Senior UK defence officials faced scrutiny from MPs during a Defence Committee session, discussing the feasibility of doubling the Army’s fighting power by 2027 and tripling it by 2030.
The ambitious target, set by the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), hinges on prioritising lethality, integrating advanced technologies, and making tough financial choices under the Strategic Defence Review (SDR).
Lieutenant General Sir Robert Magowan, Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Military Capability), emphasised the necessity of the goal to maintain the UK’s deterrent capabilities.
“If we’re going to deter as an alliance, whether we deter as a nation as part of that alliance, we’ve got to demonstrate that we have the lethality and the resilience to stay in the fight,” Magowan said. He described the CGS’s target to double and triple the Army’s capability as a shared aspiration supported by the Defence Secretary.
The committee raised concerns about the retirement or transfer of key equipment, including AS-90 artillery systems sent to Ukraine. Magowan explained that Sweden’s Archer system is expected to be operational by early 2025, while negotiations continue with Germany and Rheinmetall over the RCH 155 system.
“Part of that deterrence is industrial resilience,” Magowan noted. “If it comes to fruition fully, [the RCH 155] will see significant investment by Rheinmetall, further investment in the UK to support that programme.”
Andy Start, Chief Executive of Defence Equipment and Support, highlighted NATO cooperation and the benefits of standardisation. He stressed the role of shared platforms like the Boxer vehicle, built in both the UK and Germany, in boosting NATO’s deterrence and industrial strength.
“NATO maximises its deterrent when it standardises its equipment and it’s interoperable and interchangeable,” Start said. “This collaboration strengthens NATO and our industrial resilience, enabling us to sustain the fight for longer.”
When pressed on whether the goal is achievable within three years, Start acknowledged the challenges but pointed to opportunities in digitisation and integration.
“Chief of General Staff’s ambition is achievable,” Start stated, “but we can certainly make a massive difference in quite a short period of time through digitisation, integration, and ensuring the sensors we have can trigger effectors… without having to have huge amounts more kit.”
Magowan added: “To achieve that doubling by 2027 and tripling it by 2030 is a choice that means prioritising lethality… from a military capability perspective, lethality is at the top of the prioritised list.”
Start concluded: “Technically and programmatically, yes, but it’s part of the wider SDR choices that they have to make in terms of where they choose to put the money.”
It seems very obvious to me that, if you want to double the lethality of the army, then you need to double the budget.
You can’t double their lethality on the cheap. More money is required to acquire more and more-lethal units, and to increase numbers of practically everything.
The idea is to double lethality per head, so that one of ours can kill two of theirs. That’s a productivity thing and like all productivity these days, it’s done by investing in infrastructure and buying tech. I’m guessing there’s computer modelling that says it can be done. It’s a shame we can’t just let our computer simulations fight theirs, because in the real world we’ve seen that the tech wars cycle generations in a couple of months. So even if we did double our lethality, it would only work for a very short period of time.
It is also a question of having munitions depth so we can keep fighting with the high tech edge rather than starting with a high tech edge and being dragged into WWI when we run out of the smart stuff.
TBH building more stockpiles of what we have doesn’t double costs. The problem is that if you buy a massive stockpile in Y1 then in Y1+expiry date then all of those munitions either need to be rectified. So usually you have an age spread that is proportionate to training usage volumes so you keep cycling through the munitions. If you have a bigger stock depth you end up having to expend more in live fire [a good thing some would say] or remanufacturing munitions to deal with the EoL issues.
Then you have to feed into that how much can we rapidly dynamically manufacture on lines that are warm and ready to go with bins filled with parts so you are not cranking up a just-in-time behemoth and discovering the vital XYZ widget that costs 20p and is irreplaceable in the design is on a 9 month lead time from somewhere we shouldn’t be buying defence bits from!
That’s great but with our numbers of everything so depressingly low, we’d need every one of ours to kill twenty of theirs.
Simple question- if you think you can double,triple lethality over such a short timescale without massive additional expenditure, why haven’t you done it already?
Isn’t the reality that the army will have far fewer MBTs with a slightly better gun, no IFVs when Warrior goes out of service, reduced numbers of SPGs for years to come.
Increased lethality seems the exact opposite of what current plans are delivering.
Or it means we will see a Britsh version of the French Scorpio programm.
This is still a numbers game. The old adage of boots on the grtound being essential to control territory and manage the environment will always apply. Our dependence on increasing lethality is laudable but can it actually be achieved in the long term over any extended campaign? That is the big unanswerable. It implies an increased capability in resupply. Which counters this comment (from the article) “Chief of General Staff’s ambition is achievable,” Start stated, “but we can certainly make a massive difference in quite a short period of time through digitisation, integration, and ensuring the sensors we have can trigger effectors… without having to have huge amounts more kit.”
Since this ‘kit’ takes a long time to manufacture it means we have to have huge amounts ready in stock and the ability to backfill. The concept of making each individual more lethal implies kit, and probably in the bean counters mind increasing the effective firepower per person. There is however a flaw in this thinking. If one person can now do the work of say 10, then the loss of one person means an immediate reduction of 10% of the available effect! So instead of small losses there will be more bigger losses overall and less flexibility. In an evenly equipped or matched fight it probably makes little difference but seing as Russia and Korea are now resorting to meat grinder tactics numbers of boots will tend to prevail even if rthe lethality of weapons employed is better.
