sir Jim Hockenhull’s keynote speech delivered as part of the Strategic Command conference below.
The first picks up on the point I’ve just made which is learning and adaption wins. When we look at the forces in Ukraine at the moment and the way in which the Ukrainians are able to learn and adapt, often with support not just from Western military, but from Western commercial companies, it is incredible. Particularly when contrasted to the failure to learn and adapt on the part of the Russian forces. Learning and adaption gives you a key advantage and it may be that learning and adaption helps you deal with your problem of not having enough mass, because actually by learning and adapting, you’re able to gain advantage and that may help you.
The second part is digitisation transforms. There’ll be software defined future, there’ll be digitisation, there will be lots of ways of describing this. The idea of the application of advanced modern technology to military operations is to put it at the heart of how we do our business, how we think, how we act, how we decide, and also how we’re able to develop some of our relatively limited capabilities to make them smart capabilities. Again, this gives us an advantage and I think digitisation, or software, can be defined as a way of generating mass which makes up for some of the challenges we may have over the size and structure of our own military. If we can harness those things, I think there’s a real opportunity for us as we go forward.
The third is that partnerships really matter. I spoke about the partnership with Ukraine. I’ve spoken about the partnerships with lots of people outside Defence as well. Partnerships sit at the heart of what we do, and at the heart of what we do in Strategic Command are our people. We’ve decided that we start all of our meetings talking about people. And rather than talking about operations, or the amount of time that we previously used to talk about money, we’ve moved that into the amount of time we now use to talk about people. By switching those two things around we’ve actually really started to focus on our people.
We’ve got a whole lot of work to do to be the force that we want to be in the future. We’ve got to make sure that the lived experience of our people is right. We’ve got to make sure that once we’ve done that, we’ve got the opportunity to truly exploit all their talents. If we can unleash the talents of all our 25,000 people, there’s no end to what we can achieve.”
You can read the full speech here.
Lesion number one..when in combat operations do not drive all your tanks up a duel carriage way in a four abreast formation, someone will blow them all up.
I think that’s part of the highway code update Jonathan, inbetween pedestrians have right of way crossing junctions and more rights for cyclists.
Even Corporal Pike with some WWII AT munitions was going to have a field day!
The arrogance & stupidity of that move was unbelievable.
The one take hoe is that is shows how detached from reality the Kremlin actually is. They thought they were going to be greeted as saviours with the bunting out?
The sad thing was that with a real mass of better weapons Ukraine could have erased that whole column and either recovered it or used it for scrap.
Can you image what would have happened with appropriately armed NATO aircraft periodically visiting fish-in-a-barrel? Loitering munitions that dropped on any tank, truck or APC that moved.
indeed some form of air interdiction policy would have completely scuppered Russia plans….as alway the problem is contagion and the mad bastards nuclear weapons. Let’s be honest with ourselves if Russia was not a nuclear state with 1000 ish operational warheads and Putin not such an unstable narcissist NATO would have put up an air interdiction ages ago and taken the risk of maybe moving above the sub threshold conflict.
interestingly I believe Russian conflict doctorine has 14 levels of conflict, a very large number of those sit below general warfare…it’s one of the reasons Russia has actually been invaded Ukraine since 2014 without a formal declaration of war and why the West has struggled to contain Putins activities.
I think as an underwriting nation of Ukraines independence we should have set a no fly zone over Ukraine in the weeks before Russia invaded. Why not?
A single A10 or Apache would be enough to have returned a lot of coffins back to mother Russia.
Lesson number two, buy some of these!
“Turkey’s Baykar has showcased its Bayraktar TB3 unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) ahead of its upcoming first flight.
Images posted online by the manufacturer on 27 March showed for the first time the larger and more capable successor to the TB2.”
LINK
😂😂👍
It is such a basic mistake that I honestly don’t think our military need to learn that lesson. There are far more important lesson coming out of this latest war. None of them mentioned by Hockenhull.
It was a bit tongue in cheek, but it does actually provide probably the most important lesion out there and one that has been the catalyst for defeats throughout history….the price of hubris and not taking your enemy seriously.
Apparently, the Russians expected the first shock attack to take Kiev and eliminate all Ukrainian organised government. The advancing columns were told not to look so aggressive and try to be liberators. I think “not taking your enemy seriously” was an understatement. No plan B. Of course what happened after that is inexcusable for a professional army.
But the Russkies were never professional! You have the twice yearly conscripts, then the “staying on” contract soldiers (similar limited traing and course/technical progression as the conscripts) and you have the “full time”instructors who real off the same basic shit to the conscripts. The Russians were, and still are so far off being a professional military its laughable if it wasn’t so sad for all involved.
