Be The Army You Want To Be - Thoughts on 'Future Soldier'
This announcement can be seen as the latest attempt to try
to define what it is that the British Army role should be in the post Cold War,
post HERRICK era. In many ways it is the continuation of a policy emphasis set
in the 2010 SDSR that foresaw the UK stepping away from direct ‘heavy’ intervention,
towards a more supportive and standoff strategy that prioritised presence and
training to prevent conflict occurring.
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| Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
This blog then is not one on ORBATs or structures or
discussing in excruciating detail why Unit X needs to be equipped with 18 not 15
tanks – there are plenty of sites on the net for that sort of explicit rivet counting
analysis. Rather this is intended as a ‘hot take’ on strategically what this
announcement means for the Army and UK defence.
There are many positives to draw from what this policy
offers – it is in many ways a pragmatic take on the challenges of today, and
tries to find a clear role for the Army in an era when the use of ground force
is, in the West at least, an increasingly out of favour issue.
By defining the Army as being an organisation more intended
to focus on training, assistance and operations in the ‘grey zone’, this plan could
be potentially significant. If there is genuine, long term and sustained
commitment to growing Ranger Bns, and using them as long term training teams to
enhance capabilities of partner nations, then this will have very positive benefits
for UK security.
A long-term plan, which sees training delivered year after
year, with sustained regional presence to build relationships that last a
career can potentially be a hugely positive outcome. Done well and done with the
intention that this is the long term plan, then the future looks positive.
There is always strong demand for British Army training around
the world, and having the means to offer it, to build capacity and to deliver
to partners could be good news. Its also a retention positive tool, particularly
if it allows soldiers to deploy globally and put their training to the test in a
way that really stretches them and is a step beyond the usual exercise routine.
It is likely that the Ranger Bns will be a popular and attractive posting, and
one that will serve as a natural feed into other specialised units as well,
such as special forces.
This move to training and mentoring also feels like a return
to more traditional soldiering for the Army – historically the British Army has
been a small force operating using other allies for mass and impact. This move
to working with partners, letting their forces take the lead in conducting
kinetic operations while providing skills, training and niche assets will be a
compelling offer – it may prove a policy and permissions challenge, but it is
something that looks an extremely positive offer.
The bigger question though is what beyond Ranger Bns is the
British Army actually going to do? The paper focuses on a return to older missions
like supporting the Civil Authorities, and assisting allies, but there feels
like there is a gap between low-key low-level training abroad, stuffing sandbags
and then moving into the high intensity conflict space where suddenly the Army
will be used to deter peer rivals globally.
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| Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
Part of this curious challenge is trying to define the
circumstances under which the UK is likely to step up and conduct a genuine high
intensity campaign with ground troops. Much effort is placed on talking about
global presence to have assets near to where the UK plans to operate – so for
example the regional training hub in Oman or Germany.
But given the reduced levels of equipment, and the lack of
troops in that region on an enduring basis, what is the likelihood of them
being used as intended for real. Certainly basing tanks in Oman may be useful
for local desert training, but they’ll still need to have RORO ferries
available to move them to any port in the region where they could be redeployed
– having your equipment available locally isn’t much use if your strategic
sealift is still four weeks away…
This isn’t to say that the deployments are not valuable, its
just that it is hard to make the leap of faith from assuming that because the
Army can deploy on exercise in the region, this automatically means it can quickly
deploy and sustain credible warfighting forces, and that the political will
exists to use them.
Similarly, the return to a more assertive deterrence posture
in central and Eastern Europe by putting more troops and vehicles through on
exercises will be welcomed by many NATO partners. This commitment to Europe is
a welcome sign of the UK continuing to play a serious and credible role at the
heart of European security, and to act as an additional complication in Russian
planning for mischief making.
However, as the Cold War showed, the ability to turn up and fight as a coherent worked up battlegroup in time to deter others isn’t easy and requires a huge amount of training and effort. Is the will and funding there to seriously train and sustain a credible force that can reinforce and defend the borders of Eastern Europe as required?
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| Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
This may sound slightly negative, but part of the questions that
emerge on reading the document are a sense of wondering what does the British
Army itself feel that it exists to do and why?
At its heart there is a simple answer to the question –
namely the role of the British Army is to ensure infantry soldiers can close
with and kill the enemy in a brutal, bloody and very violent way. The rest of
the Army exists to ensure that they can do this with maximum efficiency and
minimal friendly casualties.
However, look beyond this and you cannot help but feel a
sense of organisational anxiety from the Army. The ultimate tool in its arsenal
(namely the deployable Division) exists in a way that means it is of limited
utility on operations – once it has been deployed it will be some time before its
supporting enablers can be regenerated to redeploy it, and in the field, it can
only hold a relatively limited area of frontage. The circumstances where the British
Government feels it wishes to deploy its core land fighting capability in this
way seem hard to envisage.
Is the purpose of the division to be a deterrent, its mere
existence a gentle reminder of British intent, in the manner of the SSBN force,
or is it to be a capability that can be used at lower levels – even if this
undermines the ability to generate it for operations (e.g. would deploying Brigade
Combat Teams on operations reduce the likelihood and availability of the
Division to deploy).
We seem to have a situation where the Army is in possession
of a competent and wide-ranging group of units, but perhaps remains slightly
uncertain on how and when they are intended for use as a tool of the Government.
This is perhaps the biggest challenge here to understand and justify – what is
it that the Army thinks it can offer Government?
This may sound an obvious and flippant question, but its
perhaps a good one to ask. Over the last 10 years the Army has tried on several
different occasions to reinvent itself and offer new roles, structures and
organisational changes – for example the ‘Army 2020’ plan.
