How much are we prepared to invest in our protection and resilience in the interests of our collective defence, security and prosperity? I don’t just mean how much money the Treasury will allocate to our armed forces and security agencies, but how much thought and imagination politicians and public servants are prepared to give to the widening and changing security issue.
For Ukraine, the UK is now engaged with close allies the US, France and Germany in supporting the frontline of the country’s fight for survival. It highlights that Britain is under direct threat from Russia in the homeland and near-abroad. Our airspace, seaspace and underwater space are vulnerable, and under-protected. We are threatened in cyberspace — though the UK seems better prepared than most for this. Rightly, the Government and its agencies want to promote a public cyber health and awareness programme to face down new threats.
The security issue comes to the top of the political agenda with the imminent publication of the rewrite of the 2021 Integrated Review of Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. This will be followed by Jeremy Hunt’s Budget due on March 15, which will declare how much this government is prepared to put into the armed and security services.
The IR of 2021 was the gospel of Boris Johnson boosterism. Its problem is summed up by the immortal line from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural speech: And the war came.
Not only did the war come but so too did the long consequences of the Covid pandemic, which are still being played out. The war in Ukraine, the social upheavals from Covid, and the sudden shock impacts of climate change, evident across the world in 2022, should be fundamental to the new Integrated Review. They determine where the nation, and the nation’s security, stand.
It’s not just a question of money. There is sure to be justified querying of runaway procurements like £4 billion spent on the Ajax medium tank and the troubled Morpheus communication system. More concerning are the big-ticket items, their utility, value and viability. Top of the bill are the burgeoning costs of the new Dreadnought nuclear submarine and ballistic missile programme. The Navy also has the huge cost of running two large aircraft carriers in its “carrier strike” programme. The RAF’s Tempest sixth generation fighter, part of the Anglo-Japanese-Italian Global Combat Air Programme, is another Budget prospect with many noughts attached.
The budgets for kit should not take precedence over the central question for Professor John Bew, author of IR 21 and its reiteration. We have to decide the shape and form of our services and security agencies. Shaving a few thousand pounds off the personnel register — a favourite tactic of the Treasury to cut the pay and pensions bill — will not cut it this time around.
Hollowing out the Army again will damage core capabilities. The skills of the Royal Engineers, the Signals and Logistics Corps, and Electrical and Mechanical Engineers are still highly esteemed by friends and allies in Nato and beyond, Ukraine especially. How they are maintained depends on how we shape our forces.
Given the shape and size of our community and economy, the UK should aim at a standing, highly professional army of 75,000 maximum. But in these difficult times we should also prepare, and fund, a professional reserve of about the same number, 75,000.
Behind this we must decide what we want our forces to be and do. We can agree that they can only work with other allies in any major operation. We can become a small, highly mobile but light expeditionary force — suitable for strategic raids but not sustained campaigns. Or we could just be guns for hire — our Special Forces working with the US forces, or the Royal Navy combining with the Australian Navy, for example. At present, according to General Sir Rupert Smith, our forces are trying to play all three of the above roles, with inadequate means.
It is time to choose what we want for our defence and security at home and abroad, and homeland resilience.
Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister in the Great War, declared that the business of war is too serious to be left to generals. Our security and resilience are too serious to be left entirely to politicians, mandarins and generals. The choice is for all of us.
