>Britain