Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, has affirmed NATO’s overwhelming superiority over Russia across land, sea, and air but stressed the need for continued agility and innovation to maintain this advantage.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Radakin highlighted NATO’s dominance while warning against complacency as the alliance expands and strengthens.
Radakin noted that NATO’s combined capabilities “outmatch Russia by orders of magnitude” in conventional warfare, bolstered by the addition of Finland and Sweden and increased military investments from Poland, Germany, and others.
Contrasting this with Russia’s struggles in Ukraine, he remarked: “Over 1,000 days into the 3-day Special Military Operation, Russia’s air force rarely flies over Ukraine and relies on crude glide bombs for devastating tactical effect but without creating nearly the same strategic and operational dilemmas.”
Radakin pointed to Israel’s recent airstrikes on Iran as a model of modern warfare. Israel’s use of over 100 aircraft and precision munitions destroyed Iran’s air defence capabilities and ballistic missile production in a single sortie without risking aircraft within 100 miles of the target.
“That is the power of fifth-generation aircraft, combined with exquisite targeting and extraordinary intelligence,” Radakin said, contrasting this with Russia’s outdated tactics.
While NATO’s growing strength is a significant advantage, Radakin cautioned that expansion could lead to a rigid, monolithic structure. “The risk is that as NATO strengthens, it becomes monolithic and loses the aptitude for the kind of agility and innovation that is an advantage for the west,” he said.
Radakin challenged NATO to avoid uniformity, asking, “Does SACEUR want an Alliance of 32 ‘mini-me’s’? Or can we use NATO’s size to take more risk and constantly search for a winning edge?”
UK’s Leading Role
Radakin outlined how the UK could spearhead innovation within NATO, highlighting initiatives aimed at maintaining the Alliance’s edge:
- British Army: Plans to double its lethality by 2027 and triple it by 2030 through innovative approaches.
- Royal Navy: Experimentation with wave gliders for North Atlantic surveillance and hybrid maritime strike operations using jets and drones.
- Strategic Command: Efforts to exponentially increase the number of targets NATO can engage using better data integration and analytics.
“Even our low stockpiles are greater than the number of targets we can currently generate. We are not world-leading. But we can be,” Radakin said.
Radakin emphasised that NATO must use its collective strength to maintain a disruptive edge in every domain. “In all this striving and taking risks to do more and better, NATO will still be safe. It will still outmatch Russia by orders of magnitude,” he said.
The Chief of Defence Staff concluded by underscoring the UK’s unique position to lead within NATO, balancing strength with innovation to ensure the Alliance remains dominant and adaptable. “This should be NATO’s goal in every domain and capability, and the UK is uniquely placed to both play our part and look to lead the way,” he said.
At the UK Defence Journal, we aim to deliver accurate and timely news on defence matters. We rely on the support of readers like you to maintain our independence and high-quality journalism. Please consider making a one-off donation to help us continue our work. Click here to donate. Thank you for your support!
This same old sound bite- British Army: Plans to double its lethality by 2027 and triple it by 2030 through innovative approaches.
HOW?
All time low manning levels. Tank numbers significantly reduced. An IFV being replaced by a barely armed battle taxi. Artillery is nigh on an extinct species.
How in the actual fxxx is lethality going to be trebled in the short space of 5 years?
Honestly? I would bring back the original MLRS – it used to wipe out a grid square with bomblets. Use that to deny mass advantage, use GMLRS to target depth point targets and bring in FPV drones for close battle precision targeting. But crucially, I believe they need to reconstitute mass in infantry and armour to create manoeuvre and consistent local overmatch that generates tempo.
I would build the Army around a single, fully armoured division with bolt on light-brigade elements.
We won’t use bomblets now though. We signed off against using any sort of cluster munitions. Shame our enemies won’t follow our lead.
whoever signed that and the landmine treaty were fools who should’ve gone to prison. banning and destroying those while our enemies didn’t made zero sense. thankfully the US never agreed to that nonsense, but obama admin did destroy millions of cluster munitions just so they could feel good about themselves… insanity
CDS is one of the most political holders of that office that I have ever seen. This is not good for our armed forces. He is timid and does not rock the boat and seems to be perfectly content with cuts. He has now publicly dismissed the virtue of mass. He is not improving Defence. He is a liability.
CGS still has not articulated his plan to double and then triple lethality. This is worrying. Is he a thinker or a doer? I suppose he will not articulate such plans, if he has any, this side of SDR. If so, he has lost a year of effort, and this at a time when we are in a pre-war era. We do not have a year to waste in navel-gazing.
He’s no doer. He ain’t a thinker either, more of a parrot that repeats what’s its owner says without any understanding.
