Gavin Williamson must make our defence fit for the 21st century

Defence has backed its way into the headlines yet again these past few days. The most obvious headline-grabber is the Mail on Sunday’s report that the new defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, has threatened to bring down Mrs May unless she agrees to an annual increase in the defence budget of £2 billion for the next ten years. His department have subsequently questioned the terminology of the MoS’s report. But saying it is “language we do not recognize” is the stuff of a non-denial denial if ever there was. It is widely-known that Williamson considers himself a contender to take over from Mrs May.

To add a few more briquettes to the fire, the Commons Defence Committee has demanded an increase of up to £60 billion to make UK defence ‘credible’ over the next ten years. Ideally, states the committee, UK defence expenditure should rise from about 2 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent – “though 2.5 per cent would sit comfortably” it adds emolliently. Chance would be a fine thing to get this, but it is yet another warning to Mrs May against a neo-pacifist defence strategy.

More sinister is the report during the week by the Financial Times of Mrs May and her chancellor, Philip Hammond, questioning the new chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Carter, about the value of the UK remaining a ‘top tier defence power.’ That Mr Hammond should be in this huddle can be no surprise. Like his prime minister he has little time for defence and spent much of his time as defence secretary in the Cameron coalition complaining that the military commanders ‘should become better businessmen.’ During his time at MoD, he boasted to the BBC in a notorious briefing that he managed to balance the MoD books by fixing the ten-year procurement bill at £160 billion.

A glance at the National Audit Office’s regular reporting on defence shows that Hammond’s claim could not possibly have been true. This year it has warned steadily that defence as a whole is committed to much more than can be funded. The conclusion from the Williamson outburst about funding, the Defence Committee’s warning, and May suggesting cutting the UK’s military and security capabilities to second division status is that defence, foreign policy, security and strategy are not safe in the hands of the present crew running things at Westminster and Whitehall.

The top duo of Mrs May and Chancellor Hammond, with the National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwil, scurrying along behind like their sorcerer’s apprentice, appear to be looking to freeze or even cut the defence budget. Running currently at £37 billion a year, a small cut would make little realistic difference to the search for extra funds for the NHS.

It is not just a question of finance – policies and practices and overall strategic aims have been a mess in defence for the best part of a decade now, and certainly since Cameron’s first strategic review of autumn 2010.

The day of reckoning is now at hand. Gavin Williamson is due to publish his Defence Modernisation Review within a few weeks. It was to be his bid to get more money for his department. He has declared he has to fix a projected £20 billion black hole in defence finances over the next ten years, mainly on equipment programmes – hence the calculation of an extra £2 billion a year just to keep things on course as they are.

Publication date for the review, now called the National Defence Plan, has been put back several times, with fears now that it is headed for the long grass of parliament’s summer recess. However, defence correspondents were told last week that we would hear the ‘headlines’ of the new defence plan by the Nato summit in Brussels on July 12th.

At the summit Mrs May should come clean about the five-year plan for UK defence and foreign policy aims and aspirations. She should state clearly whether she sees Britain as a top tier nation in terms of defence and global security.

In simple terms, this means whether Britain will continue with a nuclear deterrent and continues to be able to project up to a division of ground forces in coalition operations for war and peace, for alliances such as Nato and the UN. Of course, in addition there are contributions to be made for Special Forces, maritime patrols against pirates, insurgents and mass organized crime migration operations. There are also the contributions to counter terrorism, surveillance, and intelligence gathering. In addition, there are the vital new areas of cyber, space communication and weaponry, and artificial intelligence embracing the new spectrum of autonomous weapons systems.

Much will be made of the claim to be one of the few major Nato powers to devote some 2 per cent of GDP to defence, plus the huge relative contribution of the UK to overseas aid, now something in excess of £12 billion a year.

The boasts on defence spending look increasingly hollow, however, under close scrutiny. The UK includes, as it is allowed to under Nato rules, items such as service pensions, depreciation of buildings and barracks and the security and intelligence agencies, including GCHQ at Cheltenham, are also included in the 2 per cent of GDP figure. The amount being spent on equipment and personnel directly involved in defence is about 1.7 per cent of GDP, or slightly under. This moves the HCDC, the commons defence committee, suggestion of a lift of 2.5 per cent of GDP expenditure on defence from wishful thinking and political fantasy to practical reality.

Mrs May, and her national security adviser Sir Mark Sedwill, have suggested that less should be spent on the fighting forces meaning cuts and more spending on cyber and information warfare. This is said to have been put to General Carter in last week’s meeting about stepping down from being a first-tier military power. Both Mrs May and Sedwill seem to think defence choices are now binary: fighting forces that can fight for ground and air and sea space, or the new landscape of robotic weapons, cyber warfare and surveillance. They do not seem to realise that there is no choice: to defend its interests and people, the UK will have to prepare for both kinds of threat and conflict.

