Is the British Military Ready for a Major War?

On paper, it is one of the world's great

military

powers, a country that possesses not only nuclear weapons but also a Navy capable of global deployment and special forces that can stand shoulder to shoulder with any of its peers when it comes to security.

military

financing. Britain also shines as the second largest spender in NATO, after the United States, it is also the sixth largest spender militarily in the world and does not shy away from using that power. It was the UK that led the initial charge to help arm Ukraine. The United Kingdom is now working alongside the United States to protect Red Sea shipping from Houthi attacks, but despite all these positives, there is growing concern about the state of the British Armed Forces, concerns that the Britain may no longer be able to fight let alone winning a

major

war.

Since 2023, several British and American generals have been raising the alarm about the UK's military preparedness, warning that equipment is outdated, branches are understaffed and money is being wasted on failed projects, also warning that without

major

changes Britain risks sleepwalking towards military catastrophe. Two months, that is how long the Defense Committee will last in Great Britain. The House of Commons recently estimated that the nation's military could face a peer-to-peer conflict two months before stock reserves were depleted, the military exhausted its capabilities, and the country simply became unable to continue fighting. For many, the report came as an unpleasant shock after The whole UK is a nation that spends more than £50bn a year on defence, which is above the NATO guideline of 2%.

The British Navy RAF and SAS are famous around the world for being so good at what they do, but for those who have been following them. The report was not a surprise, but confirmed what they had been saying for years: In some cases, those who had been trying to alert the British government came from across the pond in 22, a senior American general said. The then Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, said Britain was barely a Tier 2 power in Jaron. Tier one is a military that not only has a nuclear deterrent power but also the ability to deploy its Navy and Air Force globally in a short time, while London has no illusions that it can match a high power level like the United States;

It is key to Britain's self-image that it at least belongs to this sacred Club, so receiving such a brutal reality check from an Ally was undoubtedly the worst thing for the country. The American general was almost certainly right in a detailed article about the comments. The Economist noted how the British Army today lacks long-range missiles and electronic warfare assets and that there are concerns within the Army that it lacks adequate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and that it does not have enough artillery for this, the Telegraph adds. that Britain also largely lacks a layered air defence, the ability to defend itself against both short-, medium- and long-range attacks.

Such credibility holes are not unique among European militaries, although Germany is now trying to rearm. currently lacks key capabilities, other peer nations have exhausted their artillery supplies by delivering shells to Ukraine, but Britain represents an unusual case among wealthier nations as its problems are compounded by an acute lack of manpower, according to the UK Ministry of Defence, entire British Army. including reservists and volunteers currently stands at 18 4,865 Personnel, that sounds like a large number but in reality it is the lowest staffing point since the Napoleonic Wars. As far as the army is concerned, things are even worse with only 72,500 people, the Guardian reports, the British army is currently smaller than it has been for 300 years, we will now address the causes of what has been called the crisis of military recruitment in a later chapter, for now we simply want to highlight that the UK is not just short of people in services like the Royal Air.

Strength: The number of fast aircraft squadrons has decreased from 31 at the end of the Cold War to just seven today; Meanwhile, the Navy is struggling to assemble enough support ships to accompany its two new aircraft carriers and this is a big problem and it's not just a problem for those who live in the land of tea and drizzle right now Britain is destined to Being one of the two serious military powers in Europe, the other being France, if Britain is really a paper tiger, then it bodes very bad for the continent, intelligence services warn. While Vladimir Putin may continue his invasion of Ukraine by attacking one of the Baltic states within 3-5 years, if by then the United States is sinking into isolationism and refusing to help, it will be up to London and Paris to do the heavy lifting.

As things stand, while the UK simply won't be up to the job, the good news is that we have a pretty good idea of ​​how things got here. How could a once revered military power have fallen to such a low level? The only question now Can and change things Given that it is the sixth largest economy in the world, one would assume that Britain does not suffer from monetary worries. I mean, this is a country that spends 2.3% of its GDP on defense every year in gross dollars, which is the second highest country. amount in NATO and yet the problems persist, so what makes one thing is to point out that even 2.3% of GDP is much less than what Britain spent during the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s ;

The figure was over 4%, which is a huge number. deficit which the government no doubt recognises, it was recently announced that defense spending would rise to 2.5% as circumstances permit. The problem is that it is an extremely vague phrase that seems more likely to be used as an excuse for not achieving goals than as an excuse. A figure to aim for as financial times tick, with the tax burden at a post-war highest level and public services under enormous pressure, there is no easy answer as to where to find the resources, although an increase in spending in defense it would be welcome, there is no guarantee that it will be achieved. would fix things, especially as the biggest problem may not be the funds themselves, but the way the MoD spends them.