ISR and ability to act quickly with precision weapons. that is how the west (in particular the US) dominate modern manuever warfare. 20 HIMARs going to ukraine in may 2022 completely turned that war around. russia had to completely abandon cities like kherson, izium, lyman and kharkiv region because they could not maintain logistics lines due to these weapons striking supply depots and lines. russia doesn’t have the ability to launch mass coordinated offenses for the same reason, which is why we see them nearly 3 years into the war trying to run across fields with 3 vehicles and a few guys on bikes…
and on the opposite, russia lacks ISR and precision weapons- which is why despite them being target #1 they’ve only taken out a few HIMARs launchers during these last couple years. russian ‘airpower’ relies on 3rd/4th gen tech- and again lack modern ISR capabilities so they were never able to conduct SEAD to gain air superiority which you need in modern war, less you get stuck in a static trench battle and cant utilize proper ISR assets behind the front.
“quantity over quality” sounded great in ww2 where there wasnt a massive tech advantage, but its an outdated concept. nowadays it is all about quality and the UK has that over russia in spades.
Pardon my ignorance. Leaving out New Me’s very valid point this leaves me additionally asking:
1) What’s a ‘wave glider’ never heard this term mentioned before.
2) “Even our low stockpiles are greater than the number of targets we can currently generate“. What does that actually mean in reality.
3) ‘Radakin outlined how the UK could spearhead innovation within NATO’. Where is the flesh on the bones here, what potential innovations did he actually outline.
What’s the context for wave glider?
A wave rider is a type of hypersonic glide vehicle that IIRC uses its own shockwaves to reduce drag.
Otherwise it might be some very efficient form of surface vessel propulsion, maybe.
See Liquid Robotics and their efforts to support USN innovation
I believe they have a composite surface C2 vessel that deploys a sensor package submersible to get the data of interest and send that into the ISTAR network. Thus avoiding the expense of SSN patrol and having potential to cover much more ocean because lower unit cost means thousands of units are possible. Probably not in shipping lanes, though!
There lies Radakin and our politicians naive complacency. At what point in NATO losses do countries resort to self interest? For instance would Denmark or ourselves commit to majority of our forces to NATO even if it means no resources left for home defence? Example being Battle for France the RAF refused to commit more Squadrons as it compromised the UK defence. NATO is on dodgy footing unless member nations have sufficient resources for NATO and home defence. Therein lies the folly of defence cuts at home and reliance on NATO.
if Russia had no nuclear weapons, it’s clear that it would’ve already been annihiliated by NATO
True – hence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and it’s Military literally fell to pieces their Leadership prioritised it’s Nuclear Capability.
Why would NATO have done that it has no reason to..no one has any will or wish whatsoever to invade or attack Russia.
Adm Radakin paints a rather rosy picture of NATO strengthwhich, alas, is a long way from reality.
NATO’s strength looks fine on paper. That only works if an isolationist USA under Trump is willing to commit large forces to the defence of Europe. And if the largest land power, Turkey, actually commits to the battle. With Erdoğan doing a balancing act between NATO and Putin, it is at least as likely that it plays the non-aligned card, as per WW2.
Then we have to factor in the malign Russian grey zone activities to undermine Eastern European states. We already have autocratic Putin fan boys running Hungary and Slovakia. Now Russian money, Internet onslaught and disinformation look like electing a pro-Putin oddball as President of Romania, while Bulgaria hangs in the balance. This is subversion on a grand scale, which Putin is doing very successfully and which the West is struggling to counter.
How many of the 32 NATO members will actually be ready to take the field, and how many will be constrained from doing so by Putin’s elected puppet masters?
Who says we will only be fighting Russia anyway? We are likely to face a CRINK military alliance (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, plus motly other satraps). , as we are seeing in Ukraine. With the Arctic ice melting, the Chines navy can easily project power into the Atlantic via the High North, while China and North Korea have such massive armies that they could deploy on several fronts at once.
At the least, NATO should have well-armed army corps forward on the Eastern frontier, backed by powerful air forces, on the Polish border, the Carpathian Basin and Romania. Similar to NATO deployment during the Cold War. We have nothing like that now. 32 member states each doing their own thing and allied military exercises, but no overall concentration of forces in key areas, which would take a long time to build up in the event of hostilities.
This to say that NATO’s superiority on paper is a rathet simplistic, complacent stance. Rather like our optimism in 1938/9 that the French, British, Polish alliance would outmatch Germany’s forces. Afew weeks later, two had been overcome and we had been driven off the continent.
