The House of Lords Library has released a detailed report titled ‘UK defence policy and the role of the armed forces’, penned by Charley Coleman on 24 August, 2023.
This article presents the main points raised in the report.
The report highlights the following core considerations shaping the UK’s armed forces size decisions:
- “an assessment of current and future threats to UK national security“
- “the need for contingent/reactive capability—the requirement to be able to respond immediately to domestic or international crisis“
- “current operational and international obligations (for example, NATO, UN)“
- “changes in technology, the introduction of new equipment and restructuring that leads to equipment becoming obsolete or surplus to requirements“
- “the need to deliver against the military tasks as efficiently as possible, maintaining a balanced, affordable defence budget“
In reference to the army’s structure, DCP21 conveyed the vision that the “army of the future will be leaner, more lethal, nimbler, and more effectively matched to current and future threats.” By 2025, the government aims to reduce the army’s full-time trained strength from 76,000 to 72,500. An overview from 1 April 2023 reveals:
- Royal Navy/Royal Marines: 29,350 (a decrease of 1.4% from 1 April 2022)
- Army: 74,830 (a decrease of 3.1% from 1 April 2022)
- Royal Air Force: 29,380 (a decrease of 1.6% from 1 April 2022)
- Total: 133,570 (a decrease of 2.4% from 1 April 2022)
The report mentioned that in January 2023, the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee released ‘UK defence policy: From aspiration to reality?’. In this, the size of the army was debated. General Sir Nick Carter, former chief of the defence staff, believed the army should be “in the order of 80,000” for combined NATO force participation.
Professor Jamie Gaskarth from the Open University raised questions regarding the army’s core purpose, stating, “it is rather confusing about what it is supposed to do“. He further remarked that managing multiple roles with 72,500 full-time troops might be challenging.
Conversely, several experts felt that personnel numbers aren’t the sole indicator of capability. Professor Malcolm Chalmers from RUSI remarked, “it is unfortunate in today’s world that the main metric we use for army capability is the number of people … If you are saying that you want a bigger army but you want them less well equipped, I would say no“.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace asserted that focusing solely on army size isn’t holistic; modernisation and technological advancement would offset personnel reductions.
The committee concluded that while troop numbers are crucial, they aren’t the definitive metric for the army’s capabilities. The pivotal issue lies in whether the army possesses the necessary resources and skills to execute governmental objectives, factoring in equipment quality and training depth.
That remains to be seen. But for the foreseeable future, you need boots on the ground. Maybe in 50 years you can hold territory with some kind of robot. But that’s so far in the future, it may as well be science fiction.
Mathew,you are bang on ,technology is fine and dandy ,but boots on the ground have to do the final job ,start to finish
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The lightning rate of remote military systems is going to impact on conventional forces much sooner than 50 years. The expanding use of drones has been witnessed in Ukraine and further advances will quickly follow. Nothing but nothing boosts technology like a major war and we are seeing new weapons on both sides. I believe AI will replace some troops in both frontline and logistics but obviously, it will take time but sooner than you might think.
Maurice, take the Ukraine war example. How much and what type of AI kit do you need to close with and defeat 190,000 Russian soldiers that are in Ukraine and then process the prisoners of war, to recapture and hold 40,000 square miles of your lost land (17% of the total), and to then defend 1,426 miles of border with Russia to prevent them attacking again?
That is not something the current forces could do.
My point is that this is not something AI could do at all.
Boots on the Ground – and in sufficient number with good equipment, bioth conventional and innovative – rather than a tiny army with a bunch of drones and cyber gadgets – is required for serious and effective warfighting against a peer or near-peer opponent.
On the contrary, Graham, AI will be able to monitor and interdict in the scenario you described. Massive logistic supply would be greatly assisted by intelligent systems leaving valuable forces to concentrate on the battle front. Direct ground conflict controlled by AI systems could guarantee more accurate interception and destruction of big enemy concentrations, forcing smaller offence tactics that are less likely to succeed. Many balls ups in 20th Century wars were due to bloody awful leadership (admittedly there were successes too). Still, AI will offer alternative options within seconds aiding the right moves on a modern battlefield. AI will transform warfare and nothing will stop its rapid development with positive and negative impacts on the human race.
This is all hypothetical future. For starters, we don’t have any delivery method in the form of UAVs which can carry any significant payload. You can look at UGVs, but lets be honest. The technology isn’t going to be there for at least 15 years.
In terms of ground conflict, any peer opponent will also have the same AI systems, to the advantage is negligible. Except they will have more ground troops than us.
What difference is AI going to make to awful or amazing leadership? None.
Sadly Matt I fear AI will be well advanced within 15 years. As for decision making it may find military solutions by physical and political means and even bypass diplomatic processes to achieve its goals. The biggest issue could be accepting this against our strong moral judgment and protocols.
Maurice. I agree with you that AI itself will be well advanced in 15 years. But whether or not we will have many drones and other equipment that can use AI is yet to be seen (due to cost considerations). The problem is that with AI so prevalent in the future, it is not really a game changer (because our opponents also have it). I think we should certainly be investing in AI. But we need to maintain a balance. Some of the lessons from Ukraine include the fact we need more of the basics like artillery.
AI will control ground conflict better than current methods? Maybe. Or is it just a decision-making tool for human commanders?
I am not a Luddite – I was the military officer for robotics and Unmanned Ground Systems at RARDE in 1989-90. We had two TDPs for logistics vehicles then; we invented the concept of platooned unmanned logistic vehicles.
Now add a super brain to the control of a remote vehicle also fitted with active countermeasures and your earlier work at RARDE will pay dividends.
Some of our TDPs were fully autonomous rather than being tele-operated, but I take your point.
RETHINKING NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
An interesting article on the subject can be found here
I’ll read it many thanks, Nigel.
Always welcome maurice! 😉
Only if you’re a terrorist organisation. Perhaps on a tactical front but we still need boots on the ground if we are going to hold territory.
Unless you are willing to take the man or woman out of the loop you still need the personal…I don’t really see anyone soon giving AI the ability to make a kill not kill decision…so in reality IA will support surveillance and some logistics…but it’s not going to replace the solder on the ground…at lest I hope it does not..because at that point humanity will have crossed a line and opened Pandora’s box.
That is precisely why the inventors of AI fear it most. It’s the microchip of our time and just as that revolutionised electronics in all fields, AI will do even more for mankind. As for replacing the soldier that may never happen but we may need fewer feet on the ground because of it.
Interestingly I did read an article in which one US airforce col tucker described how in simulations a simulated AI drone ended up attacking its controller….simply put the controller becomes the main obstacle to the AI completing its mission by withdrawing or withholding permission to fire, after a while the AI ends up removing that barrier to its mission by killing the controller….col tucker a day later rowed back on this and said he misspoke and the US airforce did not need to do the simulations as it’s logical this is what would happen….the US airforce flatly denied any AI simulation ever attacked its own controller……but basically I was pretty obvious the US airforce knows that if you give an IA a mission to do something ( kill enemy air defences) and you the controller become the barrier it will be you it removes…..why would it not…
Exactly, the bloody thing is a cold calculating system that disregards the human moral factors in its basic thinking. As for safeguards, they can be built in and a ‘soft option’ applied however, the enemy might choose the ‘cold route’ and God help us all. No wonder the brains behind AI are running for the hills!
Not only that but as one IA expert pointed out ( who is also a philosopher) the present set of Generative AIs are learning from the internet….that includes the cesspit of information not just the valuable content.
CIWS already make kill decisions.
CIWs are in reality automated not autonomous..the human turns it on and off again, the human places and moves the system around…a CIW is not autonomous in the same way as a stonefish mine is not an autonomous system..it’s an system that is placed and activated by a human…that then finalises its attack via an automated response…..even mechanical anti personal or anti tank mines have this function….a true autonomous system removes the man or woman from the whole decision loop…it makes its own way and attacks in its own way and uses learning to get better at its mission…that’s the problem….you cannot really know how it will decide it needs to complete its mission…..including killing its controller.
A very fair point. We could say that CIWS and stonefish mine (new one on me!) are autonomous only within boundaries (rules) set by a human (the designer and the operator) and once switched on by a human – and they can be switched off by a human at any time.
Therefore if AI systems are totally autonomous once switched on does that mean they do not have any boundaries (rules) at all? Surely they have boundaries set by designer/software engineer?
I would hope that a smart software engineer would program it not to kill its creator or any other own forces. If it could kill our own people, then perhaps we don’t want AI-controlled killing machines on the battlefield.
Nice report containing links to diversity, home basing, gender info…somethings that where totally lacking in previous reports.
CBP-7930.pdf (parliament.uk)
Previous reports broke down the services by branch and trade…so you could see in say the RN how many engineers for subs, surface, air etc you were short of. Those figures are now hidden. Those figures are Iwould say a little bit more important and interesting than diversity stats. If I was down by say 200 Engineers across the fleet I don’t care what race, creed or sexuality they are…that’s a secondary stat. Delivering Defence and Operational Capability counts and is a primary stat. I would want to know how many bums on seats I need not the colour, religion or gender of said bums!
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There’s no need for this trend of DIE sorry DEI being shoehorned into the Armed forces the best candidate for the job is always the better rather than making the quota for Diversity, equality and Inclusion as you have said GB 👍
Yes, lets go back to the days when Gay and Lesbian personnel got drummed out of the service, 🙄
Of course if you actually read the report you’d find:
“In 2015 the MOD decided to no longer release detailed information on pinch points into the public domain on national security grounds.”
and
“At 30 September 2021 there were 40 DPPs: the Army had 12, the Naval Service had 12, the RAF had not declared any, and UK Strategic Command had 16 DPPs. There was one less DPP compared to 30
September 2020.
• At 30 September 2021 there were 55 SPPs: the Army had 35, the Naval Service had 15, the RAF had 5, and UK Strategic Command had not declared any SPPs. There were 11 fewer SPPs compared to 30 September 2020.”
I guess you are quite happy with that unprofessional report of F-35 that fell into Mediterranean.
It will be also interesting to read a criminal report written like that…
Unprofessional report? Meaning that no-one really got held accountable?
Read it and tell me how many times you will have to read several paragraphs to understand what woke is going on…
“The FDO was first to arrive at the pilot’s location. Other than some
the pilot appeared unharmed, fully conscious
and in good spirits. The pilot was keen to stand up, declaring that they were
fine. The FDO aided the pilot to their feet and walked with them back to the
FDO’s office in the aft island.”
So there was another pilot fine too?
The FDO walked with how many persons?
I see. A refusal to gender-identify the pilot. Quite ridiculous.
I thought it hit the root causes pretty well…process issues, staffing issues and poorly designed safety equipment.
It seems that the report does not want to assign responsibility to individuals for the loss of the aircraft – its all very collective and corporate. Don’t think anyone was disciplined?
When I was in REME, if even a £200 rifle had to be repaired (or written off) through ‘Negligence, Misuse or Damage’, then we would raise a NM&D report (later just called simply a Damage Report (read into that what you will). The Report stated what the damage amounted to and how much it would cost to repair or how much a new rifle was if it was to be written off.
The soldier was put on a charge by his own unit personnel and had to appear on front of his/her OC.
The Damage Report went to the user’s OC for use as evidence for when he/she conducted OC’s Orders (summary disciplinary hearing). The Damage Report guided the OC as to what to levy as a stoppage of pay to cover or partly cover the cost of the repair if the soldier was found guilty of negligence or misuse. In addition the OC awarded a punishment if negligence or misuse was proven.
Serious incidents had a different process of course but still anyone found to be negligent was punished.
I was on the second ship to have girls at sea . I was at sea on a T23 when the no touching rule Came in and being gay wasn’t an issue anymore.
So I never have had an issue with any of the diversity stuff. As I said I would rather have bums on seats. I don’t need to know the other guff that now comes with it. It’s secondary to delivering capability.
In Aug 2017 they where still producing the figures by branch and they are available online to view from MOD.but not via the links in the document or its various hyperlinks to various pointless sites
Pinch points are contained in the AF pay review but again you need to work out what they are. Hint… Retention payments and special Pay are a good indicator.
The document is deliberately obtuse so as its immensely difficult to find actual answers.
Sorry GB, but that eyeroll was aimed at Tommo’s pretty horrendous tone, not yours. The other guff, I don’t need to know it, but I can also see why it would be useful to put out.
