The Government Has Failed On Defence
The British Armed Forces survived Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. They stood firm for decades on the front line of the Cold War. But, since 1990, they've been salami-sliced almost to death.
I got my Army number in 1988, when I joined Glasgow & Strathclyde Universities Officer Training Corps as an officer cadet. This was a small Territorial Army unit that didn’t have much of a war role - if the USSR had gone to war with NATO our permanent staff would have become the home defence HQ for southwest Scotland - but it was part of a fairly substantial army.
In 1988 the Regular Army had just north of 153,000 troops. Over 55,000 of them were deployed in Germany as part of British Army Of the Rhine (BAOR), which consisted of three full armoured divisions; a UK-based infantry division would have joined them in the event of war. As well as these four divisions 1 (British) Corps, the fighting component of BAOR, contained an independent artillery brigade, the three battalions of the Parachute Regiment, a light armoured reconnaissance brigade, two regiments of Army Air Corps helicopters and a host of Royal Engineers, logistics units and other assorted assets. Three more infantry brigades were based in Northern Ireland, and twelve - with between one and four Regular battalions each, and TA battalions filling the gaps on mobilisation - scattered around the rest of the UK. In total the Regular Army had 55 infantry battalions, including Paras and Gurkhas, and the 55,000-strong TA could contribute another 38, along with dozens of reconnaissance, engineer, air defence, artillery and logistics regiments. The Army also had more than 900 Challenger and Chieftain tanks and hundreds of artillery pieces.
Backing up this formidable ground force, and giving it global reach, the Royal Navy operated three light aircraft carriers, four ballistic missile submarines, 14 nuclear attack submarines, twelve diesel-electric attack submarines, 14 destroyers and 34 frigates. The Fleet Air Arm had three squadrons of Sea Harrier fast jets to operate from the carriers. The RN also had dozens of minesweepers and patrol vessels. Its partner in the Naval Service, the Royal Marines, could deploy the three Royal Marine Commandos as a full brigade, with its own helicopter and amphibious support.
Meanwhile the Royal Air Force had 30 squadrons of fast jets, flying an array of aircraft that included 65 Buccaneer strike aircraft, over 100 Phantoms, about 100 Jaguars, more than 170 Harriers and close to 400 Tornadoes. These were backed up by dozens of tankers, cargo aircraft and Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft and hundreds of helicopters and light aircraft.
The Rot Sets In
By the time I joined the Regular Army in 1994 things had shrunk a bit. John Major, in his eagerness to spend the “peace dividend” - you all remember how war became a thing of the past when the USSR collapsed, right? - cut the Regular Army to 120,000 in the 1990 “Options for Change” defence cuts. The four divisions became two, 1(UK) Armoured in Germany and 3(UK) in the UK. The Royal Armoured Corps was cut from 18 regiments to ten, losing almost half its tanks in the process, and the infantry fell to 40 battalions. The RAF lost all its Phantoms and Buccaneers, as well as three squadrons of Tornadoes and many other aircraft. The Royal Navy’s fleet of escorts - destroyers and frigates - was cut from around 50 to 40, while nuclear attack submarines were cut from 14 to twelve and the diesel-electric boats were completely disposed of.
Then in 1994 we got “Front Line First”, which was supposed to trim supporting units and civil servants while leaving front-line combat forces unscathed. In fact it confirmed that the tank fleet would be slashed again, from around 500 Challengers to just 259 Challenger 2s. The Army shrank to below 118,000 troops and the Navy’s escort fleet fell to 35 destroyers and frigates - well below the “dangerously low” level of 42 that had led to the notorious 1981 John Nott defence review being abandoned after the Falklands War.
In 1998 the new Labour government came up with the “Strategic Defence Review”. I was at the Infantry Battle School in Brecon when this was announced, and we were all called into the main auditorium to be briefed on it. The senior instructor opened the session by saying “Is there anyone here from the TA? Well, bye.” It wasn’t quite that bad, but the review did “modernise” the TA from 56,000 to 42,000. The RAF lost two more Tornado squadrons, while the Navy was cut by three more escorts and four attack submarines.
Tony Blair wasn’t finished with us yet, though. In 2003 we got “ Delivering Security in a Changing World”, which of course actually meant delivering less security. The Army lost four more infantry battalions, half its air defence missile units, a quarter of its self-propelled artillery and 84 Challenger 2s, leaving just 175 operational tanks. The RAF’s remaining Jaguars and another Tornado squadron were axed, and the RN escort fleet slashed to 21 destroyers and frigates. The attack submarine fleet was also cut, from ten boats to eight.
