Britain's new breed of drone-racing soldiers will be more than ready to take on Putin
The Chief of the General Staff – the head of the British Army – General Sir Roly Walker has a plan to defeat the Russians. In a speech this week he made it clear that our Army is laser focused on the enemy, the Russian Army, and is not only learning from Ukraine but re-equipping and re-training itself at pace. The European Nato allies are also focusing East. Collectively, European Nato will soon over-match Putin's men, even without the traditional assumption of massive help from the US.
Though the whole world seems currently focused on Iran in its struggle with Israel, Vladimir Putin remains the main threat here and we should not forget it. He is committing war crimes every week in his evil campaign against Ukraine's civilian population: the latest is the reported use of cluster munitions against residential areas of Kyiv. Not only are cluster bomblets devastating across wide areas against unprotected civilians, their use leaves unexploded bomblets scattered across the target area: effectively a field of landmines, and one that is difficult and dangerous to clear up.
Against this background, the move of US air defence assets from Europe to the Middle East is dispiriting, and seems to indicate that President Trump has given up on European peace. He will probably seek instead to disable the Iranian nuclear programme, with most of the hard work done for him by the Israelis.
But this is no help to us in Europe and most especially not to the brave Ukrainians who are keeping Putin's war machine tied up and so protecting us all. Bold Ukrainian secret-service operations have taken the fight to Russia and shown the world that Zelensky and his indomitable compatriots are a force to be reckoned with.
Meanwhile here in Britain there is scepticism among journalists and commentators regarding the British Army's ability to stand up to Russia, and the willingness of our young people to fight for their country. But in fact there is no shortage of young Brits wanting to join – over a million have tried over the last ten years, but sadly some 75 per cent of them were defeated by the absurdly clunky recruitment mechanism. This is now being sorted out, and people are making it through: among them my own son, following in my footsteps at Sandhurst and probably doing it better!
General Walker reminded us this week of Field Marshal Montgomery's memoirs in which he wrote: 'I shall take away many impressions into the evening of life. But the one I shall treasure above all is the picture of the British soldier – staunch and tenacious in adversity, kind and gentle in victory – the figure to whom the nation has again and again, in the hour of adversity, owed its safety and its honour'.
Never a better word said on the British soldier and it is as true today as it was then, in my opinion.
When it comes to lethality, General Walker explained how this will double in two years and treble by the end of the decade. The traditional heavy end, tanks, artillery and attack helicopters, will account for 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent expected to come from drones. Anybody who has dipped even the smallest toe into the Ukraine war would agree this is a good mix. Mass, still the main currency that ensures victory, can come from drones: thousands of them, AI enabled, with the tanks providing the direct 'thunder' when appropriate. There is also a realisation in Strategic Defence Review that he who controls the Electromagnetic Spectrum nowadays controls the battlefield. Electronic warfare capabilities are now a priority.
The third element which guarantees success in battle is training, and British soldiers have been training like dervishes in this contemporary battlespace. Despite the Russians having a few 'islands of excellence' the rank-and-file conscripts of Putin's army are in the main untrained and used as cannon fodder. The meat grinder has now consumed over one million Russian souls. The British Army for its part is now a 'world of excellence', well trained, with excellent kit coming onboard, and still pound for pound the best fighters on the planet.
In the past the British Army concentrated on a few very expensive drones, but we have now well and truly grasped the mass drone idea, so critical for success against the Russians. General Walker tells us that 3,000 drone pilots have been trained in the last 12 months, and we will have another 6,000 in the next 12 months. These will fly mainly the basic FPV drones, $500 a pop-ish, that will create the mass we need. The Army's newest sport is drone racing, which teaches FPV pilots the skills they need to manoeuvre on the modern battlefield. At the beginning of the war, we were teaching Ukraine how to fight, but we are now learning from them how to be very much more lethal in the battle space, and most especially against a Russian looking threat.
Sir Keir Starmer may be Trump's buddy today, but I'm sure he realises his genuine friends are in Europe and this absolutely includes Ukraine. It is now up to us to enable Ukraine to get into a position to get a just ceasefire out of the Kremlin. I'd argue that the RAF jets stationed at eastern airbases on Nato missions and our troops forward deployed in Estonia are doing more for our national interests than the planes we recently deployed to Cyprus. President Trump does not need our help to defeat Iran's nuclear weapons programme, but President Zelensky does to stop the Russians and force them to seek peace.
I believe that General Walker is on the right track and is delivering the Army the nation needs and that Nato needs. When war in Ukraine ends and Putin looks further westwards, he will see a very different picture to that of 2022. The British Army will once again be ready to take the advice of the great General Slim: 'Hit the other fellow as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he is not looking'.
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