I’m sure, given the stated reason (whether you believe it or not) for the withdrawal of information on pinch points, that they would be deliberately obtuse in hiding it.
Dern it wasn’t meant too ne taken as horrendous. It’s just that quotas such as that with RAF Pilot candidates being denied the chance because of their ethnicity (white ) just too appease the cult of DEI like Gunbuster stated so long as the person is competent at the job then nothing else about their race creed colour sexial orientation maters so long as they can perform the tasks required that was all not DEI quotas
Sorry mate, bit of a snap rep.
Yes, and the RAF abuse of the quota system does nobody any favours so I dispair of it. It’s a bit dammned if you do, dammned if you don’t; a quota after all is supposed to prevent dinosaurs from doing things like going “Well we want to hire the best man for the job, and you’re not a man so…”. Pretty shit when it goes the other way.
As for reporting them; these are stats the MoD keeps anyway (religion eg is recorded on everyone’s tags so that they know what kind of grave stone to give you, gender and sex for accommodation purposes etc), and, although I found this kind of information out by asking family veterans, being able to find out that, for example, Atheists and non religious people are not only tolerated by the army but one of the largest minorities, would have been pretty important to me before signing up (just wished someone would have told me what a mare it is avoiding chapel in Phase 1).
Thanks Dern The whole DEI bit got me going the other week concerning the faceless Mandarins of Whitehall and companies in the Defence sector and then the RAF being caught out with blatant you know what as for Dogtags didn’t get them until the late 80ts kept ID tag and my Med tag Penicillin allergy Lost them both when In a road accident wonder if the MOD could give me a replacement 😀
The report does actually mention that the pinch points are tracked, just not released to the public, which frankly, I think is okay.
Merit (ability to do the job) and the operational needs of the armed forces are what matters … every other recruiting objective is ideological, driven by something else and probably comprises merit and operational requirements.
some demographics are important…the age one especially….around retirement…also sex is actually an import one for modelling your workforce…gender is not) you need to understand how many and when your losing to retirement and how many and when your likely loss to babies.
“Defence Secretary Ben Wallace asserted that focusing solely on army size isn’t holistic; modernisation and technological advancement would offset personnel reductions”
I’ve been listening to rubbish statements like that for the past 30 years. Almost every SoS Defence that I can remember has regurgitated something similar when trying to justify cuts to the Army.
When the Scots Guards, 42 Commando and the Blues and Royals were fighting their way up Mount Tumbledown 45 years ago – with courage and panache – they did it with blood and guts. And the excellent 7.62 SLR, which many of those who post here will remember. No matter how much tech we have, we still need people who can fight – “boots on the ground”
72,000 is far too small given the commitments and threats that we face. There is far too much office empire building in the MoD, their “strength” is now about 62,000. I would much prefer a trained British Army of 82,000 – and an MoD of 52,000 pen pushers.
While I know this won’t be a popular statement. You can’t keep harking back to the past. I would prefer a larger Army. But technology has made huge strides. We can’t equip for past conflicts. And as for pen pushers. The civil service is crucial to the running and operation of our Armed Force’s. Many thank-less but crucial positions are carried out by dedicated civilians.
I like a lot of what you post here Robert, however I disagree.
The MoD has a long history of wasting £billions and £billions of taxpayers money – and the endless cuts in our military capability are the direct result. No SoS Defence in living memory has ever been able to sort the MoD out. My view is that we should only buy battle-proven kit off the shelf – and do away with the defence procurement side completely.
That’s easier said than done, though, especially since we have a defence industrial base to support that provides hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs. Buying everything off the shelf would wave bye-bye to that industrial base. Somethings we are great buying off the shelf. Apache, for example. It’s the best attack helicopter available. While I admit there have been many procurement disasters. We also get a hell of a lot right.
Mostly with you here David. I would buy “off the shelf” if it started with the UK options being give a priority chance. Not a done deal, just the opportunity to come up with the goods. There are irritations with kit when it comes to the RAF and RN ( you know what I think) but generally procurement is sound. Where it’s gone very badly wrong, and this is where I agree with you entirely, is with the army. The last twenty years have been a fiasco and the army itself and the MOD must take most of the blame. As for there being 62,000 staff in the latter to oversee 133,000 is a complete mystery to me. There isn’t a private company in the western world that would allow that kind of split.
Really ? “and do away with the defence procurement side completely” I have to wonder if you are actually serious or working for the Dark side !
There are 5 overriding reasons to not do so :-
Defence procurement has been a shambles for years but finally BW seems to be getting some headway in sorting it out.
During his resignation speech in the Commons last month, Wallace boasted that, during his 4 year tenure as Defence Secretary, he had obtained an additional £24 billion for the MoD
This is a sum greater than the defence budgets of many NATO countries and indeed, nearly double that of the Israeli IDF ($18billion in 2021) .
So on what has this princely sum been spent? Where are the additional regiments, tanks, SPG, artillery, air defence etc that the Army so desperately needs? Why do we have less than 50 Typhoon fighters airworthy with trained pilots available on any one day? Why has our airlift capability just been reduced by ~40% ? Why is the Royal Navy still waiting for the propulsion repairs to four of our Type 45 destroyers? And I haven’t even mentioned Ajax
The only notable thing that Wallace has done is to gift a great deal of ordnance, armour and ammunition stocks to the UkR. Oh, and spend £127,000 redecorating the RE foxhound kennels at Larkhill on Salisbury plain.
We really do get a pathetic bang for our buck here in the UK
Nice reply shame it doesn’t address any of the challenges I raised.
No one thinks UK procurement is particularly good and in need of a massive overhaul, but we aren’t alone in that one the US being the prime example.
In both the US and UK it is usually muddy specs, in contract contract modifications / add ons and Political interference that screw things up.
Don’t forget that the biggest recent example is Ajax which is essentially an off the shelf variation on ASCOD but has been added to, amended etc etc to the point that it far exceeds the original spec.
Also BW in the CP speech focussed on cutting down the service contractual add ons, setting ambitious project timescales and taking a Strategically vital industrial capacity back into public ownership.
Now perhaps you would like to explain how buying off the shelf wouldn’t cause any if the 5 issues I raised ?
I don’t know about the budget and these one off boosts aren’t great. This year the defence budget has decreased and the purchasing power is down dramatically.
The forces need to keep shrinking with less kit because there’s less money and things cost more. The U.K economy hasn’t grown fast enough to keep pace with the cost increases so a percentage of GDP actually gets you less than before.
I think it’s the endless cock-ups, which are mainly caused by having nobody competent in overall project management control and political interference.
The money is obviousy there (the £24 billion) its just that the MoD piss it up the wall. Once a big cock-up comes home to roost the inevitable consequence is cutbacks to capability.
It’s been going on for years and despite repeated defence committee reports etc etc nobody has been able to grasp the nettle and sort the buggers at the top out. There are no consequences for failure at the top of the MoD, as there would be in the private sector
I generally agree David, we have a comparatively healthy defence budget, but woefully little to show for it.
Politically driven procurement is certainly one of the problems. It’s a hugely complex and difficult matter to get it right, the balance between domestic economic and military requirements is a finely balanced set of scales.
But back to the first point, our budget really dosen’t buy the bang for our buck it should…
Much of that extra money went on Cyber, setting up Space Command, and military R&D including the UCAS project, as well as offsetting exchange rate losses on buying dollar-priced equipment such as F-35s.
You still need staff to procure MOTS capital equipment and to procure all the other stuff (ammo, spares, fuel, barrack stores etc).
62,000 of them?
Geoff, there aren’t 62,000 MoD civil servants (CS) at DE&S doing procurement and all the many, many other things that DE&S does in addition to capital equipment procurement.
That 62,000 is the total MoD number.
DE&S has 11,500 of that number:
CShttps://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1093206/20220721__DE_S_Corporate_Plan_22_Final_Accessable_version_O.pdf –
11,500 is a very small number – it used to be over 39,000 at DE&S across all its sites soon after its formation from the merger of DPA and DLO and clearly there was scope for some staff rationalisation.
Having worked at DE&S for 2 years in three areas (the Armoured Vehicle Support Transformation programme, the Operational Vehicles Office doing UOR procurements and then as a PM for dismounted soldier equipment), I consider a contributory factor to procurement cock-ups was the significant reduction in CS numbers in areas such as Quality Assurance, Cost Modelling, Finance staff, Project Management staff and Contacts staff.
I appreciate what you say Graham and I don’t deny that there a lot of good people doing a worthwhile job but again I say 62,000?
I have spent most of my working life in the private sector , mostly running my own business. I have and my daughter still does deal with the private sector and also the public sector including on occasion the MOD.
The single biggest difference between the two. Endless meetings, sometimes about having meetings, committee’s getting together as and when it suits them ( I once attended a meeting with my sales manager and there were twenty six people from “the other side”); constant changes to detail and pricing. Sometimes we are looking at a project for as little as £5000. Roughly, the average start to finish time scale for the private sector is four to six weeks, the public sector can be up to six months.
Hi Geoff, in my 34 years in the army I spent quite a lot of time working with MoD civil servants (CS) – and for my 2 years at DLO Andover in the Tank Systems Support IPT, I was the Line Manager for five CS – military personnel at DLO were in the minority.
62,000 is certainly quite a high number – under Cameron it was planned to reduce numbers of CS across the piste including at MoD sites but little progress was made.
CS are to be found everywhere including in deployable units but of course they are concentrated in numbers in static units and HQs. I never served in a unit or HQ where there seemed to be more CS than justified, and I felt that DE&S had cut too many CS over the years, as I mentioned. I suspect there are far too many CS in the corporate (Head Office) side of MoD.
You have a very fair point about MoD bureacracy where intricate procedures slows things down – and a lot of committee work. I am amazed at 26 MoD people attending a meeting to discuss a £5000 project. That was not my experience, when I was on MoD procurement work in 2009-2011 at DE&S. The £60m procurement project that I was PM for had two major reviews by committee (about 12 people) in 6 months.
My phrasing could have been better by the look of it. The 26 were an education group and the £5000 was for a job to do with the navy in Plymouth. Maybe there is a breakdown somewhere about who does what, I don’t know. I do know that my wife who was with the NHS used to get so cross when dealing with it’s admin. for the time wasting and delays.
I think it would be informative for many if there was an article explaining how the MoD ( and the DES ) is structured and what its multitude of organisations and directorates actually do.
The military would fall apart rapidly without it, and the calls to get rid of so much of supposed useless Civil Servants keep happening. And I do not necessarily mean from dear Geoffrey, but various posters over the years.
Defence for many is just the Army, RN, and RAF. It is actually so so much more than that.
I think that’s a great idea. When I was at DLO and later at DE&S we had a wiring diagram of just our own organisation and that alone was complicated enough.
This gives a flavour:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Defence_(United_Kingdom)
This is the DE&S one:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/defence-equipment-and-support-des-organisation-chart-2022
This has some simplified Org charts:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/920219/20200922-How_Defence_Works_V6.0_Sep_2020.pdf
Yes, many times I have picked through such charts to work out what is what. And they keep changing. I was looking for SSE in there and I think that has moved into SDA, itself now moved from within DES.
Long story short, as I keep saying, defence is complicated. and it is not just a case of sack a few hundred braid and sack the rest of the CS.
Here here!!
If you only buy off the shelf then nobody needs to make anything better. There is a balance and sometimes it’s got wrong but building new type 23 with the same 1980s equipment instead of type 26 just because it’s proven isn’t the answer.
The British military for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 deployed 46k troops we wouldn’t be able to do that now and I don’t see what has really changed since then technology wise that would make us able to do that again
And that’s the key difference. We won’t be doing it again. The West has lost its appetite for adventures in the Middle East after nearly 30 years of conflict. Unless it has UN backing, or it’s a NATO operation. Or or an extraction Sudan type operation. The West will be very reluctant to get involved.
Who knows what Operation will happen next. No-one thought when cutting the army after the Cold War that we would send a warfighting division to the desert a year later…or that we would send another division to Iraq less than a decade later. No-one expected the armed forces to deploy to Afghanistan for a decade.
No-one expected state vs state warfare in Europe.
True that the Public and Politicians have lost the appetite for blindly signing up to contributing to America’s desert adventures.
But are you justifying the cut of the army to 73,000? Whilst we could deploy a division for a shortish one-shot war (once they get some modern equipment!), then we could not at present conduct an enduring brigade operation without assistance from the Army Reserve and/or RM.