In 2010 David Cameron was elected, and immediately launched a new and hugely damaging defence “review”. The Army was butchered again, bringing it below 100,000 with a target strength of 82,000 and 33 infantry battalions by 2018. Tanks and artillery were cut further; Cameron claimed there would be “just over 200” Challenger 2s, but this counted almost a hundred in storage. The AS-90 self-propelled guns were cut to 87 out of an original force of 144. We lost our maritime reconnaissance capability completely, something of a problem for an island nation, and there was an expensive mess with the new aircraft carriers.
The Edge Of Disaster
At this point some serious problems started to appear. Among Cameron’s more stupid decisions was the complete withdrawal of British Forces Germany, the post-Cold War successor to BAOR, and the announcement that from now on most soldiers would spend their entire career based at one of a number of “super garrisons” in the UK. Obviously it escaped his notice that the sort of people who join the Armed Forces are actually quite likely to enjoy travelling and seeing new places; taking away the (very popular) option of postings in Germany, and sentencing troops to a full career in Bulford or Lossiemouth, were unlikely to attract new volunteers or encourage those already serving to remain. In my own case I’d left the Army in 2009 - but I heard about the 2010 defence review in my office in Mazar-e Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, which sort of proves my point about travel.
Anyway, it turned out that while an Army of 155,000 could easily attract enough recruits, one of 82,000 couldn’t. By 2018 there was a serious recruiting shortfall and 8,200 military jobs were vacant. I suspect the move towards spending a full career in some soulless UK garrison town played a major part in this, but the main cause is easy to identify. In 2012 the Army’s recruiting system, which had worked perfectly for around 400 years, was handed over to outsourcing specialist Capita.
Crapita, as it quickly became known, proceeded to crash the system. Potential recruits faced delays, repeated requests for the same information, erroneous medical rejections and a general climate of appalling inefficiency. The time between applying to join the Army and actually beginning training ballooned from a few months to, on average, over a year. In 2013 one regimental recruiter complained that 65 applications to join his regiment in a three-month period ended up with only three new soldiers joining. Between 2012 and 2020 Capita didn’t meet the Army’s recruitment target once; annual shortfalls ranged from 21% to 45%. The government’s response to this was to extend the company’s contract.
Cameron ordered another defence review in 2015, which mostly just moved pieces around the board and finally ordered new maritime reconnaissance aircraft to replace the long-gone Nimrods, after it became too embarrassing to keep asking the USA and France to keep Russian submarines out of our own waters. Replacements for some old equipment were ordered, although five of the 13 new frigates the Navy was due to get were swapped for a cheaper, less capable design.
Then, in 2021, it was Boris Johnson’s turn. Boris decided to cut the Army yet again, to just 73,000 troops, while upgrading 148 Challenger 2s to Challenger 3 and disposing of the rest. Infantry battalions were cut to 31 Regular and 16 Army Reserve (formerly the TA). Unfortunately these numbers are deceptive, because four of the 31 have recently been re-roled into the unconventional-warfare Ranger Regiment, which is useful but means they can’t serve as conventional infantry battalions, and five more have been restructured as Security Force Assistance Battalions, which are also useful - their job is to train foreign forces - but of course can’t really be used as conventional infantry battalions. Then there’s 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, which forms the core of the Special Forces Support Group. That can’t be used as a conventional infantry battalion either. So how many Regular infantry battalions do we actually have? That would be 21. The Army Reserve battalions are no longer capable of deploying as actual units, as the old Cold War-era TA battalions were; instead they’re used to fill out gaps in the poorly recruited Regular infantry.
Boris also retired two frigates early, although with the goal to increase the fleet from 17 back to 19 escorts as soon as possible, and cut the RAF’s Typhoon fleet from 160 to 137, with only 102 of them in service and the rest unlikely to ever fly again. The order for F-35B Lightning II stealth aircraft, set at 138 in 2015 but with only 48 actually ordered six years later, was quietly altered to “around 60 or 80”. It now seems to have settled at 74, which allowing for maintenance and aircraft allocated to training means there won’t be enough in front-line squadrons to fully equip one of our two aircraft carriers. Bear in mind that unlike the old Sea Harrier, the F-35B isn’t a purely naval asset; it’s also the RAF’s main strike aircraft. So government penny-pinching means we can have half a carrier air wing or land-based strike, but not both at the same time.
Meanwhile, with 74 F-35Bs and 102 Typhoons, the UK will have a total fast jet strength of just 176 aircraft. A hundred and two Typhoons is currently enough to equip just seven operational squadrons; 74 F-35Bs will equip another four. That will give us eleven fast jet squadrons. The United States Marine Corps has almost twice as many fast jet combat aircraft as the UK plans to have - it has 331, currently, and has ordered a total of 420 F-35s - and that’s the smallest of the USA’s three separate air forces. The US Navy has 594 fast jets, plus another 96 for training; the US Air Force has 2,074 plus 136 heavy bombers and 31 AC-130J gunships. Why does the USA, with five times our population and eight times our GDP, have eighteen times as many combat aircraft? And why does Russia, which has three-quarters of our GDP, have ten times as many combat aircraft?
