Is The British Army Fit For Purpose?

 

The British Army is in trouble. Equipped with increasingly obsolete capabilities, suffering from a chronic lack of new vehicles, struggling to deliver an ever changing vision of its role and with an elderly estate that is starting to be as dangerous to troops as enemy fire is, the Army is, in the eyes of its critics no longer first rate, and struggling to be second rate. Is this a fair characterisation of a complex problem?

There has been growing coverage in the media and disquiet in many corners about the state of the Army recently. The seemingly endless saga of Ajax, a program that feels almost as old as its Greek god namesake is now an easy story to write for any defence correspondent. There are regular articles focusing on the fact that the Army has been hollowed out, that even Ministers seem to think that it needs more investment and the events of Ukraine have forced into sharp contrast the state of the Army versus the reality of modern combat. One is not the equal of the other.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

The problem is that at its heart there is a strategic vacuum being able to explain in a simple sentence what the Army wants to do. The narrative feels confused – is it a global force for good, able to conduct operations with partners? Is it a ‘reference army’ that others look to in order to understand how to conduct their own operations better? Is it a COIN Army par excellence, drawing on decades of experience in this space? Is it a ‘heavy army’ able to deploy a division and brigades to deter, defend and defeat attackers? Or is it a bit of all of the above? These questions are lengthy but important because it feels hard to explain to someone who doesn’t understand the Army why it exists and what it is there to do.

Say “the Army exists to keep the UK safe” and a naïve bystander would ask ‘but surely we’re an island, so what is the threat’? There is no particular internal security threat in the UK warranting large numbers of troops. Say that the Army exists to defend NATO and the same bystander would say “but from who and why would they attack us if we have nuclear weapons”? A reasonable point – what is the scenario that leads to conflict with Russia that does not also result in nuclear release? Finally say “The Army exists to protect UK interests around the world” and the bystander may ask “what are those interest and how does the Army protect them” – again a question that is hard to answer easily. These debates highlight the existential crisis in the Army itself -what does it exist for and why? In the Cold War this was an easy question to answer, but today there is no clear vision beyond “we need a division to do stuff because that’s what Army’s do”.

There seem to be two radically divergent visions on offer for the Army – one is that it becomes a fundamentally euro-centric ‘heavy army’ that focuses on delivering a highly capable armoured force to deter Russian attack in Europe – BAOR Mk2 for want of a better word. This vision would see the Army focus on delivering troops able to fight a combined arms operation with a proper logistical tail and other enablers, against a very clearly defined threat. The ‘offer’ to NATO is likely to see the Army form something of a ‘Division’ as part of a wider package of NATO activity by the UK.

The other vision is more akin to the Army that has existed on operations for the last 20 years – a more expeditionary focused lighter force capable of conducting COIN, support to peacekeeping operations and working with allies in a range of low level operations, but always in a multi-national way. The ‘division’ would cease to be relevant except as an HQ function, but this would allow the Army to support the narrative of ‘global Britain’ by deploying troops in small forces across the globe. It could be seen as a ‘HERRICK light’ style of force designed to get Brits out of trouble, intervene in extremis for allies and be a valuable response tool to offer partners.  Both visions require different levels of investment and commitments, but probably are not affordable to both come to fruition.

It needs a long discussion about where the UK’s interests are best served and what do our allies want from the Army – is it to be a NATO leading force that can help shore up other partners and take the weight off the Americans? Such a vision is very compelling, but needs huge investment to deliver, which is probably beyond the budget of the UK to afford. In simple terms the Army is institutionally poor shape, with large amounts of its equipment needing urgent replacement and heavy investment required to provide more stocks and ammunition to make it credible for operations. The level of investment is such that major cuts would probably be needed in wider defence, even if the MOD budget does grow, which seems highly unlikely, to afford this.

There would also need to be significant change and honesty about the state of the Army and reforming its combat support capabilities. Many of the underpinning enablers that have helped contribute to mission success in the past no longer exist – the quiet dismantling of critical capabilities like engineering, logistics units, medical capabilities, communications and so on, while protecting teeth arms is fine to placate politicians, but poses a real risk to the ability of the Army to deliver on operations. Part of the challenge is that of cap badge politics – it is almost impossible to get rid of units thanks to the Regimental system, which prohibits a sensible conversation about the needs of the nation. The result is that it is easier to disband or merge less glamorous units than dare touch those cap badges whose retired officers and Associations may kick up a stink.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

Delivering the reforms needed would also require focusing money on things that don’t really win votes – people want to feel safe by hearing about tanks and guns, not that the UK has invested in a secure comms network – yet the latter is arguably far more critical than the former. The Army is not just a prisoner of the capbadge mafia, it’s a prisoner of politicians who want Gucci kit and being able to talk about how many infantry or armoured units we have over how many logistics bns exist. The former is fine, as long as you accept that come the day of the fight, the means no longer exist to maintain, support, supply and repair them all…

The selling of the vision of Europe with the British Army as a leading NATO army makes strategic sense but may be a recruitment and retention nightmare. Offering a career future of tours in home garrisons that are falling apart, full of housing in appalling states of repair thanks to MOD contracts that enrich shareholders while service personnel and their families suffer in slum conditions, and in which there is little in the way of new challenge or opportunity. Deployments to Eastern Europe may be fun for a bit, but if your life as a new officer is Warminster, Estonia for 6 months, Catterick, Estonia, Warminster, all the while using equipment older than your parents or grandparents and repeat till you can get a comfy billet at HQ LAND and keep your kids in boarding school for life while you never deploy again, then its not exactly a great lifestyle.