Firstly, you have to ensure you have Tanks, and a lot of them before you embark on anything…..
Lesson 2: AMMUNITION AMMUNITION AMMUNITION
Lesson 3: Spend appropriately on your Armed Forces now.
Not learned, HMG still trying to fund on the cheap, leaving all the services poorly prepared until the 2030s.
Isn’t that Target your ammunition rather than just fire it off in the vague direction of the where you imagine the other side might be?
Someone once said to me ‘make every shot count’…..why would you say that?
I’d feel safer knowing we could blaze away if we had to. You can’t just rely on knowing exactly where the target is the whole time.
But if Russia attacks a NATO member then UK won’t be fighting alone.
A fraction of the inventories have been gifted to Ukraine and look what that has done.
There has been no involvement of modern sophisticated fighter jets equipped with high end EW etc
More than slightly disturbed how this has somehow turned into an “either/or” argument.
There shouldn’t be anything wrong with efforts to slightly increase ammunition production. The U.S is doing just that, so you may have to explain to them why they shouldn’t. They aren’t just doing it for Ukraine’s sake.
The more ammo you have, the more precision strikes you can do.
Or Stealth or stand off munitions in their thousands. Putin knows if he provoked NATO his forces would be handed an absolute spanking.
One of the really important things has been the use of simple commercial drone and the Russian armies inability to manage that threat. The fact a light, cheap commercial drone can becomes an intelligence gathering tool, forward control for artillery and even attack with IEDs, grenades etc is very significant..what is even more so is the fact the operator can remain hidden away and in reality needs bugger all training…link that with the ability to manufacture parts for ordnance from 3D printing and you have a step change in asymmetric warfare as well as the ability of a western nation or nation with a tec savvy populations ability to create partisan and irregular forces….the new dads army are flying drones and dropping grenades, spotting and providing intel…even a mobile phone is a potent intelligence device in the hands of Granny Smith looking out her window.
it shows that EW is so very important and if your not able to shut down the EM spectrums your going to get droned.
TikTok and mobile phones were huge intelligence gatherers prior to the invasion (and since). Marry that with commercial drones and commercial satellites and it’s clear: OSINT has come of age.
Didn’t Dom Cummins predict just that 😀
I think he predicted many things….the more you churn out the more chance you have of being right at least once..like infinite monkeys on typewriters.
With time keeping from a stopped clock?
Yep…..I predict that there will be a famine in Africa some time or other….
He did but he wanted to gut the conventional forces to pay for improvements in digital/cyber warfare. Ukraine has shown we need both – and the willingness to pay for it – a fact which regrettably our policitians understand but choose to ignore.
I’m no supporter of cummins hence smiley face on the comment.
Yup but now that is on the scope using civvy level drones is not so likely workable?
Indeed but like anything that level of EW cover is going to be massively resource intensive and what it’s shown is if your forces are not carrying their own EW blanket they become vulnerable. But also if you’re having to hash the EM spectrum to protect yourself against drones..comms becomes a more difficult problem and as for your own drone activities…..it’s a very interesting set of balancing for the modern battle field. Permissive EM for your own drones and Hashing the EM spectrum to deny the enemy.
Crikey: EW has been steerable and location specific and able to object track for donkeys.
If you just blast out RF, Soviet style, you blind yourself. They used to blast out saw tooth / square wave at their targets to blind them. That is about as sophisticated as their artillery doctrine.
You are talking spectrum denial tactics?
The art is to use as little RF power as possible to achieve the desired effect!
There is nothing going on in Ukraine I would describe as modern EW.
Yes but the problem will be with very small commercial drone etc your threat is omni directional and potentially going to be at saturation points….when you have bob with his drone to the left of you and Sheila with hers to the right…then the unit you are fighting to the front….and Smith to rear providing intelligence and spotting…the advent of so many drones saturating the battle space creates a completely new complexity…..then you add in the higher end of drone warfare like micro drones such as black hornet (and its future armed decedents) and swarm intelligence drones…steerable EW becomes redundant and your only option is denial tactics…drones very likely to be in reality the new machine gun…where something fundamentally changes the landscape.
During the Gulf war, the allied forces picked off large groups of vehicles, in much the same way.
Regarding the ability to adapt, we were always taught there was no such thing as ‘cant do’, instead it was improvise, adapt and overcome.
Nothing learned about the need for more hardware, then?
