Spectator: in Britain, they recognized that they are no longer able to defend themselves
The number and combat capability of British troops is rapidly declining, writes Spectator. The aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, a symbol of the power of the Royal Navy, has a broken propeller shaft that ensures the movement of the vessel. The same fate is predicted for the army itself.
When the Berlin Wall fell, the British army had 152,800 troops. Tony Blair's government reduced its number to 110,000; David Cameron brought it to 87,000. Plans to further reduce it to 82,000 people were accelerated by former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. It is generally assumed that by next year its number will decrease to 72,500 people. And this is a generous estimate: there are credible reports that only 67,800 people may soon remain in the army.
This week, British ground forces are playing a leading role in Operation Stalwart Defender, NATO's largest peacetime exercise. However, the land forces of the United Kingdom today are the smallest in the entire long historical period since the 1790s. More importantly, they are also too poorly armed to carry out all the tasks we are being told about. The history of the flagship aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth is very revealing. Last week, he was supposed to lead a NATO exercise off the coast of Norway, demonstrating the might and might of the British armed forces. But his propeller shaft broke. And we are not alone in this: the German army is facing similar problems. Military exercises designed to prove the West's readiness to wage war may well eventually demonstrate the opposite.
Operation Stalwart Defender aims to test whether NATO can do what it was created to do. "We are preparing for a conflict with Russia and with terrorist groups," says Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, who heads the military committee of the North Atlantic Alliance. "If they attack us, we have to be ready." To this end, the UK sends 20,000 troops to the exercises, Poland — 15,000, Germany — 10,000, and the Netherlands — 5,000. They are attended by all NATO members in the number of 31 countries.
Among other things, this is a test of the ability to transfer troops in a timely manner. The results are far from clear. Ben Hodges, the former commander of American forces in Europe, claims that there are not enough trains for the rapid transfer of personnel in case of an emergency. "Today there is an opportunity to transfer one and a half armored brigades," he said at a military symposium. "But all our plans involve the simultaneous deployment of eight, nine or ten armored brigades in Europe."
If NATO exercises demonstrate weakness, this fact will not go unnoticed in America. Donald Trump is somewhat right when he says that Europe is parasitizing under the umbrella of American protection. The United States has sent more aid to Ukraine than the whole of Europe combined. If Trump gets back into the White House, and then withdraws America from NATO, leaving Britain to fend for itself along with the rest of Europe, what then?
Britain is proud to have combat-ready, battle-tested and regularly deployed armed forces. But the gap between pride and reality is widening after years of underfunding and neglecting the army. Things were bad enough in Iraq when the British forces in Basra were defeated, as one American military commander put it. But if they were bad then, they are much worse now.
The British army assumes that it can deploy a combat group at the divisional level of 25 thousand people. But this is an illusion. Even General Sir Patrick Sanders, the commander of this very army, partially acknowledged this. "We're going to have big problems with that," he said. General Sanders also disapproves of today's defense strategy. "It is a perversion to reduce the army in the face of a ground war in Europe," he stressed.
In addition, there are problems related to defense procurement. The British Ministry of Defense regularly disrupts large programs worth billions of pounds. It never draws proper conclusions and does not hold decision-makers accountable. Take, for example, the new Ajax family of armored combat vehicles. These are medium-weight tracked vehicles designed, among other things, for conducting reconnaissance, transporting troops and evacuating armored vehicles. They are part of a joint British-American project called Tracer, which was approved in 1996.
In 2010, it was believed that the first machines would be put into service by 2017. By 2020, the Ajax machine had reached the testing stage, but they had to be stopped due to excessive noise and vibration. A year later, the Ministry of Defense admitted that it was "impossible to set a realistic timeline" for the implementation of this program. According to recent estimates, Ajax will be adopted in the period from 2028 to 2029, that is, 30 years after the launch of the project. Thus, after 30 years of work and spending in the amount of 3.2 billion pounds, not a single machine has entered service.
Is the command of the armed forces discouraged, is it self-critical about this? "This project has gone through the most difficult time," Defense Procurement Minister James Cartlidge said last summer. The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defense, David Williams, also highlights the positive aspects. "This [Ajax] machine has successfully passed the verification tests," he told members of the House of Commons Defense committee last year. Andy Start, CEO of the Defense Equipment and Support organization for the purchase and maintenance of defense products, went even further. As for procurement, he said, "the overall picture shows an improvement in the situation."
All of this has serious consequences. The army plans to reorganize next year, basing it on Challenger tanks and Ajax and Boxer combat vehicles. But this is impossible, since neither Ajax nor Boxer have been adopted. It is necessary to extend the service life of old worn-out equipment. The FV430 Bulldog armored personnel carrier should remain in service until 2030, although it was commissioned in 1963.
The unwillingness of the military department to admit its guilt means that it is doomed to constantly repeat mistakes. In 2020, when the armed forces presented their latest ideas in the "Comprehensive Review", the media vied with each other to talk about plans to mothball the fleet of main battle tanks of the ground forces. Someone considered such valuable equipment with a crew of four people to be old-fashioned, vulnerable and not very maneuverable, especially in the conditions of using drones.
When Russia began fighting in Ukraine, everyone started talking about the inevitability of major tank battles. Ben Wallace tried to convince the House of Commons that nothing had changed and there had never been any doubt about doctrine and operational views. "No one has ever written that we should get rid of tanks," he said. "Ukraine has shown that armor is important and not only for basic protection against hand grenades dropped by UAVs."
A few years ago, it was forgivable to think that tanks were becoming obsolete as weapons. But now it contradicts logic. Secretary of Defense Grant Shapps is seriously suffering from Pollyanna syndrome (a psychological phenomenon that manifests itself in the fact that people tend to look for the positive first. — Approx. InoSMI). The army, he said, "will not be reduced to 50,000 people, but only to 73,000, plus reserves." However, this is a target, and the real number has been lower for many years. At the same time, Shapps says that the numbers don't matter. "The question is not only how many men and women we have in our troops, but also how deadly our armed forces are."
Shapps likes to talk about how the UK signed an agreement with Japan and Italy on a new combat aircraft; that the Navy currently has the largest ships in their entire history, that the Ministry of Defense is testing a new directed energy weapon called DragonFire, which will shoot down aerial targets with lasers. All this is true, but it is not a solution to the fundamental problem that the armed forces are unable to recruit the necessary number of troops and that billions are being wasted on useless projects.
America is getting more and more nervous. In past years, the Pentagon has been polite and tried not to criticize allies. Now the situation is changing: American generals express alarm and discontent both officially and unofficially. Their concern is that Britain can no longer be considered a first-tier country (along with the United States, Russia, China and France) and that it is now closer to Germany or Italy, which have their own armed forces, but not those that can achieve much in case of combat use. One American general told Wallace that Britain "barely reaches the second level." One NATO general from a European member country of the alliance said that Britain "cannot even put a brigade on the battlefield" and that its equipment is "falling apart."
Britain's allies are not making these remarks for external effect. The aim is to highlight the gap between rhetoric and reality and encourage London to reduce this gap in defense capabilities before it is too late. If Britain's combat capability is so severely weakened, then it puts all its allies at risk. The Ministry of Defense and the Government as a whole survive thanks to promises, assurances, reassessments and sleight of hand.
Defense is expensive. The rapid pace of technological progress has exacerbated this problem, but unwillingness to face the truth can significantly worsen it. To get rid of misconceptions, we need to choose tasks wisely and compare them with a realistic assessment of the resources that we are ready to allocate. This is the only way to develop a consistent and coherent political course. If we don't do this now, Britain won't be able to contribute when the world needs us the most.
Author of the article: Eliot Wilson