Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, has issued a stark warning to Russia, declaring that any direct attack on the United Kingdom would provoke an “overwhelming response” from NATO.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Radakin spoke of the strength of the UK’s defence capabilities and the collective deterrence of the NATO alliance.
“There is only a remote chance of a significant direct attack or invasion by Russia on the United Kingdom,” Radakin said. “And that is the same for the whole of NATO. Russia knows the response would be overwhelming, whether conventional or nuclear.”
Radakin highlighted Britain’s extensive operations, which span multiple continents and underline its role as a key player in global security.
- NATO’s Largest Exercise: Over 20,000 UK personnel participated in NATO’s largest military exercise in a generation.
- Carrier Operations: Two aircraft carriers were at sea this autumn, with one leading NATO forces in the North Atlantic.
- Middle East Engagements: The Royal Fleet Auxiliary and Royal Marines were poised to evacuate citizens from Lebanon, while RAF jets targeted Houthi positions in Yemen, and Royal Navy destroyers intercepted missiles and drones in the Red Sea.
- Counterterrorism and Training: The UK marked the tenth year of Operation SHADER against ISIS and trained 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers through Operation INTERFLEX.
Radakin also praised the enduring contributions of Britain’s nuclear deterrent through Operation RELENTLESS, which he described as critical to NATO’s strategy.
Radakin credited NATO’s collective defence strategy with deterring Russian aggression, highlighting the alliance’s capacity to respond decisively.
“The strategy of deterrence by NATO works and is working,” he said. “But it has to be kept strong and strengthened against a more dangerous Russia.”
While making clear that a direct Russian attack on the UK is highly unlikely, Radakin stressed the need to remain vigilant and adapt to threats. Radakin pointed to the importance of maintaining the UK’s presence in the Indo-Pacific, which, while representing less than 5% of its total force structure, serves as a foundation for long-term strategic partnerships such as AUKUS and GCAP.
As the UK approaches its Strategic Defence Review (SDR), Radakin called for clear-eyed threat assessments and confident decision-making to guide policy and investment. Concluding his speech, Radakin championed the efficiency of the UK’s defence spending, stating that Britain “gets as much – and in many cases more – from our defence budget than our peers and our adversaries.”
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In a lot of areas money is spent very well.
I cringe at the infrastructure costs which are integer multiples of what the French pay. Construction costs in the UK are out of control.
Much as I defend our forces when Trolls belittle them, he sounds deluded with some of that.
2 Carriers: Yes, only one with a small number of aircraft, so.until that is rectified powerless without allied F35.
Middle East:
1 T45 in Red Sea, of only 2 out of 6 available with Daring alongside for a decade or more.
RM and Lebanon. Ah, the RM you just denuded of their LPD leaving them with the ancient Argus and an Bay which lacks an LPDs capability. And once LR(S) withdraws to rest, what replaces it Sir Tony?
Zilch.
Typhoons: Yes, less than a Squadron, with the force
stretched and you in the process of cutting it a little more.
NATO Exercise: 20,000 yes, from all services. And so? Was there even so much as a complete Brigade in that total?
Interflex: A great achievement. That is not scaring Russia, more like antagonizing them.
Our armed forces remain well trained, professional, well equipped in many areas, and a reference military for many.
They can undertake multiple cimplex operations globally, with the logistic tail, alongside peer allies.
But stop sounding like your political masters Sir Tony, they are far too small and are getting smaller by the year.
Agree, the problem we’ve reached is that the military has now finished living of equipment brought on the cold war budget.. seems a long time ago but frigate numbers were all based on cold war budget and we’ve avoided the inevitable by gradually cutting number, LPDs were replaced in 2000 by using the cushion of not having submarine and frigates on a production line as well. Now we’ve reached the point the cupboard is bare
The CDS states that Russia will have an overwhelming attack from NATO so not sure why you would quote solely UK forces in your response.
If we are responding to a Russian aggression on a UK only basis then the British army won’t be involved (see Crimea war 1853 for details) and the response will be one of the following
Nuclear
Cyber
Cruise missile
Sanctions
I believe we have very sufficient nuclear and cyber capabilities to detter the Russians. Our cruise missile capabilities is first rate and we have nearly 1000 weapons which is more than enough to f**k anyone up.