If Ukraine has (re-)taught us anything, it’s that war consumes people and materiel at frightening rates.
It’s all very well to talk about digitisation but let’s talk about only 148 CR3s and only 62 sets of active protection equipment.
Or the lack of an MICV.
Or the lack of an adequate AS90 replacement.
Or GBAD.
Or myriad other tangible assets.
Agreed. Learning is all very well, how about actioning. All words for me until proven otherwise.
A few years ago these same generals were talking of strike and excusing away yet another brigade set of CS and CSS and yet more Tanks and SPGs.
On the AS90 replacement point, The MOD just procured some Archer Arty systems from Sweden.
Only to replace the handful gifted to ukraine.
For me we should just say it’s proven, very good, available off the shelf, just replace the lot with it.
Instead in 15 years time we will still be stuck with a handful of ageing as90s whilst the platinum plated replacement project languishes in all sorts of problems years and billions late. It’s all so predictable…
Marked wrote:
From the GOV UK press release dated 16th March 2023:
British Army announces new artillery deal with Sweden“”The first 14 Archer artillery systems will have ownership transferred to the British Army this month and be fully operational by next April, forming an interim replacement for the 32 AS90 artillery systems the UK gifted to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.””
From that wording it appears that the 14 platforms the Uk is receiving is just the first batch (which makes me think that futher platforms will comprise of the MAN based platform.
Marked wrote:
from Janes defence dated 19th Jan 2023
Ukraine conflict: UK accelerates Mobile Fires Platform programmeUK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced to the House of Commons on 16 January that he is accelerating the British Army’s Mobile Fires Platform (MFP) programme, so that it delivers during the 2020s rather than the 2030s. He said he has also directed an interim artillery capability to be delivered, subject to commercial negotiation.
Janes understands that the UK now plans for the MFP to enter service in 2027. Among the companies competing for the programme are Hanwha Defense’s Team Thunder offering the K9A2 self-propelled howitzer (SPH), Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) with its Boxer Remote Controlled Howitzer (RCH) 155, Nexter with its CAESAR 8×8 SPH, BAE Systems with Archer, and Rheinmetall with an HX3 10×10 truck equipped with an automatic remote-controlled artillery turret.
Precisely Jason.
I reading this “learning and adaption” fills me with sarcastic laugh when the politicians, journalists, generals and the public at large don’t cease to appeal to increase regulation and more regulation and more regulation.
The success that S.Korea have got in Europe is also due to the giant entropy that European political world impounds in European productive world.
Totally.
Plus more basic stuff.
Have an adequate airforce and army.
Have enough tanks, artillery, inventory.
Have good supply chains, manufacturers, resources, logistics.
Have good anti-sub/ship abilities.
Make sure your home base is adequately protected!
And stop publicising what you’re doing and sending to your adversaries beforehand!
Rant over.
Love it. Agree. You should go into politics. You’d get my vote.
Thanks Mr Bell. You’re pretty darn good yourself. Love your comments too. Me thinks we’re a bit smiliar. Lots of good men and women in the 🇬🇧 still.Good folk here on this site too, lots of solid common sense and good experiences and quite a few laughs too. See you on another thread… the one where we’re telling everybody that our tanks have arrived and they’re parked… just over there by those trees… Lol 😁
All except the PM and his bestie Hunt.
Ukraine LIVE: Russia’s Black Sea Fleet hit by barrage of new USV attacks, says MoD
LINK
Nigel, I think this one is old news. Nothing hit or sunk unfortunately. Have to try again.
Bugger, that’s what you get for being lazy, I should have checked!
Will these lessons be translated into military procurement and spending?
Doubt it. They’ve got big problems. HS2 overspent, overtime and going to be massively over budget.
Ditto new nuclear. Massive powerplants costing £35-50 billion each Vs Roll Royce SMR for £250 million each. I know SMR would be a much better distributed lower cost solution.
Inflation at 10+%
Cost of living crises
Energy crises…why is the UK totally dependent on imports of gas and electricity from LPG countries , Norway and Europe? Answer a lack of investment.
We have invested too little, too late in the UK.
HMG should be recapitalising the armed forces. It’s not happening. Instead we get ongoing cuts to defence.
Bit of a mess isn’t it?
I’d love to know the full story behind HS2. I cant help but feel theres been lobbying and brown envelopes in the process and all for what? cutting a few minutes from Brum to London. They should have spent the money on upgrading the Pennines link.