By contrast tours of the world to places like Belize and Brunei are exciting – they offer fun and adventure and a chance to see the world in a great way. These are retention positive, but they also highlight the difficulty with foreign basing for land forces. As the coverage of the UK/Japan defence agreement showed, trying to get a status of forces arrangement sorted out is really complicated stuff – keeping troops in a foreign country is complicated and expensive. For the UK the question is what is the operational benefit of doing so, and how complex would it be to use these troops on operations – Can troops from Country A deploy to Country B or would this be a red line for Country A? If no, then what is the value in keeping them there?

Add to this the problem that land units have large footprints and are slow to move – with only one division in play, the Army has to think carefully about where to deploy it. Get the decision wrong and you find yourself with vehicles in the Middle East when the war is in Europe. No matter how you spin it, the Army is not a rapid response force – to send a properly constructed force in takes months, and requires as long to bring home as it does to deploy. When we hear of US military personnel talking of war with China, the question is – can the British Army be there if needed or is it just too far away to get there before the war ends (assuming we got involved?).

Bring all of this together and you realise the challenge – there is no compelling vision that can explain what it is the Army is here to do. It has different options, which could be hugely positive if adopted, but it needs strategic certainty to deliver this. Over the last 10-15 years, you only have to look at the number of ‘Future Army’ documents that have been published to realise part of the problem is no sooner has the Army set its future vision than its off chasing another one – it tries on new strategies more frequently than some people try on clothes while shopping in town.

To get the Army to the stage where it is credible and renewed is going to take at least a decade of investment and commitment to putting the right kit in the right concept and training people to use it effectively. The UK right now has essentially got to tell NATO that we’re serious in the maritime and air domain, but its10 years at a minimum till the Army will  catch up. That’s 10 years of sustained investment and no change in direction – which will only set things back further. Given this period involves two general elections (24, 29) anything can happen to delay or knock this off course.

This has to be done against the backdrop that the Army itself is losing a lot of internal experience and credibility – the rapid decline of land operations means that much of the experience of what to do on ops is going away fast. OP TELIC was 20 years ago, OP GRANBY 32 years ago. There are very few serving personnel left who will have done a genuinely risk OP BANNER tour, and relatively few who have done TELIC and HERRICK in a kinetic way. It would be interesting to work out how many section level firefights the Army has had in the last 10 years – if you discount the last year or so of HERRICK, when things were quietening down, then the author is only aware of a small number in Mali and that’s it.

Potentially we’re about to hit a point where the ‘green’ Army has only had one or two kinetic engagements in a decade, a period of time unrivalled in its history since at least 1900. This means there is a rapid decline of troops who have been in harms way, and who understand what a firefight is really like. The lack of operational experience is going to coincide with a decade when it would be incredibly difficult to deploy the Army operationally in a meaningful way due to the lack of munitions and supplies that Ukraine has benefitted from and where the vehicles and enablers are too old or fragile to cope. There is a real risk that the Army may rapidly become the unwelcome guest at the operational party – turning up where allies really no longer want the Brits present (except SF) because the burden of problems and vulnerability that they bring is just too great.

There is no doubt that the women and men who volunteer to serve remain of an exceptionally high calibre, and their skills will compensate for many problems encountered. But the problem is fundamentally that almost a decade after HERRICK closed, the Army has no clear vision, no clear idea of what its role or missions are and has squandered billions of pounds of public money and failed to deliver any meaningful new capability. It has become a rusted out force crewed by good people with good intentions who have been let down by the organisation that they serve. The failure is institutional and the blunt question is now ‘is it time to scrap the Army as currently constructed and start again’?  This may sound harsh, but the reality is that the Army as it has evolved is arguably not fit for purpose and seems unable to save itself from itself. Unless something radical is done to force change and offer a clear vision that is not so dogmatically tied to capbadges and the mantra of the Division, then this may result in serious harm in a future conflict.  Arguably the Royal Navy hit this nadir in the 1960s as it reinvented itself post the decision to withdraw ‘East of Suez’ becoming smaller and far more professional as a result of focusing on doing mostly one thing (ASW) very well. Perhaps the time has come for the Army to have its own ‘CVA-01 moment’ to save itself from itself.