If we do have a limiting factor it is launchers. If we want to send a message to the Russians then we need to be able to fire more than 100 weapons simultaneously. We could do this very easily with a rapid dragon set up for our C17’s we could work this up in a few months for our stomshadow but we should start now.
The Soviet Union was deterred by our Polaris weapon system at the height of the Cold War which is shown by The Seven Days to the Rhine plan. Trident D5 and Vanguard’s are significantly more capable than that system and the Russian Federation is much smaller.
In terms of sanctions given the prevalence of London UK only sanctions are probably the second most effective in the world especially in shipping, banking, minerals and oil.
The UK a would be the worst country in Europe to attack on a solo basis and for everything else there is NATO and even if the Americans don’t come, NATO is still massive, has 2 million uniformed personnel and has a boarder 50 miles away from Russias biggest naval base and its second biggest city
.
You’re not sure?
Because the UK is my country and the CDS is the head of my countries military, so first and foremost I concentrate on them.
My points concerned conventional, which he too referenced.
I’m well aware of both our Cyber, nuclear, and niche special forces capabilities.
If the CDS had only referenced those in his speech I’d be in agreement with him as they’re all aces in our defence capability.
He didn’t.
So I didn’t.
What I did do is debunk his comments.
100%
Hi Daniele,
His comments sounded way over confident, so probably aimed at Moscow. However, the problem with that these days is that they get widely reported so the biggest effect is probably to reinforce the complacency in the UK rather than deterring the Russians.
He also quoted an Article 5 scenario (implied by ‘overwhelming force), but the Russians are very good at grey zone attacks and have been getting more and more brazen. I can foresee a limited attack on the UK that deliberately does little damage other than to demonstrate our weakness. Such an attack, whilst on the face of it would be an Article 5 incident, would probably not lead to a response from NATO as why would you go to war against Russia for a few cows for example..? Furthermore, an overwhelming response? Not as a first response to a grey zone attack we wouldn’t and that brings us to ‘what is the grey zone?’ It seems to be getting ever bigger in terms of the kind of incident that falls under that description.
So I could see a Russian missile landing in a field somewhere remote aimed at creating political instability within the UK and NATO with the Russians saying ‘not us guv it was a rogue submarine commander honest’.
Think it couldn’t happen. 9/11 says anything could happen and Russia is well aware of it and is willing to try anything. Also, given the growing instability in the West I think Russia might be tempted to pour petrol on the fire.
So the CDS needs to get honest without frightening poeple silly otherwise the country will sleep walk into a very nasty situation, assuming we are not already in one. If the head of MI5 can be honest why not the uniformed services..?
Cheers CR
We have one submarine out for nuclear deterrent . Face has air and sea . 1 sub is not enough for deterrent. If you thick the yanks or France would start launching nukes at Russia because they nuked the U.K. then you must be deluded . I don’t care what they are signed upto . They would effectively be killing their own citizens in doing so . So yes the U.K. should base its defence on being able to fight alone . Just like Poland are doing .
How many subs do you think America, China, Russia or france have at sea? Who do you think woukd not be dettered by a Vanguard submarine?
What country do you think could survive a full strike by a vanguard?
You don’t think between 64 and 128 nuclear warheads re-entering over a nation is sufficient deterrent…
Seriously?
I think many of us on here complain quite a lot, but it’s a not swipe at the forces themselves.
It is concern over the lack of depth in numbers/investment, and lack of urgency which is squarely
the fault of MOD/ treasury and sometimes poor project management with defence contractors.
You are right, many here do complain quite a lot 😀
Could be worse, can you imagine the scale of complaints on the equivalent Russian forums!! 😆
There’s a rumour going around that he’s after a fifth star, along with the Defence reorganisation.
Agree the thing about deterrent is you do actually both have and then show the capability..if you cannot deploy the capability or your enemy believes you cannot then your not deterring war and will end up in in a peer conflict.
I must admit, and this is no criticism of those who serve, I’m curious as to what the ‘overwhelming response ‘ would be ? A dozen or so Tomahawk cruise missiles? A cyber attack? Shooting down the next Bear reconnaissance aircraft? A strongly worded letter?