The UK's military procurement process is inefficient, awash in bureaucracy and infested with optimism bias. A House of Commons report last year declared that it is well and truly gutted, in addition to drowning the military in red tape, the procurement process is riddled with audits, such as the inability to purchase off-the-shelf equipment, a problem best represented by the Ajax scandal, which was intended to be the next generation of British armored fighting vehicles, the Ajax project. It started in 2010 with a simple idea: base the new vehicle on a pre-existing platform jointly developed by Spain and Austria. The UK would reduce the cost and hassle of commissioning a new system, now for the military M, buying off-the-shelf kit is Standard Poland, for example, is currently transforming itself into a regional power by purchasing hundreds of American High Mars launchers and dozens of Southern tanks in the case of the Ajax, although the mod continued to add new requirements until more than 12,200 modifications were required for each vehicle, as The Economist reported.

Notes at this point cite that it was essentially bespoke, it was also incredibly expensive due to going live in 2018. Ajax has since ballooned to a cost of £5.5 billion and has yet to be delivered, a major problem has been the development of such serious noise problems. that hurt the crew, all thanks to the endless modifications the mod insisted on, and Ajax isn't the only one going wildly over schedule and budget; The Morpheus Battlefield Communications system was supposed to go live in 2025, instead the UK al

ready

canceled that contract in December. having spent almost £700m in seven even years and these are just two examples, but they are very representative of a deeper problem with the system.

A system that encourages officials to approve expensive equipment that cannot be delivered on time and on budget is a system that clearly needs an overhaul, however waste is not the only reason Britain is getting less for its money. money than you would expect. There is also the question of the nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom, one of only two nuclear powers in Europe that Britain is committed to maintaining. Its deterrence is a measure that could prove extremely smart if the US ever withdraws from NATO. Unfortunately, nuclear capabilities are not cheap. Much of British defense spending goes towards deterrence, so it has been estimated that the military budget minus these costs is actually close. at 1.75% of GDP, that means that the Navy and RAF are forced to make do with restricted budgets to keep the nuclear defense organization solvent, the result is that conventional forces are much weaker than they could be. another way.

All of this is not to say that abandoning the nuclear deterrent would necessarily be a better idea, but it is a conversation that the UK should at least have to have difficult, although there are others that are likely to be more difficult, not least those surrounding the country's ability to recruit Recently, the Times examined British Army levels and found that since 2010 personnel numbers have been in terminal decline, while currently around 72,500, they could fall to just 67,341 in 2026, a far cry from 100,000 soldiers. what's up. The UK boasted in 2009 when Professor Michael Clark told War on the Rocks that there is, say, a threshold of strategic importance below which the military is too small to make a difference.

Britain might al

ready

be at that threshold, obviously 72,500 is still a lot of people, but as we have seen in Ukraine that is a small number in the context of a major ground war. The Russian army, for example, lost that many men in the first 6 months of fighting. Now let's make a comparison with one of Britain's peer nations, France, the French. The army currently has 11 18,600 troops and although Paris is also struggling with recruitment, it is nowhere near the same scale in 2021, the British army reported a shortfall of almost 5,000 troops, the French, on the other hand, only had around 700, curiously today's official statistics do not record.

Any shortage is not because thousands of young Britons have joined patriotic activities, but because recruitment targets were drastically reduced in 2021, when it became clear that there was no earthly way to meet them and, speaking of recruitment targets, no achieved, other branches of the military are also doing so. Suffering The Guardian reports that the Navy is 5% below target staffing levels, while the RAF is 9% below. Now, these may seem like small numbers, but they have a big impact, as the economist quotes the Air Force lacking the pilots and engineers necessary to operate. a larger aircraft fleet, the Navy has been forced to retire older ships from service because they lack crews.

All this is a far cry from official defense planning which assumes the UK can put a division into the field at short notice in 2023, the House. of the Commons defense committee estimated that due to lack of staff it could take weeks at this stage, we must be clear that these poor figures are not an accident of history in many cases they are exactly what London claimed to want in 2010, the Conservative Le Coalition government embarked on an era of austerity amid cuts to public services, then Defense Secretary Liam Fox proposed a target to reduce the size of the army from 100,000 to 82,000 by 2020, with plans to reduce it further more by 2025, and in 2021 the cuts were confirmed again despite the situation in Ukraine the plans have not yet been reversed another side effect of austerity was the outsourcing of military recruitment to the private sector before 2010 the recruitment of new soldiers was defense establishment homework here's the telegraph explaining how it was used to work, walk into a recruiting office anywhere in the country and you can have a face-to-face conversation with a soldier, sailor or airman and begin basic training within weeks , but with the acts of redundancy that set back the soldiers who needed OD in their time.

