“Well they would say that, wouldn’t they”? Response to article on Russian views on UK Defence priorities

The Guardian published an article by Dr Mark Galeotti (HERE) recently focusing on what purported to be the Russian view of UK defence priorities, and putting forward suggestions that UK defence planners should focus on.

It is an intriguing article, which focuses on three broad themes that are perhaps slightly at odds with each other. Firstly that the UK cuts high mobility light infantry at its own risk, secondly that fewer high end ships like QUEEN ELIZABETH are needed, and finally that there is a need to focus on morale and training, with the overall aim of generating light forces able to deploy globally, without necessarily the inconvenience of possessing Trident.

Humphrey has been lucky enough to travel to Russia and visit many of the sites from the Great Patriotic War and Russian Revolution. He has a respect for the culture, history and civilization of Russia, and has been fortunate enough on occasions to work with the Russian military. He also harbours a deep respect for the manner in which Russia excels at information operations, and in particular disinformation, an area that they are world leaders at.

To Humphrey, this article reads as if the author has taken at face value Russian views, without actively questioning why they may say this, or what their goals would be in doing so. The article is in many ways a good insight into how the Russians would like the UK to be, so as not to pose a threat to Russia directly. To his mind, this article is merely the latest in a long series of occurrences aimed at gently destabilising Western capability, under the pretext of being ‘helpful’. The purpose of this blog article  is to explore why this may be the case. 

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Light Infantry forces play a vital role in the UKs ability to deploy at distance, particularly when supported by either follow on forces and a coherent logistics chain that can reinforce them. The Royal Marines benefit not only from a strong amphibious shipping force, but also from strong airlift capabilities, a sustained strategic RORO force and an ability to coherently command and control complex operations, usually working alongside allies and seamlessly be able to communicate and share information and intelligence.

This capability has been shaped over many decades, and relies on physical equipment, an ability to operate well as a trusted ally, and also by possessing a global network of defence attaches and co-operation agreements to permit access to ports and airfields to move equipment and people around.

When the Russians reportedly state in the article “Britain has always had the best light infantry in the world, and the bastards get places faster than we would like” this is less a view on UK infantry capability, more a statement that the UKs sustained investment for decades repeatedly pays off. That said, it is hard to think of a single occasion since WW2 where UK and Russian forces have directly faced off other than Kosovo in 1999.

To Russia, the UK choosing to prioritise resources on Light Infantry means two key things. Firstly, in defence reviews, acceding to demands from MPs and the Media to protect the front line regiments reduces funding able to go to support the ‘tail’ (e.g. the less glamorous logistics and other enablers) that allow UK forces to deploy globally. They understand, in a way many do not, that investing in light infantry is worthless unless you also invest in the support to get it  to go somewhere.

Secondly, investing in the Light Infantry capability means taking a conscious decision to reduce investment in heavier follow on forces. To Russia this means that a British military with globally deployable light forces will probably have sacrificed its ‘heavy’ (e.g. tracked vehicles and armour) capability. Any reduction in tracked units reduces the ability to deploy troops to Eastern Europe to present a credible deterrent to Russia.

Light Infantry is fine to complete some missions, but it needs follow on forces to sustain its success. Much like the Parachute Regiment failed at Arnhem due to the inability of armoured units to link up, the modern equivalent of a parachute drop would also fail unless heavier units were capable of coming in quickly – ‘hold until relieved’ is a great line for a WW2  film, and not an order that should be given to a modern commander unless you know it can be delivered without risking the loss of the force.

Russia would doubtless be delighted if the UK chose to sacrifice its heavier capability to protect the more high profile cap badges. Such a decision would reduce risk to Russia, and actually reduce the overall capability of the UK armed forces, as Commanders would be less willing to commit to operations, knowing there was reduced chance of resupply, relief and results.

Sailing Coastal Waters

The article puts forward the view that Russia is remarkably unconcerned about the UK’s carrier, and would rather see the UK invest in lighter forces and coastal capability like submarines, and not focus on putting a Carrier Battle Group to sea. This is accompanied by the usual dire warnings that all carriers are vulnerable to being sunk, and are essentially white elephants, and that the UK would have been better to invest in smaller forces.

On a practical level, the suggestion that all carriers are vulnerable is a myth that has been put about for decades, but shows little sign of coming true. People simply do not understand how big the ocean is, how empty it is, and how difficult it is to find a ship that does not want to be found.