I’m not defending the cuts. Just that I can understand the politicians thinking. And the tech of the future will vastly change the way of warfare from conflicts of the past. COVID has proven you can shut down an entire continent without firing a single shot. Drone warfare is taking on an ever increasing role, and the tech is developing at a vast rate. The information war is also crucial. I wish we had a bit more of everything, especially manning. But all this new kit doesn’t come cheap. And we need the kit more than ever to keep our edge. Operated by the very best trained personal.
I guess Robert what is the price of peace
About 2.5% of GDP would be a good start. Aiming for 3%.
Got my backing 👍
👍😃
I too understand the politicians thinking which is recognising Defence inflation (far more than ordinary inflation) means the cost of kit will get ever more expensive, even the non-exotic, and that the only way to afford it is to cut the headcount, and then to blather on about heading towards a smaller but better army (or navy of air force), not being wedded to sunset capabilities etc (code for ‘cut the tank and SPG numbers’).
In my 34 years in the army I was not at anytime wowed by new technology – manpower cuts happened because of a politicians need to make savings for social programmes, not because better tech came along.
I am not overly impressed by drones (nor am I unimpressed), recognising, unlike many, that some types are expensive and they have their limitations. Drones don’t clear the enemy infantry and then hold ground. Neither does cyber warfare. Useful, needed but not a replacement for boots on the ground – they are a supplement, a tool.
The army is not like the other services – it needs numbers to cover the ground – and its roles are very varied – not just high intensity warfighting, which in fact comes around only quite rarely.
We had 21,000 soldiers in Northern Ireland (plus 6,500 UDR) at the peak of Op Banner in the 1970s.
We deployed at least 35,000 soldiers on Op Granby.
I doubt that we could reduce the manpower size of such deployments by more than 5% with better or more innovative technology.
First off. 34 years. That’s an amazing career mate. I did 14 in the RN, and left young enough to start a 2nd career. I’d still recommend it to anyone. And I had a great time. It’s such a tricky one. The world has changed so much, and the political will of our politicians has changed plenty, too. The high-end kit has made a big difference. A Typhoon can do what 3 Tornados could do. F35 is a all weather stealth strike fighter, ISTAR asset, and much much more. We have never had that kind of capability before. The Army is much more about people. I guess the argument will always win about having a smaller better equipped Army, against a larger, but not so well-equipped force with-in the budget available. I think our political classes have pretty much given up on sole British overseas involvement unless it’s with our allies. It’s almost like after the experience of Iraq/Afghanistan, we have reduced our force structure to the point so we can’t get heavily involved. Not for the long term anyway.
Better kit but less platforms ,so can’t spread around the war zone and you been navy Rob know better than anyone ships like Type 45 good AD but can be only in one place at a time .Good post mate 🍺
T45 is a good example. 6 T45’s compared to 12 T42’s. Even with half the number platforms, the RN’s AD capability has massively increased. It’s just a shame that they couldn’t stretch to at least 8 vessels.
True
I left the army aged 53 – and also did a second career – not easy starting off at that age.
There always used to be this phrase – ‘The army equip the man, the RN and RAF man the equipment’ – a bit trite and not totally accurate as the army also mans much equipment but it gets the point that the man is pre-eminent in the army- cutting army manpower seriously cuts capability.
I heard the ‘smaller but better army’ phrase after every defence cut, whoops… I mean defence review. Sole British operations that I recall over my 34 years were Op Banner and Op Corporate, so we don’t do them that often.
Op Banner was mainly for the dismounted Infantry (and we needed a lot of them) and Op Corporate had only a small part of the army involved, dismounted Infantry predominantly, again – 5 battalions, including the two Para battalions of course (and other arms and services of course).
Good post Graham 🍺
Thanks for that comment about Civil Servants Robert. I’m one of those in a thankless position albeit not a pen pusher! Some of us Snivelling Servants are engineers and ex-forces!
The Armed Force’s couldn’t operate without the Civil Service. Have a good one pal 👍
In 1989 the RAF was at 95,500, RN minus RM at 57,800 and the army at 152,800.
The army is half the size it was then, the Navy 40% the size and the RAF 30% the size.
Since thenthe Navy has gained responsibilities for east of Suez.
The RAF and FAA have gone from 35+ fast jet squadrons in 1989, to 8, and 9 later this year.
Air defence has been reduced to just 2 regiments from god knows how many.
The army is currently completely reliant on the RAF for air defence above 33,000 feet.
The RAF should be the first to get money and personnel. Double the E7, double the P8, some tranche 4 typhoons, more F35B, more A400M, more C17, more Voyagers, a third Typhoon base, air defence for RAF reg etc.
The Navy and RFA needs to fix its recruitment and manning problems. The Navy seems to be on the right path in terms of equipment orders.
73,000 is enough for the army, the numbers just have to be in the right places. A full armoured division and making 4x a full brigade is achievable within that number. Only once everything else I listed happens should the army be increase in size.
Fine it hard to look at the numbers we once had compare today 🙄
And we also had a lot of pretty useless equipment back then.
Really? I served in the army 1975-2009. Most of our capital equipment was pretty good but the soldiers did often whinge about the boots and the camp beds!
What examples do you have of useless equipment?
👍 🇬🇧
Yep, we had 28 attack subs (SSN/SSK mix) in 1982!
Now we can count them on one ✋or maybe two 🤘
“73,000 is enough for the army, the numbers just have to be in the right places”
Only one in five of the 72,000 will be fighting regiments – about 15,000. The rest are logistics, stores, engineers, motor transport, rations etc.
There is no way we could assemble an armoured division as the Ukrainians would recognise it, let alone deploy it anywhere other than Bovington or Salisbury Plain. Thats why Sanders was so outspoken and why he lost his job. To his credit, Wallace resigned. Both men are a loss to the defence community.
(That’s mostly because Ukraine doesn’t have divisions).
Hi Dern, I’m new to this site & I’ve been pointed in your direction as the person who might best know the answer to my query, which is- do you know which Rifle will replace the SA80? Is there even any possible contenders being talked about? The Americans are equipping their front line soldiers with a 6.8mm round, do you think this will have any influence on what our replacement rifle will be? Thanks.
Hi,
At the moment there is no plan to replace the L85A3 within the British Army outside of specialist units like SF, SOF and RMP-CP. As for the XM-7, I’ll believe it when it actually hits the ground, but AFAIK only about a handful of them have actually been delivered, and every attempt at replacing the M4/16 has been rolled back pretty quickly.
I don’t think US adoption of 6.8mm will have any short term effect on the use of 5.56 until they completely abandon the smaller calibre, including for rear echlon troops (this could take a while, as recently as 2016 I was issued with an M-16 on attachment). At any rate, I don’t see the MoD risking going through procurment and introduction of a new weapon and calibre until it’s 100% certain that the US is not going to roll back onto 5.56.
Ok thanks for the reply, very informative, as you stated the Americans seem reluctant to replace their M4/M16s, I think H&k tried to get their 416 rifle as a contender but as far as i know it’s still only used by a small number of US SFs. Just wondering, could I ask your opinion on what rifle you like to see replace SA80?
The 416 made it in to replace the M249 and then the M4 in USMC service as the M27 IAR.
As for what rifle I’d like to see replace the L85: nothing.
Ok, thanks again for taking the time to reply 👍
The Australians have just gifted to the Ukraine a large number of the ACAR assault rifle (for test and adjust purposes) a very interesting weapon which comes in
5.56
7.62
6.8
It will be interesting to see how it does in actual combat
Ah, loads of AR platforms with monolithic foregrips (so hard to clean 😭). The KAC is similiar (it’s reaching the point where even I’m having difficulty visually differentiating).
The SLR did the job my choice over SA80 😀
Much will surely depend on whether NATO adopts 6.8mm as an official NATO calibre. We would not adopt a non-NATO calibre, even if the Americans on their own did adopt it.
Indeed. The Americans adopted 5.56 in the 1960’s, it wasn’t made a NATO standard until 1980, and we didn’t follow up with it until the L85 was introduced 5 years later.
A bit more info can be found here
New British Army Special Operations rifle could influence SA80 replacement
“Speaking recently at the Future Soldier Technology conference in London, British Army officials confirmed to Army Technology that Project Hunter was nearing down select, and that, in turn, the results of the programme could influence Project Grayburn, which was still in the concept phase.
The timeline for Project Grayburn to begin sifting through the possible options for an SA80 replacement could be around 2025, with a “modular” weapon system potentially an option.”
Richard Thomas really doesn’t know what he’s talking about unfortunately. Project Grayburn is not going to get a replacement by 2025. 2030 at the earliest. Also the choice of the KAC is definitely not going to infulence what gets bought except, in any sane universe, to point out what the rest of the army shouldn’t buy.
Just to point out timelines if Project Grayburn had the same timeline as Project Hunter, and released a tender tomorrow (optimistic because Project Hunter moved fast) it wouldn’t get a weapon system into service before 2026.
A google search also shows how sadly one bad article can spread through the internet, with multiple copy pastes of the exact title.
Pictured: A Rifle the rest of the Army shouldn’t adopt:
https://i.imgur.com/xJ4AEZH.jpeg
“A google search also shows how sadly one bad article can spread through the internet”
Indeed.
Army Technology
Speaking recently at the Future Soldier Technology conference in London, British Army officials confirmed to Army Technology that Project Hunter was nearing down select, and that, in turn, the results of the programme could influence Project Grayburn, which was still in the concept phase.
The timeline for Project Grayburn to begin sifting through the possible options for an SA80 replacement could be around 2025, with a “modular” weapon system potentially an option.
Re Google Searches.
Indeed.
Army Technology
Speaking recently at the Future Soldier Technology conference in London, British Army officials confirmed to Army Technology that Project Hunter was nearing down select, and that, in turn, the results of the programme could influence Project Grayburn, which was still in the concept phase.
The timeline for Project Grayburn to begin sifting through the possible options for an SA80 replacement could be around 2025, with a “modular” weapon system potentially an option.
The fighting part won’t be doing much fighting without those enablers mate.
Pffft. Who needs logistics anyway. Russian divisions don’t have those, and they manage! Just need manlyness!!!
And foraging! Take what we need from the locals!
Join the Army, get a free washing machine.
Ha! Yes. HM 5th Foragers Regiment of Foot. Sponsored by Zanusi.
I’m sure the Laundry units at Grantham would appreciate some more Washing Machines to add to their collection. We could introduce a bounty.
Just saying, Zanussi and Zaluzhnyi sound pretty similar… Coincidence? You decide!
One them most definitely is not in a spin. I had to look him up BTW. 👍
Wait… you had to look up General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FP_c_ErXMAU0AP4.jpg
(BTW I think we can agree that if he shaved Ukraine would have won the war by now. #Standards )
Lol. Morning. His name, yes. I know his face as of course seen on screen many times.
But his name escaped me.
Failure generates more headlines, looking at Gerasimov and Shoigu. And I like to know the enemy more, I generally know a lot more about the Russian military than the Ukrainian one as studied it since Cold War days.
BTW, we talked of this before, but will the beards rules ever be relaxed in the Army? Every UKR soldier I see has one!
Am I right in saying certain soldiers can wear them? I forget who.
Oh the army will adopt beards, in like 2060 when it’s no longer fashionable for men to wear them. At that point they might even make it compulsory just to underline the point of how far behind the times they always are.
But yes! The Ukranians seem to be very fond of sporting the beard, clearly they can’t be an effective army and must suffer enormous CBRN casualties right?
And yes, certain soldiers can wear them, including but not limited too:
Pioneer Sgts, that’s the fellas I could not think of.
Thanks. On what archaic rule though? Something to do with axes and chopping wounded horses? Or am I getting my wires crossed?!
Lol yes mate, logistic support tut tut, no need, that all got sold off for head shed new cars and washing machines…..need food, ammo, meds….manskie upskie comrades and push forward for Putins ego and bank balance! Super dobra!
Don’t forget the free Lada for the people back home.
What do you class as a fighting Regiment mate?
You could start with the Paras!
The paras are good but the Royal Marine commandos are better 😂
They have better recruitment adverts agreed!
Agreed, but no matter what Regiment or Battalion the teeth arms are from, the Army comes as a single entity, in order to attempt to project combat power at any given point. In doing that it does it as one, with the CS and CSS units providing the staying power and OS support! Without the supporting units, I don’t give a fuck how big, hard, ally, gringo tashed, tooled up super warriors we think we are, we would last less than 48 hours without them mate. Cheers.