Instead, job recruitment was handed over to the outsourcing companycapita at a cost of £1.1 billion to British taxpayers. Since then, the army has not met its recruiting targets every year and the reasons are obvious, instead of face-to-face meetings to save capita. money by recruiting through call centers, this creates a situation where potential recruits do not meet with a serving officer for months and may not begin basic training for almost a year. 2017 The 2018 audit found that 47% of all applicants dropped out during this process despite this. capita continues to work as a

british

army recruiter in 2022 conservative government extended his contract despite endless mist targets, although the

british

press has pointed them out in recent months capita alone is not the only outsourcing company failing to achieve Other handover companies manage military accommodation which is often in such poor condition that it is believed to be a major factor in the retention crisis.

The defense post reports that 46% of soldiers are dissatisfied with their homes, with widespread reports of damp and mold. About a third of homes are in desperate need of repair. and at this salary that is stagnant compared to inflation, as you can begin to see why the military is suffering from labor shortages, the unspoken contract is supposed to be that soldiers accept dangerous jobs that could lead to death and, in return, the state takes care of them and their Right now, many families feel that this contract has simply been broken, so those are the sob stories of both procurement and labor.

In an ideal world, we could now leave things there, but unfortunately we are not done because there is another major problem. area where the British Army is not meeting expectations and that is equipment for an army that prides itself on being among the best. The British Army Shaw seems content to deploy a lot of obsolete equipment. Its 240 Challenger main battle tanks are powerful, but they all date from the 1980s and 1990s and while an improved Challenger 3 is in the works, the first batch of 18 will not be delivered until late 2027. The Challenger is not unusual. The International Institute for Strategic Studies notes that the AS90 howitzer also dates back to the 9th and needs modernization, while the army in general has about 800 obsolete armored vehicles that were built in the 1970s, this compares poorly with most Peer nations, to quote the US military, and many European armies have more modern and capable armor, including the US French M2 Bradley VBCI and Swedish CV90 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as updated versions. . of the leopard tank and most modern artillery now when it comes to warfare, modern equipment is not just nice to have, it is key to increasing your speed and maneuverability while reducing your casualties, where tomorrow the war between Russia will break out and NATO, British armored combat units. together with the Americans would be much slower and much more prone to damage, reducing the effectiveness of both nations.

Still, at least having obsolete equipment is better than no equipment in other branches of Britain's Armed Forces, decisions have been made to retire old platforms even before they are replaced. arrive now, the Royal Navy is awaiting deliveries of new ships such as the Type 31 which will enter service in 2027 and the Type 28 which will be operational from 2028, but with staffing at crisis levels, two more warships old ones, HMS Westminster and HMS Argal, are coming. They will be decommissioned this year to free up crew for the new arrivals. Now you don't have to be particularly good at math to realize that this will leave a three or four year gap between old ships retiring and new ones arriving in a similar period.

The problem is affecting the RAF. The Tran Typhoons of the 1990s were early retired from service for spare parts use, as were the country's C130s. The problem is that C130s are quite vital in the event of a major war, as they do so for lifting and transporting heavy objects. capabilities that are simply not replicated anywhere else Even when new developments are emerging Orders are often too small for Europe's current security environment Only 148 Challenger 3s will be delivered to the UK at a time when Poland is ordering more of a thousand modern main combat aircraft.

Meanwhile, the order for 5 E7 Wedgedale airborne warning control aircraft was recently reduced to three, as due to a lack of manpower, these types of statistics are often the result of deliberate decisions, often driven by the savings, by misunderstanding the security needs of the country or, indeed, both the E7 Wedg. The tail order was reduced, for example, because getting rid of two aircraft saved the government 12% of the cost, even though it severely limited the amount of spare parts the RF would have during wartime and the number of artillery was reduced after that a 2021 review said British forces should concentrate instead. on new technologies linked to the exploitation of robotic data and artificial intelligence, as then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson summarized the reviews, the findings cite the old concepts of fighting large tank battles on the European landmass, of course, in retrospect it is 2020 and from our position in the future We can easily see that large tank battles and artillery duels are a very characteristic feature of modern European warfare, but while we cannot blame people in 2021 for not being able to see the future , we can blame the British Ministry of Defense for not reacting to the situation.