It was just done the good old fashioned way. Every single calculation of cost was done using the most optimistic possible scenario in order to get the go ahead. Once that was achieved slowly drip drip what the actual costs would be. The only positive is that everyone knows what happenned and those who gave the go ahead are extremely pissed off about it. Whether that means things wil be different in the future ? Who knows.
Also costs were driven up by
a) the ludicrous speeds; and
b) bizarre route with loads of tunnels; and
c) massive environmental campaigns leading to enhancements ; and
d) frequent political meddling in designs leading to abortive construction (bloody expensive – stopping or pausing construction contracts typically costs 30% of the contract value) and design costs (pure waste); and
e) the unbelievably inefficient UK construction industry; and
f) a shortage of skilled workers; and
g) the final icing on the cake UK Elf’n’safety!
😂😂👍
As our North Sea supplies ran down we moved quickly to tap into Norway’s output and were among the first to get into the LNG market with supplies from Qatar to our terminal at Milford Haven. It was a case of the investment chasing available supplies and the best returns rather than lack of it, no-one forecasting that the EU would cut off its main source of cheap pipeline gas.
It was a price worth paying. I’d sooner sit at home with frostbite then pay for Russian blood stained gas.
Not going to happen by the way, as I put solar panels up years ago and have 2 wood burners and a very plentiful supply of British grown hard wood maturing nicely in my 8 ton firewood stack- so I’m fine matey. Much better than the average Russian peasant living in a wooden shack with single glazing, a rag covering the window pane, frost on the walls and no running water. Pity- Russia could be a really great country, probably the best in the world if they weren’t run by Mad Vlad and all his henchmen. Child abducting lunatics the lot of them.
We seem to have only rarely used Russian pipeline gas over the past few years, mainly buying their LNG.
We do not buy Russian Liquified Natural Gas.
There is no necessity Mr Bell. My relatives in Germany fared well this winter. Germany and Holland both introduced plant to take LNG in record time. Russia’s glee at the prospect of a Europe freezing and starving end with choking. Outside a couple of cities the Russians suffer more and more. I pity them.
Actually I have a mate in the gas industry there is still a fair amount of gas in the north sea and that is our gas reserve and there are more untapped gas fields in UK waters sorry to give a reality check Johnski I didn’t freeze in the winter lol.
Where did I imply that any of us would freeze? I should hope that we still have untapped reserves, usually the only reason they are untapped is financial, the tax. Like Mr Bell I have solar panels (at the highest 60.23 rate) plus a pair of wood burners.
Your Orc buddies certainly have implied the UK and EU would freeze, never happened johnski.
Our dear friend Airborne, when not advising on suitable flowers for ladies Summer hats in Spare Rib, has handed Johnski his backside so often it’s become a sort of guilty pleasure to read these. Our Kremlin mouthpiece did exactly predict doom for western Europe this winter and now, good con artist as he, or maybe they, is, denies it.
Wood burners? You got a supply of BMPs, T series tanks and other assorted Russian armour? They burn very well, last a long time and much cheaper than a £7 Tesco bag of cheap logs!
😅
Cruel, but just.
You’ve been implying that we’ll all freeze since last autumn. Or that all industry will grind to a halt because of energy costs and supply. Guess what? Didn’t happen. Yet again, your propaganda is cauterised by reality.
You bloody well did! Even I remember that one.
See my earlier replies. You and your mate are correct. As with his ;special operation’ Putin has shot himself in the foot. If you think the war is going badly for Russia wait until the economic consequences for all Russians really bite this year and in years to come.
North Sea oil and gas ran out in 1983. That was what was predicted at the start of exploration. I was asked what Britain would do when the oil ran out when visiting in Switzerland in 1972. As recent events in the west country have shown, the British Isles rest on significant oil and natural gas reserves; what is lacking is the political will to exploit these and market forces. Milford Haven is our only LNG terminal because we don’t need another one. The prediction of Moscow and the Putin clique was Europe would freeze last winter and or starve. Instead Europe put together a plan to import LNG and executed it in record time. LNG is an entirely new market and currently there are around a dozen countries entering production for export. Now, about that pipeline you say exists between Russia and India and China: Where is it and what is its capacity to supply these two huge countries?
Lack of investment incentive more like. People forget gas was a very low cost commodity, North Sea was already taxed heavily, even pre the more recent tax raids it was not worth investing in, coupled with oil and gas companies being shamed when participating in bidding for licenses, companies have steered clear of the North Sea so our proven reserves have shrunk. You add the push to greener energy we have created a perfect storm so to speak. Had we not created such a negative environment we would have been selling surplus energy at a premium to Europe over the past year adding to our GDP and enabling investment in defence.
