In a stark interview with The Independent, former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger urged the UK to rearm, rebuild its military-industrial base, and integrate defence more deeply into public life in response to mounting threats from Russia.
“We have disarmed militarily, self-evidently,” said Younger. “We’ve largely dismantled our military and industrial base, which is a big problem.”
He expressed concern that Britons have grown dangerously detached from the idea of national defence: “I think we’re more comfortable thinking about the army as like the England football team; they go and do their thing over there and we watch it on telly – and that can’t happen anymore.”
Speaking as part of The Conversation, a new expert panel series launched by The Independent, Younger warned that Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to dominate Eastern Europe represent a real and present danger. He argued that a form of national service or broader reserve integration may be necessary to foster a culture of defence readiness.
“This is probably more about a more creative and broader conception of what the reserves is,” he said, adding that integrating defence into everyday life would offer broader societal benefits.
Alongside Younger, Dr Rachel Ellehuus—former US defence envoy to NATO and now Director General of the Royal United Services Institute—warned that the Kremlin is actively “trying to redraw the map” of Europe. She pointed to hybrid threats and Russian grey-zone activity that blur the lines of open conflict, and criticised the dramatic shift in Washington’s strategic posture under Donald Trump.
“Am I saying [Putin] is going to invade the Baltic states or Poland tomorrow? I’m not,” Ellehuus said, “but he is going to test the boundaries of what we call Article 5.”
According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, there was a 300% increase in unconventional Russian attacks on Europe in the past year, targeting infrastructure, government entities, and industry.
Younger concluded that while Five Eyes intelligence cooperation remains resilient, trust between the US and its allies has eroded under Trump. “There will be a very, very strong machine in operation to retain the integrity,” he said, “even if… it’s more at risk than it was.”
Stocking up, speeding up new acquisitions, and maximising current platforms should already be happening. Stop the lazy and easy talking down of the UK and focus energies on fixing it up and at pace!
Agree, Trump’s policies increases the threat level but the task of rearming just got a whole lot worse. Only extraordinary fiscal measures will enable rearmament.
Then we must pay more taxes; pensions and benefits must be cut and we must accept more preventable deaths from the NHS rigorously prioritizing treatment and cutting overheads to achieve value for money.
And let me be clear i agree with you.
Si vis pacem parabellum.
For those who don’t know, this is the motto of HMS Excellent, the RN gunnery school at Whale Island in Portsmouth, it’s now Fleet Headquarters. I served in the 1970’s, when we had one potential opponent, the Soviet Union, and about 100 frigates and destroyers, with the RFA to match. Now we have one immediate opponent, Russia, and several potential opponents who already threaten us, and several flash points around the world, such as the Bab el Mandeb strait. And we have four or five operational frigates and perhaps three destroyers. We are not prepared for war.
Back then ships were a lot simpler and H&S non existent in the services.
But I agree RN is a fraction of the size it should be.
But to be totally fair the Russian surface fleet is a bad joke.
I do sincerely hope that the decision to bin the two tankers is reversed and to keep some of the smaller, useful, platforms. The current excuse du jour is ‘we can’t crew them’ well it is a lot quicker in an emergency to find a veteran crew than it is to build a ship.
Perfectionism is used as an excuse for do nothingism.
How many more people with expertise have to come out and go on record about this issue? The governments response has been lazy, incomprehensible and lethargically slow.
We need a real sense of urgency.
Drag the type 45s in 1 by 1 for sea Ceptor upgrades.
Order in more NSMs
Get all RFAs fitted with either CIWS phalanx and/or 40mm Bofors guns
Get Bofors on both carriers
Just a few examples but urgency is needed.
“ Order in more NSMs”
11 sets were ordered. More the issue is getting them onto ships.
“ Get all RFAs fitted with either CIWS phalanx and/or 40mm Bofors guns
Get Bofors on both carriers”
Whilst I agree that 40mm offers huge advantages over 30mm – not least reductions in maintenance coupled with increases in effectiveness.
I think the carriers may get a laser based system as they have two big GTs and so plenty of power.
We are going to have to fight with what we have now or in 6 months time. This isn’t going to be something we have years to plan for. The UK could be in a shooting war within weeks.
If you were going to make a move, today of all days would be the time to do it as the world’s stock markets melt. Thankfully, I don’t believe Russia is in a position to start an offensive due to unexpected losses in Ukraine. Some observers believe Russia is spending 40% of its GDP on defence, which is tantamount to preparing for war. Trump’s mixed signals with Russia do not mean his forces are not in a position to fight against Putin if the need arises and nothing has physically changed inside NATO’s HQ and its mandates.
He’s made such warnings before. Years ago in fact.
Stuff is quietly happening to get UK into a better footing.
But it all costs money and until some big lumps of cash are made available then not much is going to change.
The one thing you can say is that with the known uplifts forward orders can be placed for munitions to coincide with those funds being made available. Assuming the DBE black hole and spending it all on project Gucci+ [to be cancelled after most of the budget is spent] can be avoided.
Don’t worry HMG have woke up and going to spend 2.5% on defence 🙄
Yes we need – finally – to do things now urgently, but I see very little evidence that Starmer really gets that. e.g. No new Typhoon orders etc.
However, as has been told to UK Defence Select Committee, we need to re-build/re-instate “UK Sovereign “capabilities” across the board, and including the defence industrial base. This may take time, but it would not cost that much, have all sorts of wider benefits to the UK economy and society, and once there is at least a capability, actual production can be scaled up or even turned on en masse when needed. Pretending that foreign owned firms are the UK defence industry does not count when push comes to shove.
…and stop the loss of UK defence firms to overseas buyers/asset strippers. e.g. Limit foreign ownership of key strategic companies and ban short-selling on the UK stock market.
UK already spends more on defence than any other european country, ignore percentage of GDP look at actual amount… begs the question what is it actually being spent on….
Yeah, right. The only war we the people need to prepare for is to clean out parliament and take our own country back!!!!
yep, our leaders have been asleep at the wheel for the last 30 years, since thay began poking the bear after they promised not to
ludicrous !
No-one has poked the bear. The bear has rabies.