Is The UK A Tier One Military Power?

The Secretary of State has confirmed the launching of a review into the UK’s defence and security industrial strategy where he confirmed the goal of the UK remaining a ‘tier one military power’.  But what is a ‘Tier One’ military power and is the UK one? Its a simple question, but one that can easily spark intensive debate about the nature of power and capability between nations.

Usually when people want to get an easy story on defence they talk about how cuts to the armed forces threaten the UK’s position as a top tier military power, and how deleting carriers, the Red Arrows or the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment threatens this position. Its often intertwined with some kind of ranking, suggesting that if something is done then the UK will be less powerful than France, Germany, Vanuatu etc.

The problem though is that national power and capability isn’t something that can easily be ranked in the form of a quantifiable metric. A country with a small potent military designed to do the job of countering all the likely security threats it faces is a very potent power – for example the Singaporean Armed Forces are a good example of a numerically small force that meets the roles placed on it with aplomb.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

For the UK this debate is usually linked to national soul searching about what sort of nation we are, and whether we’re a sunrise nation or a sunset nation when it comes to military capability. There is a constant harping back to the past when bigger usually meant better, even if there was no reliable metrics to support this assertion. For some people the numbers are all that matter, and an analysis of the underlying capability and power is irrelevant.

So given all of this, what on earth do we mean when we say Tier One military power? To some people its about the physical capability a nation possesses and how it employs it – for example, does it possess the full range of military capabilities, can it deploy far from home, can it sustain a presence and can it regenerate to conduct other operations elsewhere?

This definition is perhaps a little simplistic as it focuses on merely one part of the puzzle. Without doubt there is something to be said about a nations armed forces capabilities and what can be done with them, but its important to see this in the context of wider discussion too about what the nation can actually do.

For instance there are a lot of countries out there with numerically strong on paper armed forces comprising thousands of tanks and APCs, tens of thousands of soldiers and aircraft but which have no ability to deploy abroad. Look for instance at North Korea, a nation that on paper possesses considerable military power, but which realistically only poses a threat to nations that border it.

Humphrey would argue that a true measure of a nations value as a military power is more than just its physical hardware and assets. Other aspects matter equally in determining what sort of importance and credibility a nation has.

Diplomatic reach and presence is critical, and investment in a wide ranging diplomatic network that can lobby on behalf of a nations interests, and play on wider interests is essential. So too is the ability to maintain effective intelligence services capable of understanding and countering threats in the grey spaces where they lurk.

Possession of a sovereign defence industrial base is also key because the importance to design, produce and export military capability cannot be underestimated. If you do not own the design, or buy it in from abroad, your ability to be self-sustaining, or to be a credible partner of choice with others who would want to work with you is reduced. In modern times, investing in national defence and security industrial capability is critically important.

Equally important is the ability to work with allies as part of a coalition or alliance. Few nations credibly expect to fight alone, even fewer still expect to fight alone overseas a long way from home. Being able to work as a truly integrated alliance member, and support this through effective diplomatic efforts is essential.

The ability to integrate your military efforts as part of a wider national strategy and ensure they deliver effectively and coherently is also key. There is no point possessing armed forces capable of turning a city into rubble if you have no credible plan on how to rebuild and enter the peace building process. Investment in areas that are no remotely of interest to statistics collectors like aid programmes, security sector reform, conflict prevention and so on are absolutely essential to the ability of a nation to be a key player in the security space.

If we apply this thinking to the UK we see several key themes emerge. Firstly, from a purely military perspective the UK remains a potent powerful nation. It possesses pretty much the full range of credible military capabilities from aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and the ability to deploy at distance at a time and place of its choosing.

Its armed forces have the ability to deploy and sustain a brigade overseas on an enduring basis, or for best effort it can deploy and sustain a division, with these elements supported by a national maritime and air force support both for logistics and for warfighting.

These forces can deploy globally via a network of permanent bases, and supported by host nation support and access in  other third party locations. The UK is one of a tiny handful of nations to maintain a permanent military presence on every continent on the planet,  and has the ability to deploy and operate forces at a time, and place, of its choosing.

Very few countries have this reach or ability to deploy it effectively, which is why UK presence and contribution matters so much in defence terms – it’s a nation that can bring credible and experienced assets and people to the operation and not be particularly phased by the logistical challenges.

Similarly, it is a force that specialises in expeditionary warfare and has invested heavily in logistics capabilities to ensure reach. This is demonstrated daily via a variety of ways, from the RORO sealift force supporting Army and Air Force units in the Falklands and Gulf, through to the RLC working to deploy and rotate troops out to Eastern Europe to provide a credible deterrence presence in Estonia.