Of course we should be investing in green energy also, but lets not forget China has 1100 coal plants in operation and has increase construction by 50% this year fast tracking permits for new plants. Germany alone is reopening 6 coal plant!! So if the UK could push up gas production is not really going to have a climate impact in global terms with coal still being a go to for some countries when gas cannot be purchased,
Lastly due to lack of storage we wasted 1,300 GWh of wind energy last year, it cost 2-3 times as much to store as to generate from wind atm.
Or that strategically Russia sold its gas on cheap contracts to Germany to help it shut down its nuclear fleet and to lull the whole of Europe into a false sense of security.
Then it had leverage over Muti and and bought her off time and time again with cheap energy deals. Half the reason German manufacturing boomed was cheap energy whilst UK killed its industry with insane gas and electricity prices.
Yep and Angela Merkel walked right into that trap. I still cant believe Germany shut down virtually all its nuclear power capacity making themselves a vassal state to Mad Vlad.
Indeed, unfortunately our government has not played with a full geopolitical tool box for a while.
No they have instead pandered to non factual media headlines. For instance just how exactly did Shell make 40b in profit from a UK domestic energy market with a revenue of no more than 50b? The answer is they didn’t.
As for Labour’s call for Shell and BP to return profits, I’m 100% behind it, they should return it to every country where they made it, only once that happens and Shell and BP fail as global companies wiping billion off the value of the UK will the public realise how stupid the these policies are.
Not necessarily US gas has also been sold very cheap to its own captive market, we’ve just stifled our own investment through taxation and nonsense tariffs. If you look at gas prices for the past 25 years the past year is an unwanted blip which due to non factual media reporting the government has over reacted to. We do seem very good at own goals.
We preach market forces but constrain the market capacity left right and centre.
Unfortunately if you are the only nation really playing the free market game on a global stage where everyone else is play a protectionist game or even a full blown mercantile strategy you’re going to take a hit. The free market only works on an even playing field…..
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There’s at least one lesson from the Falklands we haven’t learned yet: if you keep signalling that it’s all right for you to be kicked in the nuts, don’t be surprised if you get kicked in the nuts.
We should have screamed and shouted back at the Litvinenko murder in 2006, or even earlier, but we hushed it up instead. We countered the invasion of Georgia with the 2010 review and continual defence cuts for the following ten years. The Skripal affair was met with harsh words and a mutual expulsion of a few diplomats. It wasn’t until the end of 2020 that we thought to reverse the tiniest part of the cuts. At least we did so for a couple of years until Mr Sunak decided that keeping up with inflation was too expensive. I know the budget could have been worse for defence, but aren’t we long past the stage where we should take comfort from that, however megre?
Strong statements of determination through alligned word and action is what keeps the peace, and deterrence is still required even when it appears there’s no enemy to deter. Learn that lesson first and the rest may not be needed.
I couldn’t agree more.
Retire T1 Typhoon without replacement is the same as selling carriers to AUS.
Now there’s an idea… about the carrrier!
Lol 😁 🇦🇺 🇬🇧 We could even share it with our NZ cuzzies next door as it’s not nuclear powered.
As part of the tilt East we could do swap/share, we base a QE perm in AUS with F-35’s AUS base a canberra in UK give us better amphib (shame cant operate few F-35s off them). Of course fanatsy Navy would have AUS buying 2 of QE’s and UK having a couple of Canberra type but that won’t happpen.
F35B will work fine off Canberra class. Just needs deck treatment similar to QE class (which all ships operating F35 B on a regular basis have required). Rest of it is overhyped nonsense. Canberra class is basically the same below deck as JC1 (which was designed with the idea of operating F35B). Extra bulkhead in magazine & slightly less aviation fuel). Every thing else is still there as it would have cost extra to remove. Would it be free – no – but you can’t even integrate a different helicopter for free.
Excellent point.
Indeed, HMG has form for soundbite, “Lessons will be learened” while doing diddly squat or racing in the opposite direction. No money for the things the country needs but loads being syphoned off by Tory backers.
HMG is finally beginning to wake up to the nightmare they’ve caused. The peace dividend/Russian/Chinese mask has slipped. Public awareness of our weak defence & the threats we face is growing.
‘No money for the things the country needs but loads being siphoned off to Tory backers’ You could be right. We’ll know if you’re right when we see the Labour manifesto and what they intend to do with all the money the Tories have siphoned off to their backers.