We could contract the RLC’s job out to Carillion Amey…
Shhh. FFS don’t give them ideas!!
Can you then explain why there are two key divisions in the FS Orbat – 3 Div (primarily armoured) for warfighting and 1 Div for OOA/Persistent Engagements etc.
Granted that we would not wish to deploy an armoured div this year or next as much of the kit is old and unmodernised and there are some capability gaps. But if an order went to the army to deploy a div, then a div would deploy, even with some problem areas.
Ironically the British Army has more armoured Divisions than the Ukranians have.
Good point Dern. Might be different if we compared the number of armoured brigades, or armoured regiments or AI battalions?
Still, it’s not a competition!
No. I think when we’re locked in an existential war and half of nato is providing us with tanks and IFVs I think it’ll be a competition.
Dern, I meant comparing British Army numbers to Ukraine Army numbers is not a competition.
The “Field Army” would still be about 15,000 – how big are your Divisions going to be? As Daniele says the other 57,000 are enablers.
A mate of mine came back from Camp Bastion on leave a few years back. We had about 2000 people there, but he told me that they were strapped to be able to send out a patrol of 200. Apparently the rest were medics, cooks, payrol, stores, airconditioning engineers, generator mechanics, comms…….
Not to mention the very popular Danish nurses…..!
That’s because Camp Bastion was where the enablers and HQ where based, aside from the RAF reg and blokes on Stand Down all the fighting units where dispersed across PBs (just to remind you Op Herrick around 8-9,000 troops deployed on it at most times).
Stripping out that context makes you look either uninformed or dishonest.
Good to know you also have such a shit opinion of the RAMC, AGC, REME, RS, and RLC. Guessing you’ve never needed a casevac, or had to fight for comms to call fire support?
Those enablers ARE in the “Field Army” mate.
The Divisions, Brigades and Groups of the “Field Army” which in itself is part of HQ LAND, and consists of 1 UK, 3 UK, FA Troops, and so on, have both fighting arms – Infantry, RAC, AAC, Combat Support – RA, RE, and Combat Service Support – AGC, RS, REME, RLC, RAMC formations in them.
The fighting arms can not operate without the other two, and in fact the latter two, CS, CSS, have been cut so much since 2010 the remaining combat formations we have look unbalanced on an ORBAT chart due to some of their formations lacking their own CS CSS.
Which means without robbing other elements they cannot deploy.
And that is the metric the 73K must be measured on – how many deployable brigades can it put in the field, be that at persistent Brigade level or a one off best effort at Divisional level. The latter is what the Army is built around within the ARRC, of which the UK is framework nation.
Bastion did not have much of the combat arms because they were spread throughout Helmand mate.
Again I emphasize, an army will not be made up predominantly of Infantry and armour, they are but one part of a machine.
I’m beginning to suspect that David knows this, but doesn’t want to engage with, or admit it.
My divisions? I don’t have numbers. In the old days a warfighting division with a full suite of Div Tps could be 20 – 25k strong, but I guess even BAOR divs were about 15k strong or so.
Wallace nowadays talks of 10k divisions, but that sounds an under-estimate. Perhaps 3 Div might be around 12-14k strong. Not sure. 1 Div is of course a different organisation entirely and is not intended to deploy overseas as a division – its main role is to be a repository of persistently engaged forces and to work with international partners.
Camp Bastion had far more than 2,000 troops from UK, USA, Estonia, UAE, NL, DK. It was the main Joint Operating Base in Helmand province and was where most helos including AAC were based and most CS/CSS were there as well. As Dern says, most of the combat arms were out in FOBs and PBs miles away.
You are right that only a small percentage of troops in the army or in a given deployment are combat arms (Inf/RAC/ AAC) – possibly 35% of the total – and that only a relative few of those are on stag/patrol at any one time.
“Only one in five of the 72,000 will be fighting regiments – about 15,000.’
Just a point of detail David: the infantry is always calculated by the army planners as 25% of the army establishment, so the latest cut to army strength reduces it automatically from 22,000 to 18,000, as indeed is happening. The other combat arm, the RAC, is meant to be 10% of the total but that rule seems to have been binned of late, as the RAC is a long way south of 7,200 trained troops.
Don’t forget the AAC, also a Combat Arm.
Didn’t think there was a rule that RAC is 10% of the total – sounds high to me.
Maybe back to mid late 80s time when the RAC had 13 Regiments of Tanks, 12 of them in BAOR, and the divisional FR Regs?
13 Regts of tanks?! I don’t remember that many.
Wouldn’t RAC have been 8 armd regts and 5 armd recce regts in the 80s?
13. It’s a quote I know very well from a very comprehensive book on the British Army from the 80s, I’ll check when I’m home.
To me it makes sense.
As the Armoured Bdes varied. Of the 3 per Division, 1 had 2 Tank Regs and one MI Bn on FV432, and the other 2 the more familiar 1 Tank Reg, 2 432 Bns.
1, 3, 4 Divisions in BAOR. By that ratio that’s 4 per Division.
The FR Regs were, as we know at Divisional level on top.
Later I will find the exact passage to confirm or rescind.
I
Thanks Daniele. Must get my memory serviced!….and of course we had 2 Armd Div in Germany in 1(BR) Corps up to 1982 and then they redistributed the armour to the other divs and went back to the UK (with Div HQ in Imphal Bks, York) to become 2 Inf Div with 24 Inf Bde (comprising Saxon Inf bns) and 15 and 49 Bdes being TA bdes.
OK. Confirmed what I thought.
Encyclopaedia of the Modern British Army, 3rd Edition, by Terry Gander, 1986.
Quote – “There are now 13 Armoured Regiments in the British Army, of which 12 are based in BAOR. There is also a composite training Regiment at Bovington ( as we know ) These Armoured Regs are known as Type 57 or 43.
Further on, it states, on Armd Recc Regs, there are 2 in BAOR, at Herford and Wolftenbuttel, and will be “joined by a 3rd from the UK in time of war, for support of the remaining Armoured Div ( This I’m sure would have been for 3 Div, as 1 and 4 were located “forward” and 3 was in depth) This Reg “is known as Armoured Recc Reg (Tracked) (UK) and based at Wimbish. ( Now long gone from RAC as our RE EOD elements are there.)
This Reg “is one of two with identical equipment and organisation” ( other is at Tidworth ) and they both differ from the 2 FR Regs in BAOR as “having 3 Medium Recc Sqns and 1 GW Sqn” The Tidworth based Reg “finds a Sqn for ACE AMF (L)
There is “a 5th Armoured Recc Reg” and that was at Windsor, for either BAOR reinforce, UK Home Defence or another task.
So that is 13 regular Armoured Regs and 5 Regular Armoured Recc Regs, plus a Sqn of Ferrets in Cyprus, the Berlin Bdes Armoured Sqn ( from a T43 Reg ) and lastly the 5 Yeomanry Regs of the TA.
The Regs he lists, with badge.
1st QDG. Royal Scots DG.
4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards.
5th Royal Inniskilling Dregoon Guards.
Queens Own Hussars.
Queens Royal Irish Hussars.
9/12 Lancers.
The Royal Hussars.
13th/18th Royal Hussars.
14th/20th Kings Hussars.
15th/19th Kings Royal Hussars.
16th/5th The Queens Royal Lancers.
17th/21st Lancers.
1 RTR.
2 RTR.
3 RTR.
4 RTR.
Then you’ve the Household Cavalry of the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals, at that time separate Regiments.
So 18 Regs, which is the 13 Armoured and 5 Armoured Recc I outlined above mate.
Thanks mate. Incredible. Now only 1 RTR exists out of all the four RTR regts and it only has one sqn of tanks?
But 12 armd regts in BAOR! – An average of four tank regts per div, a far higher ratio than today (which is a mere two armd regts to the div).
I do remember 5 armd recce regts in the wider army Orbat – I always thought that was a lot at the time.
That at least has not changed. And as they cut Tanks, but not regiments, it has by default expanded. 3 Light Cavalry, 3 Armoured Recc will soon become 3 KC, 4 Armoured Recc. ( Armoured Cavalry )
It is incredible. How far the army has fallen. I remember the calls at the time that it was too small!!!
Good observation, but I think plenty of RAC regiments have been cut since your Gander book was written, not just tank numbers.
Gander: ” 13 regular Armoured Regs and 5 Regular Armoured Recc Regs, plus a Sqn of Ferrets in Cyprus, the Berlin Bdes Armoured Sqn ( from a T43 Reg ) and lastly the 5 Yeomanry Regs of the TA.
Total 23 Regts plus 2 ‘independent’ sqns
Now 10 Reg and 4 Reserve regts – Total 14
Louis, The army is so much more than a warfighting division.
He did not say that to be fair mate. He said the headline figure should be enough, if ORBATed correctly, to form 1 Division, as mandated by HMG in 2010.
And that 4x needs reforming so fully deployable with CS CSS.
We know the army has plenty of other elements.
All correct to me.
Ahhh, OK. I get your point. Just that there is often a fixation on the warfighting div, as if that is all the army has to field, although it is of course the largest (probably) and most significant part of the Field Force. It would be interesting to tally up the regular manpower in 3 Div to see what proportion it is of the 73k.
Well, we know some complain about fighty and non fighty bits of a military and their % of the force.
But you know me, without the non fighty bits the sharp end does not work.
So I have no issue if only a % of the 73K are sharp end. We both know that is not how an army, and a military, operate.
Sorry for the late reply Graham.
Maybe it’s poor wording on my part, my point was that the army should be able to field 2 divisions with 73,00 personnel. Add in the 4,180 Gurkhas which are not counted in that number but provide 2 infantry, 1 signal, 1 engineer, 1 RLC and 1 SFAB and you get 77,180 personnel.
In the original Army 2020 plans, 3x had 4 brigade HQs and 28 regular regiments/battalions and had 15,000 regular personnel.
The division now has 4 brigade HQs, 3 group HQs and 36 regular regiments/battalions. Using very simplified maths an increase of about 1/3 should give a size of around 20,000. A light division of 16x and 2 other light infantry brigades should be less than that, let’s say 16,000 max. Including Gurkhas that’s 46% of the total armies size in those 2 divisions.
Using wiki the French Army has 2 divisions of 25k each and the Franco-German brigade with 3,000 assuming half are french. With the armies total size at 118,600 that gives a percentage of 45% in the two divisions. The French also have 11 battalions overseas not in those divisions compared to just 3 for Britain and 5 including Guards.
Obviously that is very simplified maths but my point is that the army should be able to fill 6 BCT’s from 77,180 troops and the fact right now that only 4 BCT’s can be fielded shows that manpower isn’t being used efficiently.
Thanks Louis. It is of course one thing to create an Orbat that includes all your 73,000 troops – and puts many of those in the two divisions – and another question as to how many troops you can actually deploy on operations at once. If that makes sense.
We always used to reckon that 70% of the troops are in the Field Force and 30% are in Static units. Can’t quite use that metric now (without adjustment) as the 73,000 includes those who have done Ph1 training and are now on Ph2 training, but not those who are on Ph1 trg.
Assuming say there is another 3,000 young soldiers (very wild guess on my part) in Ph1 training (who weren’t counted in the 73,000 figure) and add in the 4,180 Ghurkas – and you have a real reg army total of 80,180. Now you can appy the 70/30 ‘rule’ – so number of soldiers in the Field Force is 70% of 80,180 ie 56,126, and soldiers in the Static units is 24,054.
Interesting that you estimate 3xx as 20,000 strong. So you have 36,126 for manning the rest of the Field Force – ARRC HQ/Framework units, 1xx, 6xx, Fd Army Tps (incl 16x).
So that is Structures ie Orbats.
As to the reality of what can actually be deployed. I understand that the reasons that only 4 BCTs are deemed deployable by our UKDJ community (although the MoD may have a different view) is that the other formations do not have a full complement of regular (ie readily deployable) CS and CSS troops.
Then there is a further reality pill. A number of soldiers in field force units are not deployable for personal reasons – they may be on a long career course, on resettlement (courses/leave), in detention/awaiting court martial, are medically downgraded/need significant medical treatment (that’s usually about 10% of a unit).
Agree.