While these forces are smaller than before, they can continue to deploy and sustain at broadly the same level of effect. For example the British Army can continue to deploy an armoured division, as per the 1991 Gulf War, which today would probably be better supported logistically than the one sent in 1991 to liberate Kuwait. While the air component is much smaller, it is also much better equipped with weapon systems that are far more precise and effective, and capable of having the same effect as previously multiple Tornado and Jaguar units.

Most importantly the ability to stay the course remains undiminished, the UK continues to possess armed forces capable of going out on operations and staying there for the long haul. This sticking power is something that many nations do not possess, and for some countries a physically spectacular commitment to an operation may in reality result in problems back at home as supply chains struggle or other commitments fall by the wayside to deliver the main effort.

This is perhaps the main difference for the UK – its spent decades building its armed forces into a potent military able to go away and do a wide range of operations without externally breaking a sweat -  something that is very helpful indeed.

The wider point that is often forgotten is that the British Armed Force excel at coalition work and close integration. People often compare the UK to the French Armed Forces and suggest the French have the edge. Hunphrey would disagree here precisely because of the point around coalition work.

The UK has spent decades building exceptionally close relationships with the US as a trusted partner, with people embedded in exchange roles at practically every rank, and where the UK is focused on being able to provide mutually complementary capabilities that can integrate into US planning.

For example the UK can offer to be present on ‘day one’ of a high intensity conflict with the US through the provision of carrier airpower with an integrated air wing, a Future Commando Force that can lead the way for the landing of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the RAF can offer the F35 force and a British Army Brigade or Division that can fight alongside its US peers as part of their command structure.

Underpinning this too is the deeper non tangible stuff that few rivet counters notice. It’s the exceptionally close intelligence links, the way that each others comms and IT systems talk to each other and work in an integrated manner and the wider way that UK and US personnel are used to working alongside each other as an integrated force.

This isn’t a theoretical offer, this is tried and tested and has been proven to work on the ground for real. One of the key strengths the UK has is that it can and does work with the US military in an integrated manner unparalleled by any other nation on earth.

This is perhaps the biggest difference between the UK and other nations that are vying for the ‘tier one’ status – it’s the ability to work as an integrated partner with the US anywhere on the globe, and not just alongside them.

The global strength and presence of the UK’s wider soft power assets too should not be underestimated – the range and breadth of the diplomatic network, with hundreds of posts around the world helps act as a force multiplier, opening doors, housing defence sections and trade posts and functioning as a hub for UK interests.

Many countries do not have a global diplomatic presence, which is thrown into sharp relief when a crisis hits and they discover they have no one ‘in country’. For the UK the range of the FCO network, and the manner by which over the years this has transformed into a hub for UK operations more widely is a real strength. It should be seen too as a real test of UK capability – there is little point having a globally deployable military if you cannot have a conversation with the country you want to operate with.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Added to this is the way that the wider UK programmes on areas like aid, crime and other issues work effectively together. While some mock the aid budget and think it would be better spent on Defence, Humphrey could not disagree more strongly. The aid budget is a critical tool for both preventing us having to deploy on a conflict mission in due course, often through highly innovative use of projects that may appear difficult to understand, but when put in context of wider strategies can have a big impact.

Work on conflict prevention, empowerment of women, food security, economic growth and other key projects helps grow national stability and security. If this work, sometimes supported directly by the armed forces, helps prevent us having to intervene in a conflict in 20 years time, then this is a worthwhile investment of money. Prevention is almost always cheaper than cure.

A good reason why the UK matters and works effectively as a tier one power is precisely because it can fuse these various component parts together – its armed forces operate as part of a much bigger picture, and work particularly well with the other parts of government. This is in sharp contrast to many countries where there is poor co-ordination and effectiveness and where even if you possess thousands of tanks, your ability to put the country you wish to operate in back together again is limited.

So given all of this is the UK a tier one power that matters to the US? Yes, it absolutely is. It has the right combination of reach, effect and the ability to turn up on the day and be able to fight as an integrated part of the force. It can utilise its wider links through diplomatic and other networks to facilitate access, broker deals and provide support and logistics that are essential to US plans.

One only has to look at the wealth of support the UK provides to the US, including real estate access in convenient places, burden sharing on certain missions and a willingness to go into harms way together and not need support or place difficult caveats that make it a valued and trusted partner.

The UK is also seen by other nations as a valued ‘way in’ to the US system, and this helps build value in wider links. Exercising with the Brits helps get an insight into the level of training and capability required to be taken seriously by the US. Listening to the Brits and making a point to the FCO Ambassador may be a way of sending a signal or message to Washington that would otherwise not be heard. The UK is seen as a valued ally by the US and a valued conduit by many nations as a result.