These comments by Radakin are simply dancing on the head of a pin, virtually all offensive and defensive capability has been seriously reduced over the past 30 years, yes we could commit a squadron of fast jets to attack Murmansk or similar but what then ?
The only overwhelming response we really have is Trident.
Then what?
Mistakes have been made and money wasted. We can all list those projects.
The biggest issue though is that our ambition outstrips the budget now that expenditure is included that wasn’t in the past. We either need to address this gap or reduce that ambition. At the moment we have the worst of both worlds, thus reducing our conventional forces to dangerous levels.
Fund defence properly or reduce the taskings and scale of our commitments.
We dramatically reduced our ambitions while maintaining defence spending if you look at a long term average. In the 1930’s we had to guard 1/3rd of the world’s land surface on 2.5% of GDP.
Now we need to guard just half the North Sea and a bit of the Atlantic and a slither of Mediterranean and Caribbean on 2.3%.
You may find the the whole cost of guarding the Empire come from the UK defence budget
Should say ” Didn’t come from the UK defence budge”
Yes but most of it did which was one of the reasons we got rid of the empire. The only other substantial peace time commitment to defence was the British Indian Army. In 1939 Canada had an army of just 500 with no ships.
Most other colonies were free riders as well. Australia refused to make any payments or provide any ships to the base in Singapore.
Much the same issue the USA has been having as well in the modern world.
Yes but you have to remember in the 1920s the British empire made up almost 10% of the total world GDP, now we are only 2.1% of the world GDP…so 2.5% in the 1920s was a lot.
Sorry it was not 2.5% of the British empire GDP it was 2.5% of the UK’s GDP. Most of the empire spent f**k all on defence and there was nothing the British government could do about it.
Places like Malaya and NZ made the odd gift and places like Australia South Africa and Canada where suppose to have their own forces but Australia NZ and Canada where spending around 0.5% on defence in the 20’s and 30’s.
Britain spent around 2.5% which suprises many people but actually 2.5% is the very long term average peace time spending of the British government on defence 1945 to to 1991 was a blip in the spending records not the norm.
We also have a growing population highly skilled in beach landings and amphibious operations to threaten them with
40,000 new volunteers for our auxiliary amphibious army arrive each year in Dover, they are currently largely employed by Deliveroo 😀
I wonder if Radakin is pushed to say these things by No10 or the MoD? Or he just decides to spout utter rubbish off his own bat?
This is the now all too familiar avalanche of words from the MoD or the FCO. Just words. Endless words. … in the meantime, it is probable that Trump will totally change the Western position on the Ukraine War showing just how irrelevant all these words from Britain are.
However, indirect attacks are fine, heavens, kill nationals on the streets of Britain with chemical weapons.
What vacuous words.
The idea that Russia would attack Britain prompting a war is indeed crazy. The idea that if Russia had already stumbled into a war with NATO it wouldn’t attack Britain is also crazy.
National defence policies pursued since 1989 have come to fruition; the country is well neigh undefended. Fortunately, the only large scale war threat comes from a country in what is arguably a worse state. Unless Russia wishes to commit suicide – this cannot be ruled out. Once again, history repeats itself as a bigger farce. Jam tomorrow won’t do. A country that expends time and energy on a tiny hitherto well understood mental health issue and the self invited, that cannot hope to protect its people on its own soil is already lost. Who needs to assault Britain when its leadership is doing such a fine job left to its own devices?
All time russian agressión , ok , what about the politicians assault scrapping the armed forces during 35 years , wich is more aggressive?
I think politicians are even more dangerous than Russians.
Another total wonk with braid. No mention of the enemy within. Whose numbers grow by the week. No mention of the appalling state of his own service. No mention of politicians undermining the UK’s defence and consequently Nato. Yup, another of the useless “brass”.
no it wouldn’t, NATO would do everything it possibly could to de-escalate, while ramping up the rhetoric, they would be like iran respondidng to israel
everybody knows the americans won’t get involved in a strategic nuclear exchange with russia, so if nato ups the ante, we face a tactical nuclear war on european soil, that’s a massive loss to europe, a small loss to russia, and an even smaller loss to the USA