Do Numbers Matter?

 

The RAF has too few aircraft to meet operational requirements, while the Royal Navy is reliant on ever longer deterrent patrols to cover up its ageing SSBN force. The Army meanwhile is investing in capability that in 7 years time will make it lethal (suggesting one shouldn’t go to war till that point). The perspective from the outside is that the British Armed Forces are too few in number, too under resourced and equipped with too obsolete equipment to be credible, and that the house of cards is about to come tumbling down. Is this fair?

Since 1945 the story of British military power is a constant one of more capable units replacing older platforms in smaller numbers than before. Equipment is not bought and operated for the sake of numbers alone, or to feel good on orders of battle, but to deliver against carefully defined requirements and goals. This may have been to deploy enough ships to defeat a surging Soviet SSN force into the North Atlantic, or to deliver a tactical nuclear warhead onto an advancing armoured division. The V Force, for example existed in the numbers it did to ride out a nuclear strike on the UK and then get sufficient nuclear warheads onto Moscow and certain other cities under the worst possible scenario. This scenario drove the numbers needed to build a force that could deliver this, allowing a margin for training, servicing, and attrition throughout its lifetime. The result was a large force of aircraft, supported by RAF stations throughout the UK and an extensive network of associated elements like training schools, logistical support and so on.  As time has progressed the requirement has changed as technology has changed – the 1950s requirement to hold Moscow and wider Russian cities at risk no longer requires a vast RAF force and supporting infrastructure. Instead, the same effect can be delivered via a single SSBN containing Trident missiles. The effect has not changed, but the means of delivery and the scale of the operation has.

This matters because when debates focus on the state of the British Armed Forces, we inevitably look to the past and numbers in their purest state. For example it is easy to look at tables of fast jets and assume that the UK is less capable now in 2023 than it was in 1990 because we have roughly half the level of jets. What this sort of comparison doesn’t do is understand availability, servicing needs, the technology in those aircraft to deliver the mission (can one modern jet deliver weapons to destroy a target in one sortie that may previously have needed four jets and four sorties?). As technology has changed, so has our need for equipment – we can genuinely do more with less thanks to improved technology and weaponry. We should be wary of assuming automatically that the UK is weaker now because it has fewer jets available than in previous years – the only way we can make a judgement call on that is by knowing the precise missions these jets are intended to carry out in wartime and the effects they need to deliver. To that end it is not always helpful to focus purely on numbers – they only tell part of the story. Yes the UK is undoubtedly a smaller military power than it was in 2010, 1998 or 1991, and that its armed forces possess fewer assets than ever before. But can they still do what it is policy makers want them to deliver?

In many ways the Cold War made things easy for planners. They knew roughly where they’d fight and for how long they needed to buy time for before the inevitable nuclear exchange occurred. The armed forces across NATO were designed for scenarios to hold the line, get diplomats to cool things down, then enable REFORGER reinforcement units to arrive and then wait for the war to end in either a diplomatic climb down or a giant mushroom cloud. Its much easier to prepare for war if you know the precise field you’re planning to die in.

Post Cold War planning has been far harder – the threats are not as clearly defined and there is no easy understanding of what the UK is going to do on the operation. Defining the requirement for numbers is hard when you don’t know where you’ll be based, what the threat will be like and what targets you need to attack. Since 1991 planning has arguably been ‘finger in the air’ territory of trying to ensure that the UK remains aligned with the US and NATO while being able to provide military capability to meet national needs. This has led to a significant reduction in many areas, as the requirement for multiple armoured divisions in Europe and tactical nuclear strike missions has vanished, while technology changes means more can be done with less.  This philosophy has continued relentlessly with each defence review focusing on trying to ensure that the UK ‘offer’ to allies is of highly capable forces able to conduct operations in the highest possible threat environment as a peer ally. The result has been an ever smaller and more focused military, but has it gone too far?

Its hard not to escape the sense that we’re at a genuine pivot moment now. For 30 years the assumption has been that the UK would deploy on global operations, unlikely to be large scale in nature, and unlikely to be against a peer rival like Russia. Instead, we’ve had the luxury of fighting sub-par armies in environments where we enjoy both maritime and aerospace domination and with the benefit of a secure logistics chain and helpful allies. That has led to significant risk knowingly being taken across scores of areas to free up funds for investment in others and to help make savings when budgets are under pressure. For example there was a near total dismemberment of air defence capability, with long range Bloodhound missiles being phased out without replacement in the 1990s and significant reduction in the Rapier force in the 2000s. The emphasis on COIN led to reduced investment in artillery and main battle tanks, seen as less relevant, while the Royal Navy chose to focus on network centric warfare (Combat Engagement Capability – CEC) over T45 hulls 7&8 (ironically both CEC and T45 ended up being cancelled). There has always been, and there always will be, budgetary pressure and higher priority items. These decisions made sense in a time when threats were different and we were not faced with the likelihood of facing off peer rivals in a short term timeframe. This is not the case today. The UK finds itself then in a genuinely challenging position – having invested heavily in forces optimised for global operations either through maritime deployment, or use of light role troops and airpower, it now finds itself having to focus once again on the threat from Russia.