We got a glimpse of what the British Army has to face in the 21st century at the annual Land Warfare Conference in London last week. It was led by the new Army head, General Mark Carelton-Smith, who just three days in office gave in his concluding speech a brilliant overview appreciation of what the Army needs to be and do to face the challenges of today. He spoke without resort to a single cliché, military or otherwise. He said he wouldn’t talk money or politics, and currently it could work on the £8.9 billion it currently costs each year. He said it had to be young, and adaptable, to work with allies in a range of operations for war and peace across the world.

Such warfighting skills seem far from the minds of prime minister May, chancellor Hammond, and security adviser Sedwill, to whom such training and preparation looks like an expensive nuisance. Earlier this year Sedwill produced ‘the National Security Capability Review,’ which was supposed to set the framework and policy framework for defence and the forces. So far it has made little impact, and Sir Mark’s presentation of a digest of the paper was one of the weakest elements in the Land Warfare conference last week.

It is high on clichés such as: we will exercise our ‘new national security doctrine,’ which aims “to protect our people, project our global influence, and promote our prosperity.” The survey of trouble spots around the world and emerging threats seems a bit of mish-mash, a first attempt at a GCSE paper on international affairs.

But, suggests the paper in Panglossian mode, it will all come right because of a new doctrine – the fusion doctrine which draws together all interested parties and agencies, from the aid agencies, to diplomats, cyber wonks, the police, intelligence, and last but not least, Defence and Armed Forces, ‘which are to be strengthened and modernized.’ This sounds like a rerun of Tony Blair’s ‘joined-up government’ and look where that got us.

For ‘modernised and strengthened’ a cynic might suggest you should read, ‘cut back and marginalized.’ Shortly after taking office, Sir Mark mooted to some Army chiefs that the Army should be cut back from the present strength of 80,000 to 60,000. Another wheeze he has been airing is that the Army should be reduced to a gendarmerie militia for UK homeland defence, public order and rescue missions. Meanwhile there should be a small force available for discretionary service abroad for peacekeeping, disaster relief and rescue, and a small amount of fighting – only in conjunction with coalition partners in Nato and a few favoured allies such as Australia and New Zealand beside.

A downgrading of the UK forces’ posture from tier one status in projection and reach to gendarmerie plus assistance force would not only be a mistake, it would make Britain a laughing stock. Post Brexit, Britain is supposed to reach out for new global opportunities. That wouldn’t work very well if this couldn’t be matched with the kind of security expertise, resources and training for which the UK has been renowned. It is a revenue earner. The new nine-power European, but non-EU and Nato, force the UK joined this week is a positive move in this direction.

The biggest problem raised by the new review and realignment of UK defence remains the one here at home – the disastrous record of procurement and expenditure policy at the MoD. The UK is buying too much of what it can’t really afford, and too much of what might prove of questionable value in the medium to long term. The two glaring examples are the Trident renewal programme, currently costed at over £50 billion, and the complex package of the two new aircraft carriers, their planes and ancillary equipment.

That the UK remains in the nuclear arms business is a given. The world is too risky and a new phase of global nuclear proliferation, especially of tactical and battlefield weaponry, seems to be on the way. But why does its require slavish adherence to the ancient doctrine of Mutual Armed Destruction (MAD) cooked up in the Cold War? Do we really need one ballistic submarine bombed up with missiles targeted on Russian cities at sea continuously, to remain credible? Similarly, in the age of hypersonic anti-ship missiles, two 70,000-ton fleet aircraft carriers seem strangely out of kilter, particularly if you have to devote a disproportionate number of the Navy’s men and women to keep them ticking over.

To balance the books and keep the big programmes going the ministers and their officials are dreaming of cutting man power in the services, yet again. It has always been the cheap option and this has been a disastrous pattern in all the recent defence reviews since the Cold War. All 13 major defence reviews since 1945 have meant cuts.

We got a good glimpse of the quality of the Army and the forces at their best in General Carelton-Smith’s speech in what proved, against the run of play, a remarkably feel-good Land Warfare conference this year. He said he wanted the Army to be young in outlook, looking forward to the real challenges of tomorrow, and “to be used to be really useful.”  He also said “really good ideas come from the young majors, and sergeant majors, male and female – they make the Army what is.” The same boldness and vision is not immediately apparent among the political leadership, and their advisers. Quite the reverse.