Those are some of the biggest gaps at the moment. The key enablers like the RFA manning shortages need to be addressed. Same with the RN submarine manning.
So 72k is too small. Would you care to share your detailed analysis which has led to this conclusion? Bearing in mind that we have had higher recruitment targets and been unable to fill them (as have most NATO countries). So either you believe that father Xmas should give us more soldiers or accept reality. Fantasy or reality seem to be the options.
🇬🇧
Well there is nothing surprising there with the figures, fxxxxxg tories and Labour with their fxxxxxg policy of cut,cut ,cut, what I would love to see this country run by a government full of veterans who know where to fix the defence issues ,I know it’s only a pipe dream but that’s what we need ,not fxxxxxg useless tossers like sunak and his government full of wankers and Labour are they or more will they be anybetter?only time will tell on that one
Understand it is very frustrating and when talking about cuts some people put posts out thinking were putting UK down .But sadly David it is what it is 👍
well put David!
Why would any young man ( yes I did say young man) want to join when they are faced with a potentially negative future, crap housing for many and a culture that is more interested in developing diversity than picking the best.
….not to mention that there are no kinetic operations out there, and haven’t been for nearly 10 years.
Soldiering today must mainly be about training, garrison duties and admin – with a few units going off to do deterrent stuff like Op Cabrit. Dern, I am sure will be far more eloquent on this aspect than me. I have heard that morale is very low in the army right now – mainly due to lack of real soldiering?
Wouldn’t know. Bit of the Army I’m in has been very busy the last few years.
The Armed Force’s has to reflect society. And like it or not, we do live in an ever more diverse society. People who aren’t gay, or of colour, or different religions can still make superb soldiers, sailors and airmen. Otherwise we are just alienating a potential recruiting pool. Now people shouldn’t be recruited if they don’t make the grade over somebody else just to tic a box. But the Arned Force’s still can offer a career that can be very rewarding. Even the money is better than most people think it is. I stayed in some crap accommodation and also some superb accommodation. And that’s going back 10+ years.
No great argument with what you say Robert but whether we like it or not, and I don’t, there is too much talk in the services about meeting targets based on sex, colour and so on. People being gay doesn’t worry me in the least. It’s always been the case but artificial targets of X number of women and X number from an ethnic background is just plain stupid.
Genius observation “The committee concluded that while troop numbers are crucial, they aren’t the definitive metric for the army’s capabilities”.
Good thing Poland is serious about defence and we’re surrounded by seas.
Personally it’s about MP’s having more for themselves, 80’s90’s we had hundreds of fighters and bombers.
Thousands of troops, equipment up the yingyang, Now we are a laughing stock.
To that end we’re as the money gone!?
Discuss
Who (really) is Charley Coleman – and why has he/she written the Paper? No credentials for Coleman shown?
Given that it has been filed in the HoL library, was it commissioned by the HoL prior to their Defence debate in September?
Why is Prof Gaskarth confused about what the army is meant to do? – is he really a Defence expert? He then lists 9 scenarios showing what the army can (and has often done) – so maybe he is not confused after all.
Why does Prof Chalmers say, in effect, we could only have a larger army if it is less well equipped – the equipment in most cases exists – eg. we could convert 213 tanks to CR3 rather than 148. If the army hypothetically increased by 5,000 would we really not be able to find kit for them?
In many ways as the army has shrunk, the kit has not always got better – much (not all) of the army’s kit looks mostly the same as it looked 20 years ago.
In some ways is this really the fault of the Army? They spent so many years stuck in Afghanistan doing what apart from being shot at!
We lost the capability of War fighting in those years and the kit was neglected to our cost now. We really are starting from scratch again as I see it!
The long term equipment issues go back to Labour’s door as no programmes were started and seen through up to 2010.
Tracer. FRES, and others all going in circles, cancelled, and the main vehicle fleets left alone.
So that is not the army’s fault.
What is, to my view, is what they’ve spent their budget on since 2010. The money was in place for 3 Heavy Armoured Brigades post 2010, with CHLEP, Ajax and WCSP all funded through the armoured cavalry and AI programs.
What happens? We copy the French Heavy Medium Light set up and Boxer, now a 6 billion plus programme, is expanded and brought forward from 2027 to 1st priority, while those other 3 programs are underway.
Why not stagger and do each properly before adding yet another?
That is nobody’s fault but the army’s.
Also, did the army decide that they wanted one of the most expensive APCs in existence in Boxer? If so, why?
What was wrong with the existing Inf Bdes on Foxhound? Keeping them would have left our 3 AI Bdes untouched.
As it is, one is gone and the IFV of the 2 that remain are going. Could the army not seen the car crash coming?
The army must shoulder some blame for not pushing modernisation of core, warfighting equipment during the ‘Afghanistan years’ but there was budgetary pressures at play. An equipment support project on AFVs that I was doing in 2009-2010 was defunded ie cancelled.
Of course training in armoured warfare in Salisbury Plain, BATUS etc continued throughout the Herrick years, so skills were not blunted but the kit, especially AFVs, was neither properly upgraded or replaced.
Given that the life of an AFV should really be about 25 years, then CVR(T), Warrior and AS90 should have been replaced a very long time ago. CR2 should have been replaced (rather than upgraded) about now (ISD was 1998). Other equipment has been replaced all too slowly and in small quantities (ie Rapier FSC replacment).
The AS90 never give the Army much more improvement over the M109s ,when you take look at M109s are still in service around the globe including the USA yes with upgrades .One could argue there were getting long in the tooth but still AFV been 40-50 yrs in the UK sadly the norm .Only now looking to replace them maybe with more Archer or K9s .So for me never seen the point in money spent putting AS90 in service.
Andrew, I am not sure where you do your research but AS90 was better than the M109A2 it replaced in just about every metric.
AS90: carried 12 more rounds than M109, its gun had 6.6km greater range (12km more range if L52 were fitted as planned), had an exceptionally tactically advantageous burst fire capability (3 rds in 10s) that M109 did not have, had a higher rate of fire over 3mins and over 60mins. AS90 had far better armoured protection (45t vs 27.5t veh), required 1 less crew member to serve the gun, had a lower height profile, had a more sophisticated and reliable transmission, had far better suspension for better ride comfort and higher X-C speed and which was more maintainable, had an NBC system, had better fire safety (electric servos rather than turret hydraulics), had better firefighting capability, had an APU for silent watch.
Why do you say all that is just little more improvement?
What I don’t see the point in is why AS90 was not progressively majorly upgraded over the years including adoption of the Braveheart L52 version.
Thanks for that Graham did jump in to quick but can assure you your post has been took on board. Has for Braveheart we’ll put that down to HMG mate .🍺
OK. Thanks. I am sure AS90 is still giving good service – with Ukraine – despite its lack of major updates. Still – we all look forward to seeing a replacement that is even better – who knows if it will be our first Korean product!
Wallace states recently re keeping the higher headline personnel figure would cost 5 billion.
Where does that come from. The army equipment budget.
That’s why Chalmers says that.
I’d rather have 72 thousand well equipped and organised soldiers than 82 thousand soldiers with 5 billion worth less of equipment.
So Apache E goes, Boxer goes, AJAX goes, all the Deep Fires upgrades go, FMF goes.
That sort of thing.
Do we want numbers. Or equipment.
It cannot be both with the money available unless more OTS cheaper stuff is bought.
And Boxer for example is not cheap.
This is why I keep calling for a better balance between quality and quantity.
The 73K figure is acceptable if they’re equipped correctly.
Regarding the modernisation of our army, any idea which rifle will be replacing the SA80? The Americans are equipping their front line soldiers with a 6.8mm round (M7), do you think we’ll follow suit or stick with something 5.56?
Mate, not my area at all. So no idea. One of the army lads like Dern will have a better idea.
At the moment nothing, the OSD for L85 is 2030, whatever is the replacement will be will be an AR platform, and guessing the calibre for general use will still be 5.56 mm, too many NATO forces have either adopted a new rifle or are going to and these are all 5.56 mm,
the let to be announced rifle for the Ranger’s is going to be in 5.56mm, so NATO is not going to change calibre anytime soon.
Now 6.8mm as in the Sig MCX M7 may be adopted by SF at some future date, although they have just adopted the Knights Arms SR 15 to replace their C8’s.
Bearing in mind the M7 and its sight Vortex Razor cost the US Army about $15000 each, far to much for a general issue rifle, and remember the majority of the US forces are still going to us the M4.
No hes raiding the personnel budget for the equipment.
They have been doing this for 10 years now , so when does it stop.
Its no longer the tail wagging the dog, its the collar wagging the tail and the dog
already from £46 bill 21/22 the overall budget in only 24% for military personnel, 5% for civilians
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1137992/UK_Defence_in_Numbers_2022.pdf
They only way they can save £5 bill which is 10% of the total yearly budget from small reductions in numbers is because they save on equipment as well. So forget about better equipped smaller numbers as the budget assumptions are that buying less will happen as well
Small reductions in numbers?
Thanks Daniele, of course usually manpower is cut primarily to save capitation costs, principally pay and pensions over time.
There is also a secondary effect, a saving in equipment, true. Decision to cut the third armoured regiment saves 400 persons’ pay & pensions, enables a barracks (or part of super-barracks to close and be sold off) and enables you not to buy 56 tanks and the other supporting vehicles and their kit. So I do get the point.
Hopefully the politicians realise that not all those 73k are deployable on operations (in practice), but that’s a different story.
Hi Graham
Remember though, in the case of the third armoured regiment, the KRH, they are not being cut, they are to reform on Ajax. So yes I know what you are saying but it does not apply in their case regards the pay and personnel.
We need that 3rd Armoured Regiment though! I don’t see it happening mind.
I think the changes will mostly be musical chairs between Divisions, Field Army Troops and enhancements to the RA.
Hi mate. My example could have been better picked! You are right. KRH is to be reroled not disbanded.
My point is that cuts are made to manpower to save capitation and the cuts to equipment are a corollary. The cut from 82k to 73k regular army establishements saves the capitation costs of 9k people, and there are further cuts to equipment that are linked. The army then creates a new Orbat to fit the new politically-set numbers.
Of course it should all be the other way about.
Threat Assessment should lead to Structure (Orbat) which should lead to manpower and equipment figures. But that ain’t how the game is played!
I amm sure you are right about musical chairs – and a lot of double-hatting.
Yes, well explained mate. It saves a lot of money.
72,000 trained army personnel are fine if it is recognised that in the event of anything other than conflicts with non-state opponents they represent a cadre rather than a main force with the principal function of enabling as rapid expansion in numbers deemed sufficient to meet both operational and reinforcement roles. In such high intensity conflicts the country will have to rely more on the ‘artillery’ inherent with mass than the more exquisite ‘snipers’ seemingly envisaged by our defence planners.
An Army of 72,500 to me is worrying, and what’s to say that it may be reduced in size in the near future again? Where does it stop? Reduced to 65,000, 50,000? As far as I’m aware you still need numbers to hold ground, with what’s going on in Ukraine which could have the potential to spread quickly and far the last thing we need is to reduce what we have even more.
Well for starters Capita need to be sacked, Army Careers Offices returned, with real soldiers in them. And then pay, conditions, accommodation improved.
And depending on the costs of that, where are the funds for a personnel increase?
I agree with you BTW, numbers matter too. But I’m always realistic, what do you go for if both numbers and tech in the scale wanted are not possible with the funds available?
The army can not man the regiments it has. Sort that before expansion.
As always. nukes in core budget is a big contributor to the tight finances.
It is an elephant in the room that to my knowledge no journalist will confront HMG about and no DS will comment on.
I must say, since discovering this site and reading the many comments from yourself and others who are clued up to say the least that it’s a rather complex situation, with many factors I haven’t thought about, regarding trident & it’s replacement, what about a compromise, couldn’t we arm Tomahawks with nuclear warheads ( I know they wouldn’t have anything like the yield of trident warheads) and put the billions saved for more ships, aircraft etc?
No. That has been suggested many times.
A TLAM is more vulnerable to getting shot down compared to a SLBM, so MAD is negated.
It also lacks the SLBMs range, and can not target multiple targets with MIRV.
It would work as part of a TRIAD of options from strategic to tactical nuclear carried from aircraft. The other major nuclear powers would not weaken themselves by only having their nuclear capability on a cruise missile, and nor should we.