In practical terms, QUEEN ELIZABETH is just under 300m long. Let us assume that in a renewed Cold War, she fits into wider NATO planning and is assigned a mission to patrol north of Russia to deliver an air strike if required. For simplicity purposes, lets also assume her aircraft can fly a maximum of 720km to the target location, which is right on the coast before needing to return. This means QE needs to operate in a block of waterspace no more than 720km away from the target.

A 720km radius covers about 1,647,619 km² – and the ship is able to travel over 1000km a day in any direction. Any reconnaissance mission or capability needs to be able to overfly and maintain awareness of nearly 1.7 million km of waterspace at any one time to identify where the carrier may, or may not, be.

Maritime Patrol Aircraft are useful assets, but can only be in one place at once during a mission. It would take a significant and sustained effort to patrol effectively to identify the location of the carrier and monitor her. Similarly, space based imagery is not the magic panacea to finding ships that Hollywood thinks it is. A satellite in orbit will pass over a finite area on a fixed timescale, and will only be able to image a specific area. Its imagery is time sensitive – it may miss a ship by 10 seconds or 10 miles, and even if it spots the vessel, by the the time this information is processed, analysed and acted on, sufficient time will have elapsed that it is not longer accurate. 

No ship is unsinkable, or undetectable, but hopefully the message is clear that simply finding a barely 300m long vessel in 1.7 million square km's of waterspace and being able to translate this understanding into an effective operation to damage or sink it is nowhere near as easy as some would have you believe, and would require vast investment in Maritime Patrol Aircraft, surveillance capability and effective dissemination of information in a usable manner.

To Russia, the mere existence of a Carrier Group somewhere off its shoreline is a risk. The sea is a big empty place, and it is very easy to disappear into it if required. Their overt dismissal of the carrier reflects a wider worry that they would probably struggle to find and follow such ships off their coast or an area of operations that concerned them.

It is also worth noting that for all the dismissals of carriers as easily sinkable, the Russian Navy continues in its aspiration to replace the ADMIRAL KUZNETZOV, with various plans announced to build new carriers in increasingly lengthened timelines. That no such ship exists beyond impressive models and imagery, and that no construction has begun (likely hampered by the inability to draw on resources in Ukraine to complete construction) suggests that Russia is unlikely to remain in the carrier club for many more years, despite aspirations to do so.

Those In Peril On The Sea

More widely, the proposal that the UK should focus on coastal submarines and light forces is not only at odds with the proposal about deploying globally (with such forces not having the global reach required), but it also would negatively impact the UK’s ability to operate at sea.

Light coastal forces (for instance corvettes and light frigates) are cheap and simple for a reason – they are not credible warfighting vessels for high end conflict. They cannot carry the required combination of sensors, weapons and capability to credibly float, move and fight in all likely conflicts that the UK envisages itself doing. 

While there is definitely an opportunity for a small number of cheaper ships for certain duties, which is being developed in the form of the Type 31e light frigate, downsizing to overall cheaper lighter forces carries huge risk. It means not being able to put out a formed carrier battle group, it means not being able to fight high end wars and be confident of survival, let alone victory. It means not being able to credibly integrate with allies, like the US and French navies, both of whom actively welcome the full and incredibly effective integration of Type 23 and 45s into their deployed carrier battle groups.

Such a move would reduce the ability of the RN to deploy, in turn reducing its ability to escort reinforcement convoys for light forces deploying globally. It is often forgotten the scale of the commitment in 2002/03 by the Royal Navy to escort dozens of merchant ships carrying the UK vehicles and equipment to Saudi Arabia for OP TELIC. If you lose this escort ability, you increase the risk of these supply ships to Russian surface ships, submarines and aircraft. In other words, buying cheaper ships benefits our potential foes and not our friends.

 Loss of high capability ships means no means to escort our carriers (the backbone of the Royal Navy for then next 50 years), and reduces our credibility as an ally. The US and France look to the UK to shoulder the burden in protecting their ships – in turn the UK benefits from access to capability, information and support. If the UK proves itself unwilling, or unable to safeguard US and French lives, it is likely that this access will be diminished or removed. Thus further neutralising the UK as a credible military threat to Russia. 