Also, the supposed superiority over Russia compares apples and pears. Russia is equipped to fight an asymetic war, using A2AD.to deny NATO air superiorit, cruise and hypersonic missiles to hit key bases and assets, kamikaze drones to attrite ground foces. Plus a major greyzone strategy of cable and pipe cutting, attacks on key infrastructure, cybet warfare, disinformation via the internet anf fifth column attacks. Any comparison of conventional forces needs to be rebalanced to take in this asymmetric strategy, to most of which we are currently pretty vulnerable.
We basically need to be a lot less complacent and boastful about the strength – or not – of the NATO shield and rather more concerned about standing up NATO forces and bringing in overdue answers to the many threats the CRINKs pose.
Fortunately the election to President of Romania was ruled corrupt by the supreme court so that a free and fair election must now be held, with measures to mitigate FSB interference. Democracy must be defended against enemies foreign and domestic..
Radakin needs gone ASAP. A braid clad yes man. One can only hope President Trump kicks this attitude up the arse and forces the UK to spend money where it is needed. Perhaps Radakin and the other booty licking brass should visit Poland, see the preps, then spend a week in a frontline trench further east for education.
The Strategic Defence Review mandate is to 2.5% UK GDP which is a stretch now as OBR expects 2.3% over the next three years however the review is much longer term than that, out to 2040. Some imaginary number from #47 will not be possible without US support for UK trade growth, which is exactly the opposite of the Tariff regime (20%) that #47 espouses. Clearly some insightful negotiation is required..
(Lord Robertson. Review lead, says that the #47 transition has been consulted)
This idea that Britain should play a – maybe THE – leading role is NATO Europe risks being seen as jingoistic nonsense by our allies, due to the very limited forces we have to offer.
Our fast jet combat strength is now down to the smallest of the 5 main Westetn European nations.
Likewise the army, which in terms of both numbers and combat manoeuvre brigades, is again by far the smallest contributor. The fact that it had a minimalist number of tanks, no field artillery with the demise of the AS-90, no armoured reconnaissance until Ajax comes along in 5 years, no battlefield UAVs, with the scrapping of Watchkeeper, a minimal air defence capability based on a handful of Sky Sabres and the arrival 8n a few years of an unarmed, wheeled battlefield taxi to replace our Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle, etc, etc, hardly supports our leadership credentials.
The only area where we could maybe claim to be primus inter pares – the first among equals – is the navy, though France now has more escorts and Italy is not far behind. But then, any war with Russia and the CRINKS will primarily be an air and land one, with NATO navies playing a distinctly secondary role in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
In view of the forces’ greatly diminished numbers, hollowing out, endless gapping of capabilities and excruciatingly slow development of new weapons, equipment and munitions, we are not in a very strong position to potsh for leadership of anything, other than perhaps naval commend in Eastlant – if we can actually provide more than a couple of submarines and ASW frigates, which we cannot currently do due to lack of warship numbers and the need to provide 5 to escort the carrier, albeit the role and value of the CSG in a European war is increasingly questionable.
The CDS’s ‘bigging up’ of Britain’s role and leadership, no doubt penned by the out-of-toucg civil servants at the MOD, is in danger of being seen as just jingoistic waffle aimed at the gullible domestic audience. For sure, nobody else, friend or foe, is likely to be impressed. It would be far more timely if the CDS drew attention to the absence of mass that British forces are now reduced to, the impossibility of rearming on the current defence budget, when the nuclear element is now gobbling up 36% of the equipment budget (and seeking more) and our lack of preparedness, civil, military and reserves, to fight.anything like a peer war.
It is infuriating that the MOD continually paints the picture that all is well in the garden while the defence community knows full well that this is just bombast designed to mislead Parliament and people.
Carter before him was no better either.
When has there ever not been a politician as CDS? I cannot think of any in the modern era?
I so hope Trump goes on TV and embarrass HMG over defence. No one here in the UK is able to have such a platform to do as such that would actually be noticed by the media and make the headlines needed. Radakin will not appear on BBC Question time, nor Healey, nor the previous rabble, and be asked questions that have not previously been agreed and vetted.
Thus there is no accountability and little interest from the public.
OBR is clear that 2.3% UK GDP is the Defence budget for the next three years, with central contingency for any extreme events.
The 2.5% GDP is an aspiration. Either way the 2014 NATO 2% target is met.
It’s disgusting to hear such elite people in the UK leadership thinking like babies.
In this 21st century if we have people like Radakin’s thinking;then God for us all and every man on his own
utterly unimportant, the issue is where this war is going to be fought, and that will be on european soil, so america might win, the russians might come second, but the clear and unambiguous losers are definitely the europeans
Gotta mit uns.
That’s like saying the Palestinians match the Israelis in everything except heavy weaponry.
Make peace you idiots ♾️❤️☮️
Nobody can make peace with Dictators. Deterrence is the only proven method to achieve Peace through Strength.