Yes that makes sense, bloody hell, there no easy answers/ options in the world of defense, it’s all very intriguing to say the least, I’m beginning to think I should have taken up football as an interest 🤔
I recall the Lib Dems suggested just that at one GE. I trust them on defence as much as the Cat next door.
Do both mate, footie and defence. I see you got an answer from Dern re the army IW. I knew he’d have the answers.
No, no easy answers. There is always the political aspect too. We are P5, G7. That means you have nukes to be at the top table. That takes a lot of money. I know in one of your first posts you bemoaned the amount spent, and it is vast. The issue is it should not be in core budget. At least, the capital replacement costs should not be. They were placed there, it is said, by Osborne in 2010.
On the deterrent, this scenario that was described in ” Think Defence” many years ago is always on my mind, and so so true.
You have a thief. He is sizing up 2 houses.
One has open windows, and car and house keys left on a shelf by the front door when he peeks through the letter box.
The 2nd house, it has security lights, cameras down the sides, and the windows are all closed with locks.
The thief peeks through the letter box.
He sees a loaded shotgun held by the owner, pointing at him.
Which house does he choose to burgle?
I disregard what all those CND and Russian sympathisers say. While our potential enemies have the bomb on an ICBM or SLBM, we must too, so they understand the capability that it spells their destruction if they want to use that option first.
The range of Tomhawk is 1,600km, or (in other words) if a Submarine is litterally sitting in Murmansk Harbour it can just about target Moscow.
The Range of Trident is somewhere above 12,000km, which means it can be launched from near the Falklands and still hit Moscow.
Also Tomahawk can be shot down, Trident, so far, can not. CASD and MAD mean nothing if you have to launch from a predictable spot and your missiles can be shot down.
When Captia took over, I was (As I have mentioned before) employed in Officer recruiting (I wore the RMAS TRF) before they did, if we had any issues with a applicant , I would either touch base with the local recruiting centre where the civilian staff were all SMEs in recruiting, if that didn’t help I could touch base with Westbury (And they were really good) and I had my contacts at Sandhurst . meaning I could resolve any issues within hours.
Then Capita took over, and we started seeing problems, a lot of problems so many in fact that RMAS organised a huge meeting I drove down with 2 LT Cols for the meeting held on a Sat (not impressed) at Churchill Hall. The theatre was packed and almost to a man everybody was angry at Captia. We all were hit with a three line whip:
“You will make it work”
Funny enough the man who shouted that out, later left the army to work for Captia at Upavon (their main base)
We tried to make things work, but where before we had humans, we could touch base with, who knew what they doing, now we faced people recruited from civy st who knew SFA. A Col and I decided to pay Upavon a visit in the hope of building bridges with somebody down there who then would be able to put a face to us both when we rang up in future. So signed a white fleet vehicle out of MT, drove down there and met the guy in charge who until recently had been working at Currys selling electrical stuff. He simply wasn’t interested. (Funny enough whilst been shown the building I couldn’t help but notice that the army had seconded a load of soldiers to sit alongside the new recruiters in which to help them do their job) on getting fobbed off at Upavon we drove to Westbury for coffee with the office staff there (I always took them cakes and stuff in which to keep them sweet) whom I had learnt on in the past. Another thing I couldn’t help but notice about Upavon, was the number of very expensive cars in the car park.
As I left the army 6 years ago, I haven’t a scooby how things are going regards recruiting I only have one mate actually serving whom I touch base with and he can’t wait to leave.
Two instances of Captia failing a potential recruit:
1) A young lady at University applied to join the army as an Officer, she was rejected after stating on her computer application that she had broken her leg as a child. She appealed (CC’d me into the email) claiming the leg break was as a child, and that she had fully recovered, that she had represent her county (Dorset) in Cross country and was now running for her Uni. Also, she queried their claim that she would be unable to pass Basic training as they felt her leg was too weak. She replied, that due to the hold up in her application, she not only had joined the TA passing the recruits cse with ease, she had joined her Uni OTC. With this new information they changed their mind and stated she was to keep a record over the next year of all the training she did and then reapply. She walked.
2) Another girl, was rejected due to stating on the medical part of her application that as a teenager she had suffered from acne. (That was the case I took to Upavon) she was absolutely stunning to look at, not a blemish to be seen, and yet.
There are a lot of questions about how Captia was brought in to replace a system that was actually working and if what i suspect is true, then heads must roll
A shambles mate. Thanks, I know you’ve described several training stories before.
Rumours were strong a few months ago about Wallace pressuring Sanders to accept a further cut to 70,000.
Shocking, I’m genuinely concerned where it will all end!
Important too to realise that nothing like the ceiling figure would everdeploy on a single operation. Our warfighting Div (3 Div) is probably 15,000 – 17,000 or so strong.
I think there is some complacency that we will always have the US / NATO fighting along side us in any major conflict. We should have contingency plans and that would mean having reserves. We can see from the Ukraine war that attrition is part of the strategy played by Russia.
I can only think of the Falklands conflict as an example of a major conflict fought by us without the US or NATO – so how likely is the scenario of your concern?
We have contingency plans for pretty much every MACA/MACC/MACP scenario – but it is a lot harder to imagine a UK-only warfighting operation, let alone plan against it, but PJHQ will have contingency plans for reinforcing the Falklands and may have some other contingency plans for defending or recovering other BOTs.
Reserves – of course all three services and including RM have reserve forces – the Army Reserve (was the TA) is 27,570 strong (1 Jan 23). In addition are the Regular Reserves (ex-Regs with a reserve service remit) is 1,668 strong.
Attrition Reserve equipment – there is some, certainly in terms of AFVs and artillery systems. I doubt there is much published information on this.
My concern is based on the probability the US votes for a Trump like president who resents shouldering of the burden of NATO. While pointing out that we are casually copping out by making continuous cuts to our armed forces.
Yep. I can see the logic. If I were American I would be hacked off that the wealthy Europeans could not defend themselves without US assistance because so many countries do not even stump up the minimum of 2%GDP on Defence.
In July 2022, Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov stated that the Armed Forces had an active strength of 700,000; Reznikov also mentioned that with the Border Guard, National Guard, and police added, the total comes to around one million.
Tory Mantra of “Do More With Less”. Bonkers.
What is their wage and service conditions, compared to British service personnel.
It’s a false comparison. At BAORs height it had, I recall, 55,000 personnel out of an army of 165,000.
The army needs to be a certain size yes, but not those figures.
The Ukraine comparisons are starting to piss me off tbh, they’re a nation in an existential war land war with a much more powerful neighbour, having been gifted equipment by the billions by the world’s most powerful military alliance.
It’s not a comparison with a single member of said alliance on a peace footing, not planning on a war, that is supplying Ukraine with kit for free!
(Also goes for random twitter takes such as “have you not heard of suppressive fire?” And “you don’t need foot recce when you have drones.”)
The last 2 examples especially sound seriously ignorant.
The existential point is important, then the gloves are off. Am I right in saying that, back before 2010 the 2nd, 4th, 5th Divisions in the ORBAT we had then which, I believe, apart from their Bdes regional administrative roles, were framework for expansion if we ourselves needed to increase the Field Army’s size?
What would be that framework now beyond 19 Bde? Will the RR get a Bde, Divisional set up like you provide in your own diagrams?
They are, it’s mostly caused by videos of Ukranian troops firing rather willy nilly into bushes and woodlines, or using automatic and professional soldiers commenting on the waste of ammo, then keyboard Warriors coming in and going “uh it’s called suppressive fire hurr durr.” followed by (if they’re patient) the soldiers explaining what suppressive fire is and how it’s applied, followed by the internet soy boys either going “well it would make me keep my head down” (ignoring the point that they’d either not be being shot at or not be being shot at for any significant amount of time before the Ukranians start shooting at something else) or “Hurr so what should they do just die?” It’s tiresome and I’ve seen it too many times.
2, 4 and 5 where marked as regenerative, but I had no idea how that was supposed to work, their brigades really only had about 1-2 TA battalions in them each, so short of some massive hidden plan to conscript civilians and force them into uniforms, I don’t see how that was going to happen.
https://i.imgur.com/gG4L2YA.jpeg
Btw, I’m trying to make a full orbat in the same style for the army’s evolution between 1989 and 2023 (with intervals at 89, 08, 10, 15, 20, and 25, but I’m struggling to find data below the brigade level for 08, if you know any please send it along).
Right. I’ll have a good study of that later, and a good think re 08.
Re 08, assuming you don’t need Bde ORBAT diagrams re number of RAC Regs, AI Bn, and so in Bdes, but the specific units that were in certain Bdes in those roles at that time?
If the former I have books which list such details. If the later, apart from Bdes like 3x and 16x which change little, not sure re Armd Bdes 7, 20, and Mech Inf Bdes, 1, 4, 12 as to what Reg was with who at what time without a big wiki search.
I did ironically have all of that on my database, but as I update it constantly it’s of course long since changed!
Around that time 19 Mech had changed to 19 Lt and moved to NI. And 4 Armd became 4 Mech and came back to UK.
The UK Mech Bdes had fewer Tanks as the Medium Armoured Sqns went into UK based Armoured Regs, some of the early Labour cuts to armour. The MAS had Scimitar.
Armd Bdes had the usual 1 Tk, 1 FR, 2 AI, Mech had 1 Tk, 1 AI, 2MI. Usual CS CSS for both types.
19x differed in its CSS in that it had 19 CSS Bn, unique as far as I recall, when it’s RLC CS Reg and REME CS Bn merged.
Let me know some specifics and I’ll see what I have.
Line Infantry = Royal Anglian Regiment = Personal Weapon = 7.62 SLR = 7.62 GPMG = Carl Gustaf 84 mm. NBC Kit was the best, although hot in summer. The kit I was trained to use back in the day. Hated, was the old steel helmets and putty’s both, still part of Army kit early 80s.
The problem with saying that numbers is not the only metric is that although it’s true…training, equipment and ability to deploy and sustain are also important…numbers are still a “bedrock” metric that you then layer on the training, equipment and deployability….without the foundation of the correct numbers of troops all the training and equipment will not help you…one human being is only still able to be in one place and do the same amount of work over a specific time….
So the “army of the future will be leaner, more lethal, nimbler, and more effectively matched to current and future threats.”
Spoken by an accountant, with no grasp of reality, effectively telling lies.
In order to hold territory, you need boots on the ground. Boots on the ground = numbers and more numbers!
In 18 or so months of war, Ukraine has lost somewhere in the region of 100,000 military personnel?
Bean counters believe the British Army will be able to fulfil all their obligations, with an Army of 72,500.
There really isn’t anything constructive, that you can say about the creatures who make these decisions.
Numbers do matter. The greater tech capability argument (T45 vs. T42, Tiffy vs. Tonka etc) is true in and itself, but the enemy also has greater tech capability so it cancels itself out.
British defence policy has always been to get someone else to do our fighting for us, until we really have to get involved and form a mass professional fighting force in order to win the war. The public and politicians have always been anti-military, so what can we expect from them?
In Iraq and Afghanistan our armed forces started fights they couldn’t finish, and now we can’t even start one. In a real war one needs both mass and technology to prevail, not one or the other.
Should we still qualify to be part of the UN Security Council?
James, you really need to give a few examples of where the UK gets other nations to fight for us, and where we have been slow to participate in warfighting. Our forces have never shied away from a fight, surely? We have often been amongst the furst to join a multinational war – WW1, WW2, Gulf War 1 and 2….
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Graham, only when the UK forms well-equipped mass armies under a professional leader do we start to pull our weight amongst allies and prevail on the modern battlefield: I am thinking of those armies raised under the likes of Cromwell, Marlborough, Wellington, Kitchener in the Second Boer War, Haig in the Great War, and Montgomery and Slim in the Second World War.
We did indeed ‘pull our weight’ during the 1945-93 Cold War, and certainly during the 1982 Falklands War and 1990-91 Gulf War, and we had the will, mass and technology to win all of those, not to mention such campaigns such as Northern Ireland and the Malayan Emergency through to successful conclusions.
We couldn’t even fight in any of those campaigns with the much-reduced armed forces of today, let alone win them. There is still plenty of old-skool warfare going on in the world: right now the Ukrainians are doing all the fighting and dying to protect European civilisation from barbarianism. I get that NATO cannot commit its soldiers to combat, but how long would the UK’s armed forces last in such a conflict if they were?