If the UK is serious about being ready to ‘fight tonight’ against Russia in the same way as it was in the Cold War, when tens of thousands of troops in Germany stood ready to deter invasion then massive change is needed. It would require a huge investment in defence spending, building up of stockpiles of munitions and supplies, reinvestment in infrastructure and helping reestablish the ability to carry out a genuine ‘Transition to War’ mobilisation that has not been tested in many decades. The cost of this would be eyewatering and there is no political appetite for it to occur. This will not happen. It is clear politicians have an aspiration for the UK to play a leading security role globally and to provide capable armed forces that can deliver these aspirations. The problem is that what was affordable in the Cold War to fight a ‘heavy war’ and affordable as a COIN / Expeditionary Ops force in the post-Cold War environment is now not achievable. There is no funding or political willpower to put in place a Post Cold War ‘Heavy War’ solution.

Allied to this is the challenge that it will take many years to ramp up production and increase capability. The UK, along with partners, has taken a lot of risky assumptions on ammunition production and logistic support – essentially to maintain enough stockpiles for ‘a war’ not ‘the war’. Expanding stockpiles will take many years and require sustained investment by government and industry – this isn’t something you can just do overnight. Looking at media reporting on production for Ukraine and its clear many orders placed now won’t deliver until 2-3 years time at the earliest. With UK stockpiles (along with allies) starting to run down of advanced weaponry as these are sent to Ukraine, policy makers need to decide how much support can be offered, versus how much needs to be held back for national reserves.

For the UK in particular the challenge is determining what its vision for Defence is, and marrying this up with an affordable plan. The cost of regeneration will be enormous, but the cost of running on is equally of concern – for example look at the reports about the material state of HMS SOMERSET, or the clear fragility of the SSBN force which is conducting 6 month long deterrence patrols instead of 3. The UK faces a real challenge in that so much of its equipment is now increasingly elderly and fragile, with replacements having been deferred too many times over the years. Numbers have been reduced and availability is also suffering, while there is a constant sense of wheel reinvention and indecision – just look to the saga of the Warrior IFV which is being updated, scrapped, not scrapped but not updated depending on what day it is. All of this is fixable but it requires time and money, both of which are in short supply. This means the UK is likely to face very difficult decisions on what it wants to deliver in terms of military effect.

The risk of continuing to try and have it all is that there are ever fewer parts to deploy. The RAF for example has only 3 Wedgetail aircraft planned – this means that with operational commitments and servicing, the chances for joint exercises and training with other units is slim. The risk of skills fade through lack of ability to exercise it is significant. It’s the same with the reduction in Hawk airframes, where units like 100Sqn which worked closely with the Army can no longer support training for forward air controllers, and fewer fast jets makes it harder to support exercises. Individually the parts are still there, but the ability to fuse them together and work in a coordinated manner both within the UK and with allies is rapidly decreasing. With ever fewer new assets entering service, it becomes harder to do everything that was done before.

Policy makers face unpalatable choices – do they reduce aspiration and capability, thus shutting them out from relationships that truly matter (for example with Washington), or do they keep trying to eke more from less, even when this reaches the point of being a barely sustainable commitment? Do they continue to fund and equip the forces in a way that allows them to try and do everything in a small way, or build a deep but narrow force with significant margins for attrition and casualty replacement? Look for instance at Ukraine where tank losses are high – in similar circumstances the UK would find itself without a tank force very quickly and with no replacements to draw on – and that’s even before you consider the inability to bring forward trained crews. 

The UK realistically is facing a tipping point where it cannot do everything it wants to do anymore and its credibility as an ally may suffer. Is it better to step back completely in some areas to focus on being a niche ‘ally of excellence’ in others-  for example being clear that the UK will no longer do some activity but instead prioritising others – in military parlance becoming the Supporting Commander rather than the Supported Commander. Could the UK, for example, consciously step back from major land activity, ceding this space to other European militaries who have a more pressing land concern, like Poland, and focus more on air and naval power? This may be politically unpopular but would enable proper resource allocation and investment to future capability rather than spreading ever more thinly.