And the big reason for reducing manpower remains as always tax cuts and austerity.
It’s easy to double when the starting point is firepower that’s probably no greater than the Spanish.
Should not be too much of a problem, considering that the British Army hardly exists at the moment. No modern tanks; no modern cavalry capability; no modern fighting vehicles; no artillery to speak off and what there is is out of date;, helicopters either not ordered or being prematurely scrapped and enough materiale to last about a week.
Add in the fact that the army is 3000 understrength and 4000 of the establishmnet are off sick and senior NCO’s are leaving at a rate of knots you can see how our fighting capabilty could be improved some.
3,000 understrength?!
More like 30,000 under!
True, but I’m only counting what we have, bad though it is.
Generals can say what they want – if only!
This all comes down to money – or lack of it. Without HMG ring-fencing defence, how can the Armed Forces effectively plan and budget for programs? HMG still can’t commit to when they will increase to 2.5% of GDP and now Rutte is talking about increasing the NATO commitment to 3% (which I believe is absolutely the right thing to do). I have ZERO confidence that 2.5 lest still 3% will ever materialise.
I think we also need a clear definition of what is meant by ‘increasing lethality’. What does this mean? How is it quantified by 2027 and again in 2030? The comment given regarding Archer replacing AS90 reads as though it’s a one-for-one replacement – which we all know it’s not. The Army only acquired 14 Archer tubes whereas we had over 80 AS90. Sure, there will also be RCH155 but when? How many?
The government needs to waken up and acknowledge that much more money is needed for defence and quickly but I fear the upcoming SDR no matter how honest it’s being constructed, will be swept under the carpet and forgotten by the Treasury. The SDR is simply a way for Starmer to kick the can down the road and ignore defence.
I’d be happy with 2.75% defence spending having a bit of insight into the numbers from the other side of the curtain.
Given how much is spoken for in CASD, nuclear submarines and large capital projects going from 1.9%, which is where we were, to 2.75% would be absolutely massive. We are only at 2.2(ish)%, minus some accounting so really 2%, now.
As I have said before the main thing is to stop it all being sucked into mega projects but to keep most of it for relatively small projects like rapidly backfilling munitions and not being tempted to go after the next new-shiny.
“Jaw, jaw, jaw”. Lets hope there is no war.
Jaw, jaw, jaw is absolutely correct. I think it is fairly safe to predict that the only thing that the army will double by 2027 is the number of press releases it issues.
CGS assumed his appointment exactly 6 months ago. By now there really does need to be a firm, credible and costed plan in place to achieve doubling of lethality by 2027 (which starts in barely 2 years time), and tripling by 2030. Some ‘early days’ actions should have been put in place by now, with endorsement confirmed in the SDR report.
No matter that efficiencies can be achieved by smarter sensors, quicker ‘sensor to shooter’ times, more precision munitions etc, however more weapon systems (a lot more) will also be required.
A nudge up to 2.5% of GDP spent on Defence, even if achieved next year, will surely not be enough, by a long chalk.
Absolutely. If budgets remain broadly flat and you want more lethality, what do you give up to achieve it? There doesn’t appear to be a lot left to cut in any of the services.
‘double fighting power’
Show us a solid plan with concrete outcomes and goals, otherwise it is all just political spin.
“Show us a solid plan”, that isn’t the point of the statement to double lethality, it’s for the mainstream media to plaster on articles so the majority of voters think that defence is being taken care of as they won’t read into it beyond that, like people here do and assume the U.K. armed forces can take on anyone backing up the tough talk from politicians.
I can’t imagine there is any actual intention to make real changes, this is the same army cutting a turreted IFV for a non turreted APC and has almost no artillery and no actual timeline to replace it, will be cutting MBT numbers as they upgrade to CH3, all whilst stating they plan to double lethality with a straight face with most of the programs not really being delivered fully until well after 2030, it’s hard to see much credibility with these statement or the people making them, as you say it’s all just political spin with no outcomes, the SDR will not change anything as it’s really treasury dictated rather than responsibility vs resources needed.
Yet to see any example of how these clowns propose to achieve this.
Sensors, technology, imagination, magic, increased dividends for defence contractors, nothing of substance for the actual forces that will be sent into conflict, but it doesn’t sound as good when you admit your forces will be sent under equipped in dated equipment.
As usual, sheer twaddle.
Overall, lose 6 Regiments of AS90 SPG, point instead to 14 Archer and repeat the waffle about RCH155 and lethality, without any confirmation the funding is there for things like PGM for MLRS.
‘In 2023, Warsaw undertook a reform of the Polish army. The aim was to turn the country into Europe’s leading military power, with the largest army in the European Union. The goal: an active army of 300,000 soldiers by 2035. According to NATO estimates for 2024, Poland’s active forces have 216,000 soldiers, making it NATO’s third-largest army after the U.S. and Turkey.
Until 2022, the Polish army was smaller than those of France and Germany, but Poland now leads both France (204,700 soldiers) and Germany (185,600 soldiers). This represents a significant reversal’
But Britain cannot somehow manage it? HMG has to stop willing the mission without willing the means. Digitisation? Digitisation of what, precisely? One deployable Brigade can be pretty much be run using semaphore.