Technologically advanced equipment is used to enhance military capability: it should not replace troops. Otherwise one ends up with a situation like they had in Afghanistan, where the army was doing lots of fighting, but never dominated the ground. Large armed forces also allow for more rest and training time between deployments.
James, being an island nation has led to a maritime strategy for most of our history with a perceived requiredment for a large, capable bluewater navy. With no land borders there is very greatly reduced likelihood of invasion hence only a small professional army capable of being enlarged in time of major war in Europe. I can understand why we therefore have a small army relative to the Europeans.
The Cold War was a peculiarity requiring sizable (but never enormous) forces (Army and RAF) to be stationed on the continent, permanently, in a deterrence posture – thus we had a continental as well as a maritime strategy in play.
Options for Change decided that the army should reduce post-Cold War from 160,000 regulars to a mere 120,000 (that figure having been carefully worked out and judged to be the right size for our post-Cold War commitments and likely future tasks) – and to reduce to just 386 tanks (hence the size of the post-Cold War CR2 order).
In your oldest historic examples, we led armies of like-minded nations to oppose and defeat the aggressive military opponent of the day. That fitted with having a small army of our own – and leveraging the wish of allies to achieve the same end. I never thought we hired these allied soldiers to do our dirty work for us.
In the example of the world wars, not only did we fight with allies but also raised the size of the army by appealing to citizens to join up in larger numbers and then in conscripting. No problem with that – did the job. Back to a small army when peace broke out.
In the present time we should of course still have a regular army of 120,000 with 386 tanks – but the beancounters have scythed away at the Options for Change logic many times since 1991. Fair enough to reflect that some tech fielded in the last 30 years enables a smaller army to be justified but most of the cuts were to make savings for voter-popular social programmes (health, education, social services).
I think we could do the Falklands Conflict again but with fewer ships and submarines – but the likelihood of the Argentines seizing the islands is much reduced given the much stronger military footprint there today.
To do Op Banner again would be impossible – at its peak we had 21,000 soldiers (mostly infantry) there and still had to raise a militia of 6,500 UDR men and women.
If we get engaged in a Ukraine type warfighting conflict we would send 3 Div which unfortunately it would have only two classic manouevre brigades, the third being Deep Strike/Recce which cannot seize and hold ground as it lacks infantry. How long would 3 Div last? – good question. It does not help that much of their kit is old and unmodernised and there are some capability gaps, but the guys are well trained and we have Reserves.
In Afghanistan we needed at least an infantry division for an area the size of Helmand – instead we started with a single BG and ended up with just a reinforced brigade. Beancounters and politicians restricted the numbers deploying. Hence lives were lost and we did not really succeed and were bailed out by the Americans who surged into Helmand to help us in 2009. Most embarrassing.
Graham, we don’t have a navy which is anywhere near as powerful as it was in WWII or the Falklands War: on the war memorial in Stanley, there is a list of naval and merchant vessels which participated in that campaign as long as your arm, many of them unknown to posterity, but all vital for winning it. The Argentine air forces are probably the only real threat to the Islands these days, but we might have to fight a similar war in a remote area with no allies against another well-equipped enemy sometime in the future. If we want a blue-water capability, a small navy of 30,000 won’t do it.
The ‘British Way of Warfare’ has had its critics before amongst those of us who believe that the centre of gravity of our enemies (France, Germany or Russia) lies in central Europe, and this is where we need to confront and defeat him. Had the BEF of either WWI or II which was deployed in France in the first part of those wars been on the continental scale of mass, the Germans would not have come as close to defeating the Western Allies on the Marne as they did in the Great War. In the second show, our Army could have attacked in the West and taken pressure off the Poles, thereby dissuading the Red Army from invading from the East. Also, the Allies wouldn’t have had to abandon Narvik and North Norway the following year, in order to reinforce failure in France and Belgium. This action turned a defeat for the Germans into a victory by default, which left the entire Arctic coastline extremely hazardous for the Arctic Convoys later on.
I think the real problems we have in Britain are our one-eyed pacifism and distrust of a large standing army.
The first is enabled to take root because we are geographically isolated from any real existential danger, which means that a catastrophic defeat like the recent one in Afghanistan can be almost immediately forgotten about, and we can pick and choose which wars we get involved in, unlike, say, Finland in 1941: the only liberal democracy to fight on the Axis side, because they didn’t have an alternative, anymore than they have had ever since.
The second attitude towards professional armies might have stemmed from Cromwell’s raising of the New Model Army, from which some of our oldest regiments trace their origins. That army was religiously and politically motivated, and completely professional in its conduct of its campaigns, all three of these characteristics being wiped out from the British Army after the Restoration of the Monarchy: note that, as soldiers, we swore our Oath of Allegiance to our Monarch, not to our Prime Minister. The last characteristic – professionalism – has thankfully been part of our Army when it is at its best, but the self-declared attitude of its soldiers is amateurish: no-one admits to being ‘keen’ or that they freely chose to take up the profession of arms.
“I’d rather he was doing something else, to be honest.” That was a quote by a mother visiting the Army Foundation College, where her son had started his military career, shown on a recent TV documentary. That’s the public attitude we militarists are up against.
Hi James, I am enjoying our discussions! Certainly our Navy is smaller than in WW2 and the Falklands Conflict of 1982 – I would not expect otherwise – and later reductions were justified to a very large extent.
I think our air force experts might challenge your thought that the Argentine Air Force today poses much of a threat to the Falklands: Wiki: “In mid 2021, one analysis found that the numbers of operational aircraft with offensive combat capability were practically at a level of zero. In addition to only around six A-4 Fightinghawk aircraft being operational, the availability of C-130 transport aircraft was only assessed as being at six of originally 14 aircraft. However, 23 IA-63 Pampa, 12 T-6C+ Texan II and 12 EMB-312 Tucano trainer aircraft were reported operational as of 2021”.
Biden has requested that Congress authorise the sale of ex-Danish F-16s and ex-Norwegian P-3C Orion MPAs to Argentina – to stop them buying Chinese aircraft. So the situation regarding effectiveness might change dramatically.
You say if we want a blue-water navy than 30,000 won’t cut it. We have always had a blue-water navy and still do have – in fact it is one of only 3 in the world. The Todd & Lindberg classification system (c.2015) states that USN is Rank 1 and RN and French Navy are Rank 2 blue-water navies – so we have the 2nd or 3rd most capable navy in the world. Do you think that our carriers, escorts and submarines can’t deploy across the globe? If the Falklands Conflict happened again, certainly we would deploy a much smaller fleet of naval vessels but each ship and sub has greater capability (and less vulnerability perhaps) than their counterparts of 40 years ago – so which area of naval operations might we have a capability gap or shortfall?
I agree that a larger stanfing army could and would have deployed larger forces in the BEF in WW1 and WW2 – we deployed only 6 Divisions to the BEF in WW1 and only 13 divisions (390,000 men) to the BEF in WW2!
I am not sure anyone now mistrusts a large standing army – no-one surely thinks they might turn on the Crown, Parliament or the People. I think the issue is that there is no logic for a large standing army – just 120,000 Regs augmented by a 60,000 Reserve Army as per ‘Options for Change’ should do it.
I very much agree that we should have the ability to deploy on operations (very rarely) without allies – Op Corporate and Op Banner are examples of the most demanding of those; it is the latter that we would not be able to replicate.
Graham, I presume the Oath of Allegiance UK service people swear is so they come out to protect the reigning monarch and head of state in the currently unlikely event of another Crown Vs Parliament deathmatch, in which case, the UK Government would have to hire the Wagner Group to fight for them…half of London’s owned by Russians anyway, apparently, so at least the Wagnerites will be fighting on home turf.
The Argie air forces were the main threat to the Falklands at the turn of the 20th century, having had their Skyhawks upgraded by the Americans. But that was a few financial crises ago, so they’re probably broke again these days.
Northern Ireland was a sideshow operation for the UK armed forces – one could do a whole career and never have to go there, because the army was so large, the main effort being the BAOR and RAF(G) in West Germany. At one time there were 22,000 soldiers in the Province, and the number only dropped below 10,000 for one year before.the peace process started kicking in. The army in NI had the best internal security technical kit of the day, and numbers on the ground to dominate it by constant patrolling.
Compare those two deployments to recent times, where the army never had more than 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and around 2,000 at the most in Eastern Europe right now – not even a speed bump for the T72s.
We don’t seem to realise that high tech isn’t a replacement for mass on the battlefield, and that our enemies have long been catching up with the West in acquiring or developing similar equipment. So they’ll have both mass & tech. In the Ukrainian war, the technical kit being used by both sides is cancelling out each other’s advantage in using it first. Hence we have trench warfare, World War casualty figures, and a range of Soviet and ex-NATO AFVs that most of us remember from the Threat pamphlets or Exercise Lionheart.
We European NATO members need to start taking the situation we are in more seriously, and start re-arming in order to defend ourselves: the USA has done most of the fighting for us in various wars since the end of the First Cold War. Now that the Russo-Ukrainian war has turned from one of movement to one of attrition, the UK Government’s projected force reductions mean that we are again falling into the deep sleep of England, from which we shall be awakened by the crash of bombs.
Indeed, that war is similar to the Spanish Civil War, in that it is once again dividing the world up into three main power blocs: then it was Fascism, Communism and Western Democracy, now it is Kleptocracy, Authoritarian State Capitalism (i.e. Fascism or ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’), and Western Democracy. This is the line-up for WWIII.
Air Power is usually the deciding factor in modern war: had WWI gone on into 1919, the Royal Air Force would have used its large bombers with four man crews for strategic bombing of German cities and industrial areas. That developing capability was scrapped after the Armistice. WWII introduced strategic bombing from the first day, and ended with wholesale annihilation of major cities, so WWIII should start where the last show left off. Time to dig out ‘Protect and Survive’, and start removing the doors in our houses to make internal shelters, then. 🤪
Hi James, here is the Oath of Allegiance: “I… swear by Almighty God (do solemnly, and truly declare and affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III, His Heirs and Successors, and that I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, in Person, Crown and Dignity against all enemies, and will observe and obey all orders of His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, and of the (admirals / generals/ air officers) and officers set over me. (So help me God.)”
So yes, if Parliament opposed the King militarily, then our Armed Forces would defend the King.
Hard to think of Op Banner as a sideshow, when 1,300 soldiers died and 6,000 were wounded – and it was essentially ‘active service’ when BAOR was not.
I am not sure what you mean when you say the USA has done most of the fighting for us since 1991? Which wars did we fail to turn out for?
I am embarrassed that Europe (wealthy, with many men under arms and sophisticated kit) still needs the US to bolster our defence of the continent, especially when the main threat (Russia) is less than competent.
Someone once said that when an army drops below 100,000 it is not an army any longer – it is a mere gendarmerie. We do need a certain amount of mass in the army, especially for deterrent and defence of the Continent – and one under-strength ‘armoured’ division and a ‘golf-bag, mix and match’ division does not constitute ‘mass’.
Graham, Northern Ireland was a sideshow to the main effort: it was a job which needed doing, of course, and we had the numbers, equipment and will to finish it, unlike recent operations where we have failed. The UK armed forces had to commit only a small fraction of their manpower, and a lot of soldiers never served there in their careers. It was seen as a ‘live training area’: good operational experience (you were a ‘proper soldier’ if you had the GSM for it), but we all knew it wasn’t anywhere near being in a total war. By the way, no-one called it ‘Operation Banner’ when it was on; we called it ‘NI,’ or ‘The Province’ if you had done a tour or two there.
The USA provides the western Free World’s foundation of military security, by any measure: for Desert Storm, the US had 500,000 soldiers in theatre, compared to Britain’s 35,000 at any one time (50,000 over the period). Post-war, they maintained two armoured divisions’ worth of equipment at Camp Doha in Kuwait up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and had deployment exercises using it most years during the 1990s. US aircraft have carried out the majority of airstrikes against ISIL, and US forces have stepped in to kick ass in Basra after we got out in 2009, helped us in Helmand, and provided bombs and bullets when European NATO nations started running out of steam over Libya in 2011. The US is right now, as usual, providing the lion’s share of financial and military aid to Ukraine, the outcome of this current war being of no effect whatsoever to the former nation.
Britain is foremost amongst the USA’s allies, but our military contributions have declined with our constant force reductions: post Iraq/Afghanistan, we seem to contribute about as much as a nation of five million people like Norway or Finland.
