Britain’s Armed Forces are in major need of reform

Former EU negotiator Lord David Frost has switched to his role as National Security Adviser to prepare the government’s Integrated Review (IR) on security, foreign policy and defence – to be launched a few weeks from now. Lord Sedwill,the former NSA and Cabinet Secretary, is helping in the preparations for Britain’s chairmanship of the G-7 summit at Carbis Bay in Cornwall this June.

Both the IR, and the summit will chart Britain’s global strategy now it has left the EU. “Boris Johnson wants the Integrated Review to be more than just a defence review,” Lord Sedwill says.

The latest draft of the IR is now being passed through several interested ministries, with detailed work in the Foreign Office, Treasury and Defence Ministry currently under way. The major ministries are to issue their separate policy white papers, I understand. The Defence White Paper will essentially be a mini defence review in itself. It will have to address complex issues of current expenditure and projected deficits, and how the extra £16.5 billion funding awarded by Boris Johnson in an unprecedented four year settlement is to be spent.

Meanwhile, Lord Frost has been touring and studying many outposts and ministries connected with his new security empire. I understand that he is to be the main government spokesman to present the Integrated Review when it is unveiled at the end of next month at the earliest – more likely just before Parliament rises for the Easter recess in the week of 29 March. “Lord Frost is being tutored in the role of security adviser and strategist,” says the government’s defence and strategy adviser Paul Beaver.

In the defence review and the IR the government will have to square the circle of current and future defence expenditure – particularly in the light of yet another bad report on equipment programming and budgeting by the National Audit Office, published last week. For the fourth year in a row, as the NAO laments in the introduction, the defence equipment plan is unrealistic and unaffordable.

All three of the armed services face major overspends on their equipment budgets. The Army, for example, is reckoned to have spent around £7 billion over ten years on two major armoured vehicle programmes – for the Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicle and the major upgrade of the Warrior infantry carrier. “So far they have not achieved a single operational vehicle,” says the doyen of independent analysts, Francis Tusa. “After a series of modifications the main gun of Ajax vibrates so much that it cannot be fired on the move – which is one of the main operational requirements.” The navy has a current £4.5 billion overspend on capital programmes, according to the NAO. The RAF has difficulties with large acquisitions such as the Poseidon P8 maritime patrol aircraft and the Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning system – both involving Boeing.

The budgetary problems with the MoD are looking like a chronic disease. Despite heroic and imaginative efforts by executives such as Sir Bernard Gray and former Defence Secretaries such as the forensically fiscal Philip Hammond, the problems persist and hackneyed expressions like ‘defence budget black hole,’ and ‘dire defence deficit’ are rarely out of the headlines.

The government has given real extra money for defence. It is needed, but the settlement is not quite as generous as might first appear. The trick is to stem the leaks and unnecessary black holes, make current programmes work, and have enough for the needed innovations – especially in cyber, intelligence and space.

The RAF has currently about 120 frontline strike aircraft on its books, but with ordnance for only 30 at any time.  Some programmes, such as the F-35 strike plane for the carriers, need to be cut back. Only half the original planned order of 130 could ever be needed. The arrangement for purchase and cooperation with the US has not been satisfactory – costs are high and work and technology sharing have been less than generous, as Britain and the major European allies are finding to their cost.

Personnel is another major question to be addressed by the reviews. The Army is currently 7,000 down on its statutory manning level of 82,000. Plans are being mooted – in The Times for one – that the trained strength should be cut to 65,000 fully trained personnel,  with the number of all ranks in training or about to leave at around 72,000. Go any lower, the force becomes unbalanced and it will be hard to maintain renowned specialist units such as the SAS and SBS.

A strong sign of where the government intends to take Britain’s power and influence was given in this week’s announcement of “Carrier Strike Group 2021,” for the deployment of a task force led by the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth across the globe to the Gulf Singapore and across the South China Sea. The carrier group will be supported by all three services, have US Marine forces alongside, including their F-35B strike planes and the destroyer USS The Sullivans.

Ben Wallace the Defence Secretary, launching the Carrier Strike Group 2021 at a virtual ceremony with US acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, said “This deployment embodies the strength of our bilateral ties and reflects the depth of this vital defence and security partnership.” Alliances will be the key to the security future, most commentators agree. But leaving Europe, and backing Nato does not mean that the UK should ignore what is going on in the backyard. “Britain has to attend to the North Atlantic – particularly the Russian submarine activity there,” says Francis Tusa. Britain needs one or two more hunter-killer SSN submarines of the Astute class, at least.

Inevitably with new stratagems, threats and global realities comes the question of leadership. The form book is already being scrutinised for the successor to General Sir Nick Carter as head of the armed services, Chief of Defence Staff, to lead and manage new plans, forces and global posture. In the frame, as a matter of course, are the three service chiefs, and the head of Strategic Command, General Sir Patrick Sanders. A great battle commander, with a DSO and CBE to his credit for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, he is a firm favourite with soldiers and civilians alike – and if it came to sheer affability and approachability, he would win by a knockout.

His likely rivals are the current head of the Army, Sir Mark Carelton Smith, a distinguished SAS commander with the Irish Guards and Eton – a rough contemporary of Boris Johnson’s – also on his CV, and the head of the Navy Tony Radakin. Radakin is the dark horse , and is well respected as a communicator and a reformer – hence the moniker ‘Radical Radakin.’

Much lies in the hands of Ben Wallace, the defence secretary. He will not only choose and lead the new leadership, but shape the new approach to old and new tasks for the forces. The forces have performed vital roles in the Covid crisis, but given little credit for it, least of all in Whitehall. They have filled gaps, and plugged holes from tracing and testing, vaccination training and sorting out the chaos of PPE distribution. They have shown what modern forces, standing and reserve, can offer in resilience tasks in modern society – sustaining in emergencies from  pandemics to natural disasters, and terrorist threats. Currently 6,000  are on active Covid duty – with a further 14,000 ‘Covid force’ in reserve if things get worse.

Yet their biggest opponents are from the civil servants and many politicians – this led to back-up military forces being called in too late for matters like PPE management and building the Nightingale facilities in the first wave. Functionaries and political hacks, suffering the effects of bad arts degrees at an impressionable age, like to cite history in saying ‘it is not the British way’ to use third line forces on civil contingency duties. Remember Peterloo, Tonypandy, the Black and Tans, these wiseacres like to say.

Wrong. Almost every major democratic ally of Britain has better arrangements for using forces for civil contingency emergency and community support than the UK – France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, especially. In this emergency the Army’s logisticians, communicators and managers have been working in seven ministries. There are 120 three-person teams helping with the vaccination and immunisation campaign. This whole issue could and should be addressed in the IR – a crucial element in the homeland security and resilience of Global Britain. It won’t be.

But as much as the field leadership of Britain’s forces, Ben Wallace needs to address the civilian management of defence. “Faced with repeated reporting of the lack of budgetary credibility, the top civil servants seem just to slope their shoulders and look away,” says Francis Tusa of Defence Analysis. A change at the top is needed of the men in suits as well as those in uniform.