I think things did change after Salisbury we just weren’t told about it. We maybe only got the first glimpse in the run up to and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Indeed you are correct, Russia deployed nuclear and Biological weapons on British soil causing the death and significant harm to British citizens. In reality that was an artic 5 trigger event. The UK government should have forced a far firmer response with an NATO countries place “isolation level” sanctions on Russia or we are going start the process for triggering article five…western weakness is a problem..it’s not just Russian and china become emboldened but the western world looks weak to the wider unaligned world and countries fall into the sphere of china and Russia.
I wonder which large NATO countries would have put the brakes on that Germany (gas) and France (Mistral, avionics, gun sights….) maybe…..
Attrition is the missed lesson here, when fighting a peer matched/ near opponent, you need the numbers.
Technology is an advantage, it’s important to learn lessons and adapt, working with others makes you stronger. Thank f*ck for this bloke, who else could have figured out that these things are important? If it hadn’t kicked off in Ukraine, how could we ever possibly have known these futuristic concepts? Honestly, why don’t we give him a crack at curing cancer or figuring out faster than light travel next.
We are so f*cked if this is the intellectual level of British Army leadership. You take three lessons from the Ukrainian conflict and one of them is not related to nuclear deterrence, artillery, ammunition or persistent and resilient air-defence networks? The value of fortifications and the ease of defensive fighting compared to retaking land? The proliferation of cheap and attritable drones for ISTAR and strike?
Maybe I’ve missed the context here and he’s talking about seemingly obvious concepts that just don’t get enough attention? I hope for everyone’s sake that is is the case.
I think,to be fair, he is Com Strat Com, which is not the British Army but a tri service command of hi-tech enablers, SF, Intell, Comms, and other stuff.
That excuse aside, I broadly agree.
No particular order.Kill the enemies drones would be priority number 1.
Lasers will soon make drones vulnerable.
Kill the enemies ability to use satellites and stand off aircraft to observe you force movements and target them number 2.
This means missile and space based Interceptors. XL range SAM such as SM-6.
GBAD in large quantity with capacity to take some attrition number inclding ABM ar 3
Long raise cruise and hypersonic systems to target the enemy supply. Manufacture, shipping and command and control number 4.
Huge stock numbers of FCASW and precision strike missile and buy into US/Aus hypersonic solutions.
Have enough of everything in the locker especially ammo and an industrial base that is permanently set up to scale up production if required. This would mean redundancy in supply chains. More common parts and 3D print capabilites at 5.
Jamming and cyber to target the enemies comms.
That will cost a fee quid.
Obviously a bigger RN, RAF and an army with IFV replacement programmes etc.
Missed 3 obvious ones
Miniscule numbers of troops can’t hold a front line of any relevance
Miniscule numbers of tanks without reserves will be gone in no time
Air power without defence suppression armament is no use anywhere near the front line.
Never mind though, lots of management speak will compensate for that…
Another reasonable lesson is that economics and security are related. Unless you like being ignored in G7 meetings. 😂
Money and industrial capacity always matter in war….in WW2 Germany had quit frankly a far better army/airforce and technology, full of utter fanatics… it’s problem was it ended up making war on three powers that utterly out produced it in regards to military and non military industrial capabilities…the Germans may have perfected armoured and combined arms warfare…but their industrial capabilities were utterly outmatched and they ended up buried under an avalanche of stuff.
Their stupidity was taking on Russia & opening a 2nd front, without first defeating the 1st front. Yes France had fallen. But Britain & its Commonwealth allies could fight a long range war in a way few others could.
Youtube channel
TiK History
The MAIN reason Germany lost WW2 – OIL
Incredible fact. By the end of 1941 British war industrial production was already out matching Germany’s. They never caught us up. We continued to out produce Germany all the way until the end of the war.
Everyone has learnt lessons from Ukraine, the biggest lesson is for nonce Putin however, that being don’t over estimate your ability and underestimate your enemy!
Lesson number 42, Russian Armour Doctrine: All T series tank turrets to be fitted with a parachute!
😂😂😂😂😂
main lesson: defense needs funding!!!
The very first lesson he should have announced was cutting back the British Armed Forces after the end of the Cold War, was a huge mistake!
It has left us in a precarious position should war breakout. With insufficient manpower to effectively train conscripts while fielding a viable fighting force. Worse still, for many years the size of our army has been insufficient to maintain a viable military industrial base. What little remains has almost no surge capacity to rapidly re-arm in times of crisis. It’s going to take decades to recover from this foolishness. That’s assuming recovery is possible at this late stage in the decay process.