The MoD is using adjectives to cover up providing a mediocre service, in the same way that new-build estates of mediocre houses are described as ‘exclusive luxury developments.’ I remember buying a mediocre ham and cheese sarnie from LNER which had six lines of adjectives describing that foodstuff in similar glowing terms: how much more ‘leaner, agile and capable’ will the UK armed forces get, on their way to eventual extinction? They could be classed as ‘extinct in the wild,’ having fired very few shots in anger for several years. Now ‘surviving only on parades, training areas and very small population groups here and there.’
Thanks James, when you said that the US had done most of the fighting for ‘us’ I assumed you meant ‘for the UK’, rather than for the West. Some of those conflicts came about due to US foreign policy rather than the collective will of the West – Iraq invasion 2003 being a case in point.
I don’t think we should just be amazed and awed at the fact that the world’s only superpower can deliver more military force or military aid than we can – that is a given.
I don’t see that we do little more than a country of 5m.
We surely are the second biggest supplier of military aid and training to Ukraine, far more than any other European nation. We run the eFP task in Estonia and contribute troops to the mission in Poland. We are the only country in Europe apart from France that can do serious carrier operations. The RAF continues to attack ISIL on Op Shader.
I do agree that our forces have atrophied badly (and the ‘leaner and more capable/agile’ strap line is tired and ludicrous) especially since since the end of the Cold War. We have clearly reached the irreducible minimum level in all three services (but many would argue that point was reached a decade or so ago).
Other nations too have fired few if any shots in anger in recent years, but I doubt that our armed forces will become extinct – there is a demand for our forces to be used in Deterrence/Defence Diplomacy missions and in helping Other Government Departments in MACC/MACA tasks. We should also not assume that peace will last forever – and that warfighting will be required, even if only at small or medium scale.
Graham, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was just as much a UK mission as an American one – the RAF had been flying operational missions over Iraq since the mid-1990s on Operations Bolton and Resonate from Kuwait and Turkey. Tony Blair was as set on ridding Iraq of its WMD materials as George Bush was on regime change. Lest we forget, Saddam Hussein dragged both our countries back into the Middle East with his unjustified invasion and brutal occupation of Kuwait, brought about partly because he couldn’t pay his debt from the Iran/Iraq war – another unjustified invasion he thought he could get away with. By the way, most of his war materiel came from China and the Soviet Union – it was a media lie that Iraq was ‘supplied by the West.’ The only western kit I saw lying around in the desert after the ceasefire was a copy of ‘Survive to Fight’ – the old British NBC manual – translated into Arabic. Desert Storm was a war in which the UK certainly did pull its weight – in a time when we had the confidence that we had the firepower and will to win, which we nearly always did. I think Aden in the late sixties was the sole ignominious end of empire withdrawal that led to a failed state.
The other myth that justifies UK armed forces reductions is that the previous force was not agile and rapidly deployable: they have always been that, usually within 24 hours and fielding heavy weaponry, like in the Falklands and Gulf Wars, both won by the Cold War armed forces in joint operations.
We are in a major war right now – with Russia. We are doing everything short of deploying our own soldiers in the theatre of war. This means that we are in a worse situation now than at any time during the 1945-93 Cold War, because we can only get out of it when the Russo-Ukranian war ends, which it never will, short of extermination of one side’s armed forces by the other.
Europe’s unending problem with Russia predates the Soviet or Tsarist eras: we are facing a modern Mongol Horde, who exist only to conquer the West, whom they envy and despise. Russia can’t sort out its economic model any differently to the Mongol one: they are both based upon waging a Total War of conquest, robbery and destruction, rather than enriching their citizens. The Ukrainians don’t call them the Orcs for nothing: the only thing made in Mordor was weaponry.
The sooner we in the civilised free world wake up to this fact, the sooner we can start building, manning and equipping an east-facing defensive line of positions that will make the Maginot Line look like a single strand barbed wire fence. I can’t see any other way we can co-exist with people one can’t trust an inch.
Ditto for the UK military diplomacy, training and advisory, peace-keeping roles etc etc: those are ‘bits & bobs’ we’ve always done, with anything from around a thousand British soldiers serving with UNFICYP, to just a dozen or so on training teams around the world. Indeed it was an RAF Regiment liaison team who, in 1965, recommended the USAF Security Police based in Viet-nam beef up their firepower with light armour and adopt the AR-15 rifle, which was first being used in combat by Commonwealth forces in the 1962-66 Indonesia Confrontation (another win for us).
Great post James. If the WMD evidence had been really strong and fully endorsed by JIC, then the 2003 war would have been justified although UN sign-off would still have been required in my view.
I fully agree that it is a myth that British forces have historically lacked agility (in the eyes of defence-cutting politicians, anyway) – we have deployed just about everywhere you care to mention and have never once been ‘late to the party’. The speed of the deployment to the Falklands was extraordinary.
I doubt the wisdom of expending £billions on fortifications on NATO’s land border with Russia – you mention the Maginot line – it was so expensive that its construction starved the ‘mobile’ French army of funding. But we should increase the numbers on the eFP mission – up to at least one MN brigade in each Baltic country and Poland.
Graham, the UK and USA will have to carry out unilateral military interventions from now on, because China and Russia are on the UN security council, and will always veto any proposal by us.
Mikhail Gorbachev backed us up for Desert Storm, as well as other Arabic nations such as Egypt and Syria, who sent around 50,000 troops between them.
When I was at Ali As-salīm airbase on Op Bolton in 1998, we had a lecture given to us by one of the scientists working on the Prototype Biological Agent Detection System, in conjunction with RAF Regt CBRN-trained NCOs. He had been on the UK inspection teams, which were tasked with quantifying and disposing of Saddam’s WMD materials. He said that if they were prevented from inspecting for just one day, the materials would be moved from the site, and the teams would be starting from scratch, with no idea how much Hussein had left.
A Tornado navigator gave us another briefing, showing us camera footage of their missions over the southern no-fly zones. He said that Hussein was set on developing a nuclear weapon, and we were in Kuwait to prevent him from doing that.
In Tony Blair’s autobiography ‘A Journey,’ the former Prime Minister set out the case against Hussein, listing all the UN’s resolutions and demanded which he had ignored or otherwise not complied with.
Saddam was like a poker player with a lousy hand, and we called his bluff, exposing his weakness – that all his WMD materials had been destroyed or had disappeared. I think he was more worried about his Arabic neighbours than the West, and had to keep everyone thinking he had some means of defence left to him. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish.
I went back to Iraq several years later for the post-invasion security and reconstruction operation of Op Telic 3: our Area of Operations around Basra International Airport had been won by then, so we treated it like a sandy Northern Ireland, and rarely needed to fire a shot in anger, let alone had many fired at us when on patrol. That part of Iraq was heading in the right direction: national elections were held with no outbreaks of violence, the airport was opened to allow the local population to go on the Hajj, RAF Regt teams trained up the airports Border Security force, and handed over the civilian part of that establishment to them, the Marsh Arabs welcomed the local security and stability our presence gave them, their children started going to school, with support from the USAID organisation, electrical power was restored etc etc. And that was just what I saw in five months on patrol.
None of this was reported by the news media of the United Kingdom, who were only given the bad news. So barely two years after Blair left office, British troops left Southern Iraq for good, having stayed there barely seven years, equivalent to pulling out of NI in 1976. No wonder the former place went to shit the moment they left. Well, we were winning when I left.
Another briefing we had in Kuwait in ’98 was from a visiting RAF air marshall, who told us about that year’s Security and Defence Review, which would make the RAF ‘leaner and network enabled,’ whatever the latter adjectival phrase means. Six years later, I am sitting in the OP North tower in command of three other Gunners observing 10km of perimeter fence. We are on for 24hrs, before going on to 24hrs on the main gate PVCP and after that, 48hrs of mobile patrols in the AO. We’ve just come from 24hrs of QRF and 24hrs of anti-MANPAD patrols. We get 24hrs off in 18 days (3×6 day sets). The OP equipment includes a couple of weapon night sights, a hand-held thermal imager (when it’s not being taken out by a mobile patrol), a man-portable radar set, and a pair of 7x50mm binoculars. Comms include a Clansman radio and a field telephone, with a secure walkie-talkie – really ‘network enabled.’
There we were, the cutting edge of RAF operations and UK foreign policy, part of a 165 strong ground defence squadron responsible for ensuring 500 square kilometres of an alien and potentially hostile land is safe for all to go about their lives. Had we not been there, the airport would have never been safe for aircraft of any type to use it. We did the job there and then, but I knew then that we were at full stretch doing it, and had no reserve manpower to cope with a real challenge to our capabilities. I never had that feeling in NI in 1988….but I did on Op Granby in 1991, where 21 of us manned three OPs to protect all the RAF’s SH force of Chinook somewhere near Wadi Al-Batīn.
Tony didn’t write about the justification for his round of defence cuts in his book, of course. UK Prime Ministers must be in some sort of debt with Satan: “You shall have ultimate power on Earth in exchange for fulfilling the demand of my chosen myrmidon Vladimir to weaken your own civilisation, thereby letting barbarianism flourish. Do you accept, mortal one? I’ll even chuck in immortality as baksheesh. Boris thought that was a good deal.”
James, of course China and Russia (and previously the USSR) always had a veto but have they used the veto to prevent ‘the West’ from undertaking military operations?
Great stories from the various deployments you have been on. Interesting that your group was short of manpower on Op Granby as otherwise we put a lot of people into the field (43,000?).
The army was totally under-manned on Herrick – we needed an Inf Div for Helmand but started with just a BG (and Bde HQ top cover) – soon went to a bde group but that was about a third of what we needed.
Pathetic, maybe the Pollies should take a 2.4% cut
The one thing that is key is DETERRANCE and that means visible presence. For that you need numbers to cover that. Leaner manned units such as Ships at sea that have the right connections and back up to get additional support when requested. Our current conventional numbers do not really give us strength at the table, good kit, excellent training and ability to cover is what is needed and some times tech is not the answer as low tech can do the job better and easier which can be changed easily to meet the current in your face situation. We do need a real mix of tech and numbers. We are fortunate in the UK we have water all around but that also makes it harder to keep and eye on our coastline which is far from secure. I advocate the idea of having greater reserve/auxiliary numbers to back up the full time team. They are then available for not only for war but to cover any need for numbers the nation may need. That gives us strength without high cost and can fill those roles we may need.
One thing the army does well is to have a range of tech. The infantry for example can be in a light role units with low-tech soft-skinned vehicles or in units with wheeled Protected Mobility Vehicles such as Mastiff with pintle-mounted MG, or in armoured infantry battalions with cannon-equipped tracked Warrior.
So manning is not a prime factor in maintaining an efficient and fully capable defence?
Why then are so many RN vessels alongside due to under resourcing (apart from maintenance support)?
Why are our fast jet capabilities limited by a lack of qualified fast jet pilots?
Why can’t the army come near to effectively meeting its aims and commitments?
Sorry but until AI becomes the norm we need adaquate qualified and expert personnel in all three services and their associated supporting communities.
Manning is of course a key factor in maintaining efficient Defence.
I am puzzled by RN numbers – 2010 SDSR reduced the Service to an Establishment of 30,000 regs yet strength at 1 Mar 23 was 33,009. Something is not right here!
Army at 1 Mar 23 was 78,059 regs strong against establishment of 82,000, so very undermanned.
Recruiting is poor for several reasons, mainly that ‘the offer’ is weak compared to the expectations of todays young people, and the recruiting org, Capita, is incompetent.
Retention is poor due to low morale in many parts of the army, for multiple reasons including: (I perceive) lack of active service, boring routine, modest pay and pay rises that do not track inflation, poor impact of service on personal and family life, variable quality of accomodation with much of it being poor, disatisfaction with old kit, reduced opportunities to do fun stuff.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-50976302
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/31/exodus-armed-forces-anger-squalid-military-housing-drives-troops/
You are still doing better than us in Australia. We only have 7 Infantry Battalion are we are about to loose another, ALP Governments always screws Army as in the contract for 450 IFVs reduced to 129 (although we hope for additional 50 batch contracts). We are still using 60 year old M113AS4 for three Battalions that will probably reduced to one with a tank squadron. Artillery seems to be the only winners with SP Arty K9 Thunderer and LR Fires with a Regiment of HIMARS.
Are your M113s operated by armoured infantry ie are they meant to keep up with the M1 tanks?!