Now Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister and we’ve had a “refresh” of the 2021 review. Sunak has announced £5 billion in new spending, which will raise the defence budget to 2.25% of Britain’s GDP - as the refresh says, “significant progress in meeting our long-term minimum defence spending target of 2.5% of GDP.” As it’s been limping along at 2% for years, creatively assisted by “refinements” like counting the cost of the nuclear deterrent and even pension payments as defence spending, this is certainly a small improvement. Recently Sunak has announced (but, of course, not actually delivered) even more spending, which would reach the “long term” target of 2.5% by 2030 - although, of course, this means nothing because he’ll be out of Downing Street by the end of the year.
Unfortunately it’s still nowhere near enough. In those long-ago days of 1988 we were spending 4.21% of GDP on defence, excluding nuclear weapons and pension payments. Bluntly, that’s what we should be aiming for again, not Sunak’s pathetic goal of 2.5%.
Meanwhile the government has quietly announced that two more frigates will be retired early, leaving just nine in the fleet; along with the six Type 45 destroyers we now have a grand total of 15 escorts. The Navy’s two Albion-class assault ships are rumoured to be headed for “extended readiness” - mothballs - too, removing most of our amphibious capability. Apparently the Navy can no longer recruit enough sailors to man even the shrunken fleet it’s been left with.
It isn’t just the Navy that can’t recruit, of course. The Army is trying to water down security vetting for overseas officer candidates, and has missed its soldier recruitment targets every year since 2010. Much of this is due to Capita, of course, but no doubt another factor is the current trend in military advertising. Recruiting efforts are now neglecting the sort of people who traditionally join the Army in favour of trying to recruit snowflakes who want to rescue babies from floods or, even worse, religious maniacs who will risk the lives of their entire unit so they can stop to pray in the middle of an operation.
Seriously: If you’re leading a patrol in a contested area with gunfire audible fairly close by, and one of your soldiers suddenly decides it’s time to strip off his weapon, helmet and boots so he can pray, what are you going to do? Will you stop the patrol and patiently wait for him, as the section commander in this pathetic video does - even ignoring a radio message to avoid disturbing him? Or are you going to give him a swift kick up the arse and tell him to do that stuff in his own time?
Time Has Run Out
Successive governments have got away with this massive vandalism because the international situation has let them do it. It hasn’t exactly been a peaceful 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell, but the wars we’ve been involved in have been small or low-intensity. There’s been plenty of wiggle room to let politicians say we can enjoy a “peace dividend”, or spend less money but get “smaller, more agile” forces that are better suited to counter-insurgency operations against asymmetric threats.
Well, that’s all over now. In case you missed it, there’s a big war going on in Europe. Over 100,000 people are dead and millions have been driven from their homes. There’s nothing low-intensity or asymmetric about the fighting - and, worst of all, it’s very clear that all the big, expensive war machines our politicians have been trimming, slashing or allowing to age into obsolescence are as important as they’ve ever been. Russia and Ukraine are fighting it out with tanks, artillery and combat aircraft, all the things we don’t have enough of anymore. The idea that small, light and mobile forces are all we need has been comprehensively demolished.
Russia’s forces are performing poorly in Ukraine, but of course they performed poorly in 1941 too; nevertheless, four years later they were in Berlin. Russia’s military leadership will learn, and it will put those lessons into practice. If Russia wins in Ukraine, within a year or two their military will be much more formidable. We need to be able to confront them with a formidable military of our own, one funded by at least 4% of Britain’s GDP. If that means ending foreign aid, we need to end foreign aid. If it means slashing benefits, we need to slash benefits. If it means shutting down a slew of useless government departments and state-funded quangos, we need to shut them down. We need to put aside the nonsense of “peace dividends” and defence on the cheap, and start spending some serious money on the Armed Forces again. We need new equipment, in large numbers, now - not a small quantity in ten years. We need deep stockpiles of munitions so we can keep fighting if the war lasts more than a couple of weeks. And we need to fix our broken recruiting system, raise military pay and end the persecution of soldiers and veterans by greedy left-wing lawyers.
Because I’ll tell you what happens to people who beat their swords into ploughshares: They end up ploughing for the people who didn’t.
Death by 1000 cuts
Brilliant article! But very worrying. Our supposed Conservative government are descending into LibDems hellbent in creating a nanny state. They seem oblivious to the increasing threat of Russia with support from China and Iran not forgetting the growth of malign Islamic influence and antisemitism in the UK.