The article talks of submarines that can contest northern waters, presumably (although not explicitly stated) to be conventional submarines and not nuclear ones. Such a move would gift an enormous military advantage to the Russians, for nuclear submarines benefit from speed, stealth and sensors – they can move quickly to an area of interest and observe it undetected and without need to break cover.

Coastal submarines are slower, with reduced endurance and while quieter when running on batteries, do need to vent regularly to replenish air. As many books on Cold War operations in northern waters hint at, conventional submarines struggled when operating near Russian territorial waters during the cold war in a way that nuclear submarines did not.

Russia knows this, and it knows that anything it can do to reduce nuclear submarines near its waters is fundamentally a good thing. They will be aware that a well operated western SSN poses a clear and credible threat to the operation of their SSBN force, to shadow operations of their surface forces, and to monitor wider developments – all of which can be done in a manner that a conventional submarine cannot.

Finally smaller surface ships and conventional submarines have reduced endurance and reduced time at sea. While they will not automatically be easy to find, the area in which they will be operating is likely to be considerably smaller than  larger vessels, which can deploy and stay at sea for longer, and increases the chance of them being found, primarily because their radius of operations is more constrained.

These proposals represent a view that for Russia, the dream solution would be to emasculate one of only two truly ocean going global navies that poses a real threat to Russian interests. Scaled down reach, reduced capability and an inability to pose a credible threat to Russian interests at home, in the near abroad, or globally would be an excellent result indeed. It would benefit Russia and threaten UK national security as a whole.

The Russians will also be well aware that a move to conventional submarines would almost certainly shut down the nuclear submarine construction lines in Barrow. The loss of work would mean that critical skills required to keep the construction of nuclear submarines going would be lost. In the short term this would directly impact on the move to build the DREADNOUGHT class, and in the medium term would see the end of the UK as an operator of SSBNs, and with it nuclear weapons.

The Russians may not directly cite the existence of Trident as a threat, but they will be acutely aware that while the UK remains a nuclear power, they face three nuclear armed allies in NATO, each of whom possesses sufficient nuclear capability to provide a credible deterrent to disrupt the functioning of the Russian State, and who can do so independently of the other two.

This means Russian planners constantly need to consider how to react to three different powers, all of whom require different handling and different considerations on how to best counter and neutralise. There is no doubt that Russia would be delighted if the UK were to remove itself from the nuclear club, for it reduces the number of rivals that Russia needs to worry about who could pose a genuine existential threat to the Russian State.

Rapid Conclusions

The article concludes by suggesting that the UK needs to be able to get to places quickly, and not with the heaviest kit. This may sound impressive, but arguably runs contrary to the lessons Russia seems to have identified.

One only has to look at the enormous investment in the Russian armed forces, particularly the Army and its armour/artillery to realise that for Russia, the need is a large scale force capable of fighting high intensity warfare against a peer foe. This force is able to deploy rapidly and be used as a ‘force in being’ to threaten, intimidate or coerce neighbouring states.

One also needs to consider the manner in which Russian exercises, such as Zapad 17 (conducted with Belarus), which saw over 100,000 personnel and 20 ships deployed at various times, are testing the ability to rapidly mobilise the military to handle and respond effectively to external threats. This isn’t being done with light forces, but with high end armoured and artillery capability, supported by potent air power.

There is real danger in these proposals – they present a vision of a UK that if adopted would paradoxically weaken the UK’s ability to actively defend against this sort of threat. It would see the UK able to deploy a thin red line of light infantry, unable to be reinforced, or defended, while the navy would be unable to deploy to effectively monitor or deal with the threat from Russia. Finally, moving to a non-nuclear posture would be of direct benefit to Russian policy goals, while at the same time removing the ability of the UK to be a calculation in Russian policy making in the same way.

The article presents a dangerously seductive view of UK defence planning which combines attempts at flattery with a view of the world suggesting that everything would be better if we just did as Moscow suggested. It does not seek to question Russian logic, nor does it seek to ask why would the Russians want us to adopt such a proposal? 

Given the manner in which Russia increasingly sees the West as a potential foe, not a willing friend, surely the first question that should have been asked was ‘well why on earth would they suggest that’? The answer is simple – they suggest it because they know it will hurt the UK, and benefit Russia, which to their minds is the very definition of a policy success.