Lessons to learn? There is nothing new aside from the use of drones and the need to counter them.
Otherwise, its long range fires, ammunition, control the skies, combined arms……
Nothing new, just lessons forgotten.
Too many rely too much on the digital revolution & forget that when it fails, you revert back to what came before & what came before that. Bayonets were actually used during the Falklands war. Ukraine conflict has reverted to WW1 trench warfare. Modern high end weapons in the main, cost a fortune & take the WW1 equivalent of a battleship (time wise & money wise) to build. High intensity modern warfare cannot wait 3-4 years to build a fighter or a warship or a tank. They can still knock out 105, 155 & 127 artillery shells or 12.7, 7.62, 5.56 ammo (at least individual factories can) like they did in WW2. There are just less factories. You can’t do the same with missiles, armoured vehicles or aircraft. They don’t scale the same. Too many parts from too many places where just in time really means just too late.
Thats not to say that modern weapons don’t count – they do, but they have limits, not always set by the weapons themselves.
So I’ll go against the grain here. These Typhoons don’t have a high resale value but as we know aircraft have support costs. These wouldn’t be gifts there would be cost to support provided by Bae and RR. They have good life left on them and therefore good support revenue is possible for the next 15 years. Revenue = tax = defence funds.
There’s 20 T1 in storage and 10 flying. Upgrade cost of these are high as they’re are different structurally to the T2 and T3.
Link
We know we need to upgrade T3 and T2 with new radar, instead push that out and build 30 new at the latest spec. We get 30 more added the global EF fleet which as it grows (due to Spain, Germany and Italy orders also) the cost of maintaining it should come down (economies of scale). Keeping 30 T1 flying with a NATO member keeps 30 more EJ200 engines in service again help with support costs.
Put 20 T2 in storage as per the current T1 reserve numbers.
With this strategy we get revenue, the same fleet numbers but more capable airframes, we continue to manufacture a fast jet and reduced operating costs.
Given we make a large percentage of all Typhoons there will be elements of building Typhoons in the UK even if final assembly will dry up once the Qatari Typhoons have been delivered.
T2 Typhoon should receive the same upgrade as T3 and I would focus on that first before thinking about extra orders. Once that happens an extra 20 or so aircraft to keep 7 frontline squadrons would be good.
I would prefer extra F35B however and whilst some may want British made aircraft we’ve had quite a good run with Typhoon as of the four countries we make the most of each aircraft and we’ve had the most export orders for final assembly-268 assembled in Warton.
UK military aerospace industry is looking good with Tempest taking over and Aeralis being produced, as well as 15% of all F35 airframes built here (although I assume it’s less now with RR not being involved). Maybe at a certain point we should just hang up our boots with Typhoon and not buy aircraft for the sake of it, extra F35B would be better.
Maybe but by next year we won’t be producing a fast jet. Imagine saying we won’t be building an UK warship just making parts! Pretty sad for a country that pioneered the fast jets and built iconic aircraft like the Vulcan and Concord. We do have strong aerospace manufacturing industry but its future is largely in the hands of others.
Doesn’t really mean anything in reality though does it.
No expertise will be lost as BAE is upgrading Typhoon for the RAF and making parts for other nations, making parts for F35.
Tempest will come and I assume there’ll be 3 production lines, one in Japan, UK and Italy. Hopefully exports will come.
Tempest isn’t really in the hands of others, nor is Aeralis. Helicopter production is in the hands of others but UK assembly is likely.
We do aircraft upgrade hear in the UK all the time, Marshalls is a great example but ask Marshalls to assemble a new airframe they would need assistance. Upgrades and maintenance are quite different to new build and production line setup. Qatar Typhoon run will finish next year and Tempest won’t go full production to some time 2030s. Even upgrades for Typhoon won’t start untill near end of the decade and tge first upgrade will be the simpler T3, so not an intrusive upgrade and hardly comparable to new build. Aeralis prototype will fly 2025, so that’s not going to see production until end of the decade. That’s my opinion but it hardly matters because theirs zero political will.
BAE have more than enough to keep them occupied.
-Upgrading Typhoons
-Building around 40% of all Typhoons.
-30% of each Gripen is built here
-15% of each F35 is built here
Really??? Learning lessons. I’m not so sure.
Lesson 1) numbers count, attrition in war is inevitable. Therefore the UK military needs enough personnel to cope with attrition. Losing warships, submarines, jets, helicopters, tanks, IFVs, APCs, SPGs, MLRS units is not a odd phenomenon that only happens to the enemy.
