Thin Pinstriped Line

The British Government has decided that the Chinese company ‘Huawei’ will be permitted to provide infrastructure for non-core parts of the next generation of mobile phone networks, known as 5G. This decision, taken in the face of strident opposition from the USA, and in contrary to the actions of some allied nations has aroused a variety of responses from support to concern. How significant is it though and what does this decision tell us about the difficult of carrying out domestic politics in an international century where local decisions can have the potential to impact on strategic relationships? In simple terms 5G is the next generation of mobile phone capability, delivering significantly enhanced power and capability to phone networks and being the first to truly cope with the advances in how the internet has reshaped our experience with telephones. From being a means to annoy people by shouting loudly on the train, to now being an integral part of every aspect of ou...

The number of active warships in service in the Royal Navy has long been a matter of public interest. You only need look at the debates in the 1900s over the procurement of Dreadnoughts or arguments around aircraft carrier and battleship numbers to realise that numbers matter to the public. It is traditional when people assess the state of the RN to look and compare ship numbers to that of Admirals or other metrics, or compare like for like the number of vessels to other navies. Usually these statistics can be spun any which way you like in order to meet the story you want to achieve. The current area of interest is that of the size of the escort fleet (namely the six destroyers and thirteen frigates in service) and whether it is enough, too small or even too large for the tasks ahead of it. The well regarded defence publisher Shepard media put out an article this week suggesting that the force of 19 is likely to drop over the next few years as the gap between existing sh...

Last week there were reports in the media that the UK is considering using text messages to provide warning of imminent attack by ballistic missiles. The idea attracted a mixture of scorn and ridicule, with people seeing it as the new version of the ‘four minute warning’ and wondering what possible difference it could make. In fact the idea has a lot of quite interesting potential benefits and is worth considering further. Theso-called ‘ four minute warning’ dates back to the Cold War when as early warning radar systems came on line, the ability to gain advanced warning of an incoming attack grew. In practical terms there was never a guarantee about the actual time people would have got, but the hope was that there would be at least four minutes notice. While this doesn’t sound a lot, it is worth remembering that ballistic missiles fired at the UK from the Soviet Union would only be airborne for a relatively short time due to their speed and flight distance, so the reality i...

In an interview with the Sunday Times today, the Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace MP raised concerns about the future ability of the British Armed Forces to operate alongside American allies, noting that this cannot be taken for granted and that it would be essential to look at improving British sovereign capabilities. This would include better ISTAR and other capabilities that the UK benefits from when working as a partner alongside the US. In the first article on this subject today, Humphrey explored what this could mean particularly for the British Army. The key challenge in this debate is that while developing national sovereign capabilities may sound appealing, it comes at a significant price and could require scaling back of ambitions. For instance, if the assumption is that the UK is going to operate alone, or without direct US support, does this mean that it continues to make political and policy sense to want to have the ability to deploy a ground-based...

The Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace MP has questioned the previously unthinkable assumption that the UK can expect to go to war alongside the US. In a wide ranging interview in the Sunday Times , SofS openly questions whether the US is a reliable partner anymore and what this may mean for the forthcoming Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). To many commentators and fans of Defence an SDSR is a process by which they can spend hours discussing orders of battle, buying more equipment and trying to develop a dream fleet / air force / army that meets their needs. Already you can find threads to this effect all over the internet. What is often neglected in these discussions is the fact that an SDSR is much less a shopping trip to the defence equipment bazaar, and much more a chance to take stock and reflect on the UK’s national strategic priorities, policies and choices about how it sees its position in the world, and what this may mean for the levers of govern...