In this period there has been the vision of the Army as laid
out in the SDSR, the Army 2020 vision and now this vision of the Army in 2025.
Each time the answer feels different – different structures, different
locations, different unit roles and different objectives – there is a sense of
near perpetual change as the Army strives to find a version of itself that it
feels comfortable being.
Between1945 and 1990 it had this through the existence of
BAOR – it knew that its role was to deter in peacetime, and in wartime expand
rapidly to provide enough troops to buy time to avoid the war turning nuclear.
Once the war had turned nuclear, then there was no role for it – bluntly the Cold
War Army existed to fight for 7-10 days then die.
It is perhaps telling that files from this period on
planning for home defence struggle to identify a post-strike role for the Army
beyond helping the civil power. Yet this structure and reason to exist gave a
sense of purpose.
The period 1990 – 2015 was arguably a period of fighting
wars that felt familiar, without having to answer the difficult ‘so what’
question about what value this added to British foreign policy outcomes. For
all the huge sacrifices made in Iraq and Afghanistan, this tactical set of
victories still has arguably resulted in at best strategic stalemate or defeat
in both countries.
The problem then is trying to work out how the Army can
avoid these challenges in future – what roles can it take on that avoids the
errors of the past, while in the same turn provides relevant assets that can
add value to help deliver Government security objectives.
The move to a training focus seems sensible, and one that if
committed to, could be a really valuable outcome. But the problem is, lurking behind
this sense of opportunity is the concern that we may find ourselves going
around this buoy again in another 5 years when the ‘Army 2030’ vision inevitably
gets launched.
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| Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
The other big concern about this document is that for all
the talk of impressive new capabilities and investment coming downstream, it
remains the case that the British Army will be unable to deploy a modernised divisional
level capability until around 2030 – the best part of a decade away.
To deliver this is going to require huge vision, and a
willingness to commit to staying the course, and not constantly reinventing the
wheel in endless new rounds of strategy documents that regurgitate the
buzzwords of the day. The worry is that in the constant desire to seek relevance,
the Army is unable to commit to equipping itself to stay and remain relevant.
What is needed is a laser like focus, much as the RN and RAF
have done to deliver Carrier Strike. Fix on a capability and get on and deliver
it, and not get stuck in endless reassessment of what it may mean and how to do
it differently. It is telling that having reread the various documents about the
future Army plans published over the last 10 years, all of them seem to have a
vision, being pushed ever further to the right, which incorporates deployable
units using the same equipment that is in service now, albeit a bit more
modernised.
The fact is that the Army of today is on the verge of rust
out.
The ongoing failure to deliver meaningful new equipment, to
bring capabilities into service in a timely manner and to start using them
properly means that the Army is being left behind. This is painful to say, but
when you realise that the SDR of 1998 talks about reducing numbers of platforms
like Challenger 2 or AS90, and then you realise this is a document that is nearly
a quarter of a century old, and we’re still using those platforms, and still
reducing those numbers, then you have to accept there is a big problem out
there.
Also, bluntly, the Army seems stuck on the endless debate about cap badges – that the paper delivering an Army that is going to be almost 30% smaller than the one of 2010 is unable to reduce capbadges is worrying. Its not the capbadge themselves that is the issue, it’s the wider question of what this means for headcount, administration, duplication of resources, postings and whether its a resource efficient system to have so many capbadges in existence. To continue to focus on acting as if the Army cannot possibly reduce capbadges is dangerous – it is held hostage by the unwillingness of those who champion it to accept that some badges probably need to go.
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| Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
At the same time many of the strands in the paper feel like
a greatest hits of Defence papers dating back 30 plus years. The call for
better integration of reservist and civil servants, and the call to address
retention and gapping, and also to make better use of skills and experience to
create a digitally enabled workforce – all of these are themes that go back at
least as far as 1998, and probably a lot further. (It is also notable that both
Space and Cyber remain a ‘new’ domain despite being a military issue for over
half a century).
The fact that once again there has been a rallying call to
say ‘we must have a better integrated workforce’ not only leads you to conclude
that all of the previous commitments to doing so have been a total failure, but
also that there is little likelihood that without serious cultural change, this
time is likely to be any more successful either.
This may sound a surprisingly bleak assessment, but it is difficult
to be able to make a compellingly positive case here for the Army in its
current state in terms of what it is trying to do. It feels uncertain of its role
but scared of seeing through tough changes – the fact is that the Army 2020
Refine work promised the biggest change to the Army in a generation in terms of
structures and capabilities, yet this has, barely a few years later seemingly
been totally abandoned and replaced with another bright future just round the
corner.
Can the Future Army plan be different? Possibly – but it
depends on being given the time, space and resources to make it happen. If the
net result of this plan is to throw the Army into yet another cycle of unit
moves, base closures, base reopenings and change programmes, without giving it
time to bed in and work, then it will fail.
What is needed is a period to let these changes work
through, to try things out and to actually get the new equipment needed and
make sure the Army is able to do the jobs it wants to be able to do. Right now
it feels that whether it wants to or not, we’ll be hearing in a few years’ time
about how Army 2030 / 2035 is the bright exciting future of the British Army
and how the new Mobile Infantry units with exo-armour really will be
incredible, particularly once Ajax enters service and we get around to finally
taking the FV432 out of service…
Hopefully this time will be different – there is a lot of
good raw ideas in the paper, and if given the time to properly set it up, then a
lot of good things could happen that will continue to make the British Army
remain as a credible fighting force. For all our sakes, it is vital that the
Future Soldier programme is given the space, time and funds to be a success.
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