How Putin's invasion of Ukraine changed everything since February 2022 Poland has embarked on one of the largest rearmament waves in modern European history Germany is slowly getting serious about military spending the Nordic states of Norway Sweden and Denmark are forging coordinated defense plans while the UK for All aid and donations to the Gi war effort continue to proceed as usual and all of that brings us to our final question: Can things be changed? Can Britain reinvent itself as a military power capable of winning a major war? Even if I wanted to do it now, at this stage one might wonder if we are being a bit harsh on Britain - after all, this is a country that still boasts some of the best Special Forces on Earth, enough naval capability to back up to the United States in the Red Sea and enough leadership to help build the Coalition of States helping Ukraine with all this negativity, one might wonder if we are just being nitpicky, to which we could only say yes, a bit guilty as a charge , but the aim of this video was not just to dismiss the UK's defense capabilities - it was to act as a wake-up call to tell the uncomfortable side of the story that anyone who cares even vaguely about European security really needs to hear because, While Britain may remain a major regional power, it risks falling into obsolescence just as the danger level on the continent is rising in a way not seen since 1939.

Hopefully videos like this can help for the mod to come out of its malaise, a malaise that fortunately is not yet terminal; In fact, changing the military's fortunes might be easier than it would at first. Imagine that the telegraph suggests that the first thing to do is improve the offer made to the rank and file, that means no more accommodations, no more salary packages that don't keep up with inflation, it means treating those who choose to serve with the same deal. kind of basic respect they deserve, such as introducing retention bonuses, and you know that making staff feel valued at the end of recruitment also means bringing the process back in-house with an emphasis on face-to-face meetings and a fast track to basic training. a sense of urgency among politicians and in society Poland's rearmament is so rapid because all major parties and the majority of the public agree on the need to quickly assemble a vast army that can deter Russian aggression in Britain.

The Ukraine war still seems a long, long way away, even though the UK is bound by treaty to help, if Putin turns his attention to NATO's eastern members, a further influx of cash would also probably not be wasted here, which It could come from making some tough decisions about Britain's nuclear deterrent or from a general increase in spending. although either way it would have to be tied to a review of military procurement, probably a review that forced the mod to consider buying more off-the-shelf Ks from trusted allies like South Korea or the US instead of making custom versions Sophisticated, of course, all of this.

The UK supposedly wants to try to regain its tier one status, but that is far from the only option. There are other directions London could take, perhaps the most interesting being abandoning its global reach to focus on specialization, as The Rocks recently published a full essay. According to this idea, the basic premise is that if Britain is not willing to invest more in strengthening its military power, then a cheaper way to remain relevant might be to reduce some branches and strengthen others to a higher level than the peer nations. The test was how Britain could invest heavily in its already well-run Special Forces, effectively creating a vast network of elite troops that could be used to support Allied armies in times of war.

Other possibilities could be to specialize in counterterrorism or remote warfare operations in each country. In this case, the idea is that Britain would sacrifice its ability to fight a major war alone in exchange for developing a cheaper, more efficient army that would only fight in conjunction with its allies. The sa envisioned that the UK would adapt to work alongside the US, but it could simply be very easy for France or Poland to provide the infantry and manpower, of course the downside of this is that it means the UK would have They have to give up their military autonomy and become just one part of a bigger hole, but since that's basically what NATO does.

Anyway, it's about doing it, maybe it's not as big a leap as you might imagine, as one interviewee told Bloomberg, we're getting to the point where the British Army really needs to decide what it's going to do, is it going to be a intense conventional war? a fighting force or lighter outside area one, the former will require new investment and a serious overhaul of the current system; the second will require a serious internal discussion about the UK's status in the world; Either way, it is clear that something must change right now. It feels as if the British Army is at a turning point, a historic moment in which it can complete its austerity-era campaign towards downsizing and reliance on new technologies or reverse course and start bulking up by bringing in new recruits and spending lavishly on new equipment in an attempt to regain tier one status To be clear, we are not advocating either approach here, both will involve trade-offs and Both have advantages and disadvantages, what we are saying is that something needs to change because for all its undoubted ability for all the bravery of those who serve within its ranks the British Army today is in danger of becoming a shell of its former self.

Before, if politicians do not act soon, they risk sleepwalking into a world where the UK could lose a major war and a world like that just can't bear to think about.