These are the threats our hollow armed forces face. A stark choice is before us
For many years now, under several different governments, retired officers like me have been pointing out the steady decline in the war-fighting power of our armed forces. And this decline has indeed been severe.
As an example, from 1996 to 1998 I had the honour to command the 4th Armoured Brigade based in Germany. The brigade had two armoured regiments with 120 tanks and two armoured infantry battalions equipped with the tracked, armoured Warrior fighting vehicle. I had a regiment of artillery with 24 tracked, armoured self-propelled 155mm guns. There were several more regiment-sized units providing engineering, repairs, signals, medical and logistic support. We trained hard and were genuinely at a high state of readiness. At the end of the Cold War some years previously the Army had eight such brigades in Germany.
Today the Army is in the process of procuring its next tank, the Challenger 3. When this process is complete, there will be just two tank regiments left in the British order of battle. They will be accompanied by infantrymen equipped with the wheeled Boxer vehicle. There are at the moment only two regiments in the artillery equipped with 155mm guns, many of them wheeled Archers obtained as replacements for tracked guns donated to Ukraine.
It's sad to say it, but my old brigade on its own had more firepower and lethality than the whole of today's Army.
Similar processes have taken place in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. There may soon be just seven frigates and six destroyers in the fleet, meaning just two of each typically available for operations. Key capabilities have disappeared: the Royal Fleet Auxiliary has no functional solid stores support ship, meaning that one will have to be borrowed from Norway to support this year's deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group to the Far East. Meanwhile here at home the RAF currently has no airborne radar aircraft at all.
It is not to be alarmist to describe today's British armed forces as 'hollowed out': it is, sadly, merely to be realistic. British soldiers, sailors and airmen are, I am certain, still the equals of any in the world, but there are too few of them and they are not properly equipped and supported.
The gradual decline of our armed forces has largely resulted from the so-called 'peace dividend'. Following the end of the Cold War the world was seen as being in general a safe place. British defence spending, which had run at 4 or even 5 per cent of GDP, is barely above 2 per cent at the moment: and even that figure has only been achieved by including military pensions in the total.
It has been evident for some time, however, that the world is not a safe place any more, if indeed it ever was. Vladimir Putin has mobilised Russia onto a war economy footing, and according to the latest figures from the International Institute for Strategic Studies he has now managed to exceed the combined military spending of all Europe on a purchasing power parity basis.
The war going on in Ukraine illustrates the scale of the threat presented by Russia, and the scale of the defences needed to meet it. It's difficult to state exactly how many combat brigades Russia has deployed to the warzone, but we can say with confidence that it is considerably more than a hundred. Ukraine, on the defensive, has a hundred brigades in the fight.
The British army today has just seven combat brigades, and at the moment it can realistically deploy just one of them fully equipped for war. This figure will not increase to more than three under current plans.
Then, Putin's Russia is by no means the greatest threat out there. Even Russia's huge military expenditure is dwarfed by that of China. We may think of China as far away, but it is now by far the world's largest shipbuilder. Xi Jinping is building a powerful blue-water navy which will soon be able to deploy massive strength anywhere in the world, much as US Navy carrier groups do today. Already, growing Chinese power menaces our friends and business partners in the Pacific: Australia, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
We have forged the Aukus alliance with the US and Australia, and this was an excellent strategic decision: but it must be resourced. As part of the pact the Royal Navy plans to base a nuclear-powered attack submarine in Australia before the end of the decade, but without extra funds for our run-down nuclear and submarine infrastructure it is doubtful if this can be achieved. Certainly there is plenty of pressure on the Royal Navy in home waters, with crucial undersea cables and pipelines vulnerable to Russian attack.
I would argue that all this would mean that a substantial increase in Defence spending is essential, to at least the level stated as an aspiration by this government and the last: 2.5 per cent of GDP. I know that this is the figure that Lord Robertson and his team, currently conducting a Strategic Defence Review, are working towards and the Review could not be in better hands.
But such an increase, though welcome, would not achieve the sort of transformation that is needed. On top of all that I have said, we now have the recent announcements from the new Trump administration, making it very clear that the US will no longer take primary responsibility for the security of Europe. Exactly what this will mean in terms of deployed US forces and commitments is not yet clear. However it is evident that we must be prepared not merely to restore our forces so that they are no longer 'hollow': we must do a great deal more than that.
It's not widely realised that only around 1.7 per cent of GDP is spent on conventional defence as 0.5 per cent of the total is devoted to the nuclear enterprise. To have a credible war-fighting conventional capability, uprated to include AI and drone warfare etc, will require us to spend a minimum of 3 per cent on defence as a whole.
Alongside this we must make Nato much more efficient by returning it to the Cold War model. General Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, is a top-drawer general. We should give him the command and operational freedoms and authorities his Cold War predecessors had, and put a stop to all the duplication of effort and waste amongst Nato nations. This would allow much more Nato military bang for our collective buck and achieve what is required at a much lower overall cost. This, I believe, would permit the UK to achieve its strategic goals without having to spend the 4 to 5 per cent of GDP on Defence that President Trump has proposed. Nato is much more powerful than Western politicians and conservative generals permit it to be.
I must state at this point that I completely understand the fiscal predicament that the new Government is in, and I fully support its growth agenda in principle. In an ideal world we would grow the economy first and increase Defence expenditure second.
But this is very far from being an ideal world and it has just become much worse. There is a genuine risk that war will come, and that risk is made greater the longer we fail to act. As a nation we must lift up our eyes from domestic politics and think in terms of grand strategy. We must start reinvigorating Defence and the armed forces now, regaining our claim to leadership and influence in the process.
The consequences of not being sufficiently strong to deter our adversaries could be catastrophic to our way of life.
General The Lord Richards of Herstmonceux GCB CBE DSO DL is a former British Army officer. He served as Chief of the Defence Staff – the professional head of the British Armed Forces – from 2009 to 2013
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