We see the US occasionally mutter darkly about cutting and running in Basra and Helmand. This seems a convenient rewriting of history – having served in Iraq and seen the handover of provinces to Iraqi control, it was clear that the US military was fudging every metric possible to hand over and get out as soon as it could – and many other nations were looking to get out too. The rawness in some quarters is perhaps a reflection on different approaches to handing over rather than a sense that the UK was cutting and running.

Every nation enters into a conflict with a defined end state – to suggest that after years of fighting the UK was cutting and running would seem unduly harsh. There is a point when its right to move to the next stage, and in both Iraq and Afghanistan the UK was there at the start and will likely be there at the end too…

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Will the forthcoming Defence Review change anything though about the UK’s position as a ‘tier one’ player? Its hard to tell to be honest. It seems unlikely that the Review will change the desire to maintain the UK as a globally facing outward looking nation with a spread of global interests and a desire to get involved and play a leading role in international security.

What may change is the level to which forces are committed – for instance, the Army is likely to come under heavy scrutiny over the deployable division proposition while the RAF and RN will need to justify the carrier force and F35 roles.

But the wider question that will need to be addressed is a more simple one – in an age when the MOD is potentially nearly £15bn overdrawn, is unable to make strategic planning choices because it has to focus on in year cuts, and is trying to deliver too many unaffordable programmes, can it afford to remain a military tier one power?

Realistically the main worry of the Defence Review is an outcome which continues to commit the UK to staying the course on a variety of programmes, but which doesn’t take hard decisions about what to stop doing. Given the huge financial challenges and the unlikelihood of financial salvation from the Treasury, the review is going to be faced with the stark choices of spreading the butter ever thinner and trying to maintain the pretence of doing more with less, through descoping, deferring delaying and reprofiling projects and hoping things don’t fall apart, or the choice of cutting and focusing on doing less with more.

The former option is likely to be politically acceptable as a way of continuing to suggest the UK remains a key military power, and to meet the global Britain narrative. But the risk is that without more funding to buy out the problems in the equipment programme, then failure on operations becomes an increasingly real risk.

Culling tasks, perhaps stepping back from the focus on operations like working with NATO or deploying to the Far East, or asking if we actually need Carrier Strike after all and instead focusing on providing a very well funded suite of niche capabilities at home may be paradoxically of more value to the US.

If the UK continues on its current path then the risk is that with ever fewer assets, it will have to gap more, borrow more and run risks to generate forces for operations with the US. If there is a perception that the UK isn’t adding value because of its determination to remain a pocket superpower in name, then the US may feel frustrated and that that the alliance brings more costs than benefits.

At a time when the US Navy is facing massive cuts to its forces to pay for the next generation of SSBNs (27 erxtra ships will be scrapped between 2026 and 2034 on current plans) and with life extensions of the BURKE class being scrapped, LCS being paid off and other problems emerging, they will not have the desire or resources to support the Brits.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

In these circumstances would the US find more value in a UK that takes the tough call to trade capability for assured access? In other words the UK makes the difficult call to step back from doing some military roles, agreeing with the US that these will be areas where help is needed on future operations (for example, you could scrap the MBT fleet in its entirety and instead ask that the US provide tank support when needed) in return for the UK properly burden sharing.

This burden sharing could take the form of investing heavily in some niche areas – for instance much more ASW assets to support 2^nd Fleet in the North Atlantic, or additional underwater resources. It could mean providing additional tankers to support the US Air Force which is experiencing major problems with its new tanker force and so on. In other words, the UK configures its defence policy around taking choices to cut the budget, save money, but also make itself relevant to the US for the long term for protection purposes.

This is the potentially awkward choice facing policy makers today – do they want to continue on the same path of trying to do everything, or do they want to step back and invest in some areas but stop doing other things? Both options have their merits – if you want to be a leading player globally then you probably need to invest widely – but if you want to be a credible fighting power then you may need to cut back in other areas instead.

The wider question then is whether if difficult decisions are taken to slash defence reach and capability in some areas, will the UK choose to remain globally focused through its diplomatic, intelligence, trade, aid and other networks, or will it instead draw in on itself? Some of the threats to security today are arguably far less about military power, and rely far more on funding things like aid, policing, good diplomatic networks and global trade than they do the presence of an aircraft carrier.

The outcome of the Review is likely to be painful because deep and radical cuts are probably needed to make the books balance. How these cuts fall will shape how the UK defines itself militarily for decades to come – will it choose the path of pocket superpower in name, but not capability (in some ways mirroring the French) or will it choose to be bold and slash away long held roles in order to be of real value in other areas? Neither answer is particularly appealing, but baring a very substantial change, one or other seems the likely outcome of the review for Defence.