2) Cheap UAVs and suicide drones matter. If quiet and stealthy they are hard to detect and to counter.
3) outraging the enemy with long range accurate fire counts. Ergo MLRS, HIMARS units that can shoot and scoot are crucial for the army.
3) The era of the MBT is not over. Especially if equipped with an APS. Therefore upgrade as many C2s to C3 standard and stop the penny pinching. Fit them all with Trophy and then purchase in enough submunitions to reload as many times as needed.
4) All armoured vehicles entering into the combat zone should have an APS.
5) Sub surface and surface strike drones have potential to revolutionise naval warfare. The MoD needs to scale up and speed up their introduction.
6) Munitions count. Having an adequate military- industrial base is vital to stay in the fight during protracted warfare. Russia failed to plan for a 2 year high intensity war. They singularily failed to secure their supply lines and to prepare for the inevitable crippling sanctions. I am sure China will not make the same mistake. The UK and it’s allies need to be independent of supply.
7) probably the UKs greatest conventional weapon are our SSNs. Therefore an ambition to delivery 12+ SSNrs into RN service is 100% the right counter to Putin and Xi expansionist tendency. The PLAN has no counter to Astute/ Virginia class submarines and utterly lacks the expertise in ASW. Therefore SSNr should be able to really cause disproportionate damage to PLAN forces. ASW is an area of expertise for NATO due in no small part to WW2 and the cold war.
I’d hoped the revised integrated defence review would address these issues and put some meat back onto the bones of our armed forces. Seems Sunak is happy whittling away our stores and equipment giving it to Ukraine so his government doesn’t have to admit to defence cuts or need to replace donated kit. Sad state of affairs.
Reuters has just broadcast a story of the Ukrainian defence minister standing in a field in front of a C2 stating the tanks had arrived in Ukraine. Won’t be long now until they have their combat debut. May God bless them and all who ride in them. Slava Ukraine
Just come across this picture, dont know if it is real:
https://i.postimg.cc/HsrKQ2F5/Fs-UGa-Zc-Ww-AY-Jae.jpg
I think it is. Looks similar to the tank displayed behind the Ukrainian defence minister. ERA fitted. Additional front armour. No remote weapons turret on roof. Disappointing. Hopefully plenty infantry will fight alongside to target any suicide drones. A good old machine gun is usually adequate defence Vs drones.
The picture on sky news does include a C2 with remote weapons stations for machine guns- no ERA on this one- but I know they can be fitted from a supplied kit.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-live-updates-putins-plan-for-nuclear-super-torpedoes-in-pacific-ocean-12541713
Its on this thread here- clear as day- a C2 with remote weapons station- all present and correct
for those who decried the afghan pull out, look at the Ukrainians willing to fight for their country, we cannot impose nation building lets support emerging democracies where viable.
👍
Drone defence seems to be an area where there is little or nothing out there at the moment. Sure in the longer term, this might be where lasers come into play. But in the interim, it looks like units across the battle space are going to need a system for spotting and downing a range of low and slow flying drones.
System like the 40mm CTAS have round intended for air defence that might be well suited to the role. They will need combining with effective search systems and deploying with most if not all units as their ranges are likely to be quite short for air defence systems.
Unless there is a better way to do that job at the tactical level?
Drone defence- vs suicide or small commercially available drones is usually easily achieved with a simple GPMG. A remote weapons station with ideally some form of radar or tracking system would be fine to remove the threat.
that may be true with the present generation of non-manouvering drones, but when they learn to jink and dodge, human aiming may become less effective?
….I hope this means bringing back munitions manufacturingto the uk.
i remember when it was first moved to India and the quality wasn’t what it should’ve been risking our troops lives…. time for politicians to stop being stupid just to save a few pounds !!!
Lesson number 1; make sure your Archbishop isn’t a member of the KGB 🙂
https://pjmedia.com/columns/robert-spencer/2023/03/24/why-zelensky-is-cracking-down-on-the-church-n1681182
Most people have probably ‘jogged on’ from this topic. I would however, like to table a proposal, that the UK leaves NATO, and declares itself as a neutral country.
Why? We do not have a credible Army any more. The Airforce needs double the amount of aircraft it currently has, so sell on what we have to whoever wants it.
The Navy wants/needs/requires all manner of ships to look after the UK, let alone anyone else.
No political party is interested in the UK armed forces. Some (like the greens) would love to see everything disbanded, and for us all to become tree-huggers.
Lessons over everything. So many that have to be learnt. Every situation where the last lessons were not learnt or a next situation is so different, no lesson means anything from before.