Britain: Unarmed and dangerous

It’s common thinking among officials that, as things stand, our armed forces could not cope if all the threats we face came to pass. 

Nato insiders, meanwhile, are sceptical that the UK can fulfil all of the long-term pledges it has made within the next decade, including the dream of having two armoured brigades – more than two-thirds of the army’s current 70,000 odd regulars – ready to deploy should the balloon go up. 

Peter Ricketts, the UK’s former national security adviser, says: “The world is more dangerous now than it has been at any time in my career. And when Labour say the army has been hollowed out, they are right.”

These are the sub-optimal circumstances under which George Robertson, who has served as both Britain’s defence secretary and Nato’s secretary general, will lead the Strategic Defence Review, which is expected to be published next year. 

This review will be as unique as it is critical: Starmer has brought in people from outside Whitehall who can be more radical than civil servants. Robertson has already set the tone, calling the Russia, China, North Korea and Iran alliance a “deadly quartet”.

“I hope that this means he will be more honest with the public than others in his position have been,” says Ricketts. “Previous reports have had some degree of false reassurance in them, ‘here are the threats but don’t worry, we’ve got this’. I hope he (Robertson) lays out that the future is going to be tough and the government needs to make difficult choices between what we can realistically do and what we cannot.”

To understand the scale of the challenge facing Robertson and his team, you need to understand exactly how Britain got here. Between the spending cuts of the 2010s, strategic choices made in the 2000s, hubris following the Soviet defeat and many more examples, the reality is that a cocktail of complacency has led to the UK forces being understaffed, out-of-date and in a position few find satisfactory. 

None of this is the fault of those who selflessly serve. It is the result of political and economic decisions, often made for opaque reasons, that have let down those who choose to join our forces.

Most of those decisions can be more easily understood once you break down the four key areas that defence and security experts say have gone badly wrong over the past few decades. 

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

If you’ve ever listened to politicians debate defence spending, you’ll doubtless have heard something like this: 

“Will the right honourable member now commit to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, or do they not agree with me that our national security is the most important priority facing Britain today?”

Politicians’ obsession with percentages when discussing defence drives officials and experts around the bend. 

“It’s useful as a statement of longer-term intent, but it can be a bit of a sleight of hand,” says Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at RUSI, the defence and security thinktank. “About 10 years ago the UK started including things that are legitimate to include, but that the public might not expect to be in defence budgets.”

A famous example is veteran and MoD civilian pensions, which not every Nato ally includes. It also includes the hefty costs of the nuclear deterrent, which is currently being replaced, overseas financial aid and things like support for Ukraine. While all of these are important, they might not be precisely what the public thinks of when they contemplate year-on-year spending by the Ministry of Defence. 

If, however, we are forced to speak in terms of percentages, then it’s reasonable to compare today’s threats to those of the past and take that as an indication of how much the UK should be spending today. 

Savill says today’s threat is comparable to that of the mid-1980s. “We are involved in some operations around the world. Nothing like the early 2000s, but we do have troops deployed in dangerous places. We also face existential threats from Russia and China, so we need to think about deterrence and how best to contain them.” 

Taking Savill’s comparison, during the mid-80s, the UK was spending above 4% of GDP on defence, peaking at 5.5% in 1984. Which makes the current lauded high watermark of 2.5% look rather meek. 

Even if Britain suddenly upped its spending to 4%, the next logical conversation would be “well, what will we splash all this cash on, exactly?”

The threats facing the UK today are unarguably more complex than those of the 1980s. The geopolitical ambitions of China, the evolution of technology and the potential loss of America as the ultimate protector of Europe come to mind. These challenges and others have created a less predictable world in which increasingly varied threats come from more angles than ever before. This means politicians must make big calls on what matters most. 

PICKING AND CHOOSING

For all its complexities, defence spending can often be boiled down to two simple calculations: how much money do you have and what are the biggest dangers you face?

Threats naturally evolve over time: the priorities at the height of the cold war were different to those that emerged from the Arab spring or the rise of Islamic State. But they can also change suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving governments with little choice but to shift focus and resources. 

“When I took the job in 1999, my main priority was implementing the previous year’s review,” says Geoff Hoon, who succeeded George Robertson as defence secretary. 

“The Soviet threat was in the rearview mirror and our priority was building bigger platforms for the navy and building new aircraft carriers. Those sorts of things. We were really thinking about big deployments to major war zones against conventional armies, as we saw in Bosnia or the first Gulf war. Then 9/11 happened.” 

As the threat changed, so did the priorities. Defending Britain suddenly meant a greater emphasis on intelligence gathering in countries in which we were not active, and using technologies to support specialised troops. 

The subsequent war on terror, particularly operations in Afghanistan, had a heavy focus on getting personnel in and out of dangerous places. 

“Suddenly, agility and moving troops safely were much higher up the list of priorities,” says Sophy Antrobus, a research fellow at the Freeman Air and Space Institute, King’s College London. 

“We didn’t need extensive air defences to protect bases at home from long-range missiles and we were not at risk of a land invasion. But we did need armoured helicopters to deploy troops safely and surveillance planes to monitor what the Taliban was doing.” 

This, in a nutshell, is how governments are forced to think when slicing up budgets that are already stretched. Each threat and conflict provides a fresh problem to solve. Whether it’s a naval blockade of Libya to enforce a no-fly zone or providing hardware and ammo to Ukraine, the crisis of the day takes precedence. 

The problem with this is that when the pot is so small, spending money on one thing means that by definition you are not spending money on something else. Which, in an ever-changing world, means every new crisis presents a fresh logistical nightmare. 

BUYING BAD

Britain has been among the most committed and generous allies of Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion. A noble act, no one can deny. But sending equipment, either directly from the UK or bought elsewhere, has laid bare the consequences of prolonged underfunding. 

It’s difficult to get solid numbers on exactly what ammunition any country has in their own supply cupboards. But it’s an open secret that western stocks of ammo (and other hardware) have been badly hit.

“The approach towards procurement has been a mess since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not just in Britain, but across the alliance,” says a Nato source. 

Officials take a particularly dim view of the UK’s attitudes to stockpiling from 2010 onwards. “Really, you are looking at a decade and a half of unjustifiable defence cuts and lack of investment. These decisions were entirely political and have led to this situation where Britain’s now scratching around looking to buy gear at the peak of the market, competing with allies, which drives up the price,” the Nato source adds. 

Ammunition is a prime example of something that got overlooked because, at some point, someone decided it was less important than something else. 

“There was a view that with the Soviets gone, we wouldn’t see a fight for national survival, state-on-state, so close to our own borders,” says Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe. 

“Yes, there were other wars. The Balkans, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they were peace support missions or counter-insurgency missions, nothing like the threat we had prepared for with the Soviets.” 

In short, the UK, along with other allies, made the calculation that we were unlikely to see ammunition expenditure rates like those we see today in Ukraine. 

When there is no demand for something, like any other commercial product, manufacturers don’t just stop production, they bin the capacity to make it. 

“Bottom line, it’s a commercial consideration,” says Shirreff. “No company would invest in a production plant unless they are guaranteed a market. And even if we suddenly decided to fill the stock cupboards for a full-scale land war, getting that sort of operation off the ground would require a two-year lead time.” 

Nationalist protectionism has also created inefficiency in the global defence industry. Officials point out with great frustration that there is a lot of duplication across arms manufacturers. 

“There are multiple allied and partner countries working on sixth-generation fighter jets. There are multiple countries working on the next generation of tanks. All this achieves is competition for resources and talent. It’s not efficient,” says our Nato source. 

More frustratingly, even if it were possible to procure equipment efficiently, the number of personnel in the army has been in decline for decades. There is not much point in having shiny new tanks if there’s no one to drive them. 

RETENTION

Speaking to multiple active soldiers and officials, one issue came up consistently: how unattractive it has become to fight for your country. 

Convincing people to join is one thing – the armed forces rely heavily on the types of patriotic people who simply want to serve. “The MoD cannot keep pace with the private sector in terms of pay or other working benefits. Especially for people with specialist skills like engineers,” says Antrobus.

The greater concern among the sources asked, however, was keeping those who are currently in the forces happy enough to stick around. 

Geoff Hoon says that one major factor is the quality of life that those in uniform can expect when they leave the forces. “You see lots of people, particularly single men, leaving without much prospect of buying a home.” 

It differs slightly depending on where you serve. Most officials spoken to for this article generally accepted that the RAF looks after its recruits better than the army, for example, where multiple sources described the difficulty in settling down and having anything resembling a normal family life. 

Active soldiers spoke of partners who were sick of raising children alone, unable to build a relatively stable base for their young families. Those without partners described a life of constant moving and never feeling part of any community outside of the forces. 

Another common complaint was the actual work that those who join end up doing. One senior soldier spoke of being made to fill in for logistics corps in moments of national crisis. “No one trains this hard to wash pots and pans for pensioners in Yorkshire,” they said. 

What makes joining the forces special and appealing to those inclined to serve, most agree, is the prospect of exciting work that matters. And if the armed forces are not providing that – through training exercises if not active service – then it’s little wonder people with honourable intentions seek better-paid work elsewhere. 

Finally, there is the hard reality that serving in the forces is dangerous, and big foreign wars with heavy losses of life are unpopular. There is very little that any government can do about this other than find ways to make things safer. In fairness, safety for serving personnel, particularly the RAF, has improved. 

SO, WHAT TO DO?

When asked, nearly everyone spoken to for this article said that for the Strategic Defence Review to be a success, it had to be honest with Starmer and the public. 

“We need to be realistic about the scale of the threat and that we, Britain, cannot face it alone,” says Tobias Ellwood, former chair of the Commons defence select committee. “Britain’s voice in the world has diminished over the past decade, that cannot be undone. But we can leverage our position as a nuclear power to have a voice at the top table.

“We should use that voice to be honest about the fact that Britain and our allies have yet to come up with a proper strategy to handle China, Russia and Iran all working together. But we can lead the way on this if we use our influence properly.” 

Sticking with the honesty theme, it is critical that Britain stops pretending it can be all things to all men and instead focuses on its strategic strengths.

“Bluntly, the UK cannot be a major power in the Indo-Pacific, lead the way in European security, top of the class in cyber all at the same time,” says Peter Ricketts. “What we can do is pick the ones we know we can do at the highest level and be an example to our allies, a benchmark for a mid-level power. It will give us so much more credibility working with our non-Nato allies like Japan and India and a better foothold in parts of the world [where] we don’t carry much influence.” 

Robertson may want to reflect on how Britain is viewed by its allies, particularly the role they believe it can play in European-wide security. Despite what many in Britain think of its global standing, allies still have a favourable view. 

“Britain is crucial for European security – especially as we look across the Atlantic at what might come next,” says Rasa Juknevičienė, Lithuania’s former defence minister. “Britain has been one of the most reliable partners for a long time. I hope that despite Brexit, Britain will become closer partners on security with the EU – many of us see it as the number one power on the European continent.”

Accepting that challenges and threats change is crucial to the review, particularly when it comes to procurement. “I would like to see the report focus on equipment that can operate in multiple terrains, particularly things like surface-to-air defence,” says Hoon. “One thing we have learned the hard way is that threats change faster than our ability to adapt to them, so we need to be agile and adaptable.” 

Transparency on spending will obviously be a major part of Robertson’s task. That doesn’t mean that the government should break down exactly what it is spending to the penny on specific equipment – that is reasonably kept secret on the grounds of national security. 

However, a more honest conversation about how the budget is padded with pensions, overseas aid and everything else that isn’t personnel or power would benefit both politics and the public. 

Finally, officials both in Britain and Nato would like to see Robertson’s review speak frankly about how difficult and expensive the challenges ahead really are. 

“The government is in the unenviable position of needing to make tough choices where there are no obvious tough choices to be made,” says a British defence official. 

However, the one change this official would like to see Starmer’s government make is to put an end to this idea that clever use of technology is a realistic alternative to heavy metal and highly trained troops. 

“I understand the instinct to streamline – this stuff is expensive. But Labour has probably 10 years in power to explain that underspending is dangerous – not just for troops, but for potential escalation,” the official adds. “The thought of a cheap Iranian drone killing British troops keeps me awake at night. That’s not some far-fetched idea. And at that point you’d have the public calling for blood.”

In a state of pre-war, a single incident can escalate. Britain had a near miss in 2022 when a Russian pilot shot at an RAF surveillance plane. “Had they hit, the public would have almost certainly demanded retaliation,” says Ellwood. “And that could be it: Nato at war with Russia.”

This is the world in which Keir Starmer finds himself, not even 100 days into leading Britain. 

Calling for a review of Britain’s defence and security was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Even with the horrors in Ukraine unfolding close to home and our adversaries increasingly brazen, politicians have been too distracted by political chaos over the past few years to do more than panic and tinker around the edges of defence policy. 

For this review to be meaningful, it must tell the new prime minister things that are hard to hear. In turn, he must understand what the review tells him and pass those hard messages on to the public.

If he doesn’t, this situation of underfunded defence and unrealistic assessment of the threats we face will see Britain drift alone into a world that gets more dangerous by the day.