Reforming Britain’s armed forces: Part 1

IF THE POLLS are to be believed, and they always come with caveats, then it appears increasingly likely that the Reform UK party will form the next government in Westminster and that Nigel Farage, all things being equal, will become our next Prime Minister.

A general election must be held by 2029 at the latest, but my guess is that we’ll have one before then, maybe as early as 2027. And on current form Farage’s party could gain an absolute majority in the House of Commons.

A Reform government will face many challenges both domestically and abroad, but if you believe that the first duty of the government of any state is its defence and the protection of its citizens then things military may come pretty high on the agenda. The present dire state of Britain’s armed forces only reinforces this priority.

So, what do I think a Reform administration should seek to do to sort out the UK’s defence posture?

The recently published Strategic Defence Review 2025 (SDR) would be a good place to start. It took so long to produce that it is was arguably out of date before the ink was dry. To a large extent it had been overtaken by events before the final draft was complete, and many now consider it already obsolete.

NATO is not the safe pair of hands that it once may have been

The SDR adopted a “NATO First” approach, which is perfectly understandable given that its main author, Lord Robertson previously served as Secretary General of that Alliance.

But NATO is not the safe pair of hands that it once may have been now that the Trump administration occupies the White House once more; the USA can no longer be counted upon as a reliable ally for its European alliance members.

My personal view here is that any current or future SDR should instead be predicated upon a “Homeland Security First” priority, followed by the defence and security of British political, economic, and military interests abroad in second place, with NATO demoted to the third rung thereafter.

We already know that the UK’s ability to defend the homeland is questionable given the range of threats we might have to confront. I don’t think there is any real risk of an invasion of the British Isles involving ground forces of a hostile nation any time soon, so we can probably be a bit more relaxed on that score for the moment. However, the threats from the sea and the air are a bit more pressing.

Britain is above all else an island nation, and its security has long depended on control of the seas around it. The fact that we haven’t been conquered by invading armies since 1066 bears witness to that.

There has been, however, an uptick in the threats to the UK’s sea defences of late, mainly – but not exclusively – from a revanchist Russia. It has become clear that Putin’s forces have been devoting more time and energy to probing routes into the North Atlantic via the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap strategic transit route, as well as mapping the undersea energy and communications cable networks on which much of the UK’s economy and civil infrastructure depends.

And of course potential enemies could launch assaults from the sea using missiles from surface and sub-surface naval vessels. Of particular concern here is the risk of attack from the west, from Irish territorial waters and beyond, and over Ireland itself, which has no significant defence forces of its own with which to counter them.

To meet this maritime threat the Royal Navy is, sadly, poorly equipped, perhaps more so than at any time in its long and illustrious history, as the current crisis over deploying ships to the Mediterranean is highlighting.

Its fleet is small; with only 15 major surface combatants (two aircraft carriers, six destroyers, and seven frigates) plus ten submarines (four ballistic missile and six attack vessels) it would be hard pressed to counter the threat. There are also continuing problems with not having sufficient crews for its ships and with ship availability, with many tied up in dock for maintenance or repair. This does not fill anyone with confidence.

Second – just – in importance to UK defence security is the RAF. The existential threat to the UK could manifest itself in many forms – crewed aircraft, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and attack drones – many of which could be launched from land, air, or sea.

To meet such threats the RAF currently boasts a fleet of some 670 aircraft, but of these only circa 150 are combat aircraft, comprising Typhoon and F-35B fighter/bomber jets. However you want to look at it, this is barely sufficient.

the UK’s skies are basically open

More worrying, perhaps, is the almost total lack of ground-based air defence (GBAD) systems, and the almost total absence of anti-ballistic missile defence (ABMD). Short of anchoring a Type 45 destroyer – with limited ABMD capability – on the Thames and perhaps another on the Clyde to protect the UK’s strategic submarine base at Faslane/Coulport, the UK’s skies are basically open.

Which brings us to the British Army. Our army has traditionally and historically been a small, professional force which has an expeditionary role, partly due to its colonial policing ancestry. Although Britain’s Empire is long gone, the army retains this expeditionary role with responsibilities for, among other things, overseas possessions such as the Falklands, Gibraltar, and Cyprus.

Currently our army is committed to providing two divisions plus a corps headquarters to NATO, but this is so beyond UK capabilities as to be laughable. The UK might, repeat might, be able to deploy an armoured brigade to Europe if required, but only with a major effort. There are neither the deployable personnel nor the equipment to do any more.

It is fair, I think, under current budgetary constraints that the army should be the third priority for funding. And yet, with only a paltry 148 new Challenger 3 main battle tanks (MBTs) on order and the Royal Artillery presently fielding only 14 155mm guns, it is not a credible force, as senior generals in the US military have noted.

The problem is that the army is not capable of very much at all, certainly not on its own, and possibly the only way ahead is for it to specialise, majoring on things that it is good at – small-unit infantry operations, medical and logistic functions, and (arguably) special forces (SF) operations among others – and allowing allies to fill the gaps – tanks, artillery, air defence etc – which have been allowed to atrophy.

And then there are a whole raft of other functions like cyber, intelligence, space, and ‘grey zone’ operations and so on which need to be considered. Suffice to say the UK is playing catch-up on many of these too.

In the next instalment I’ll make some suggestions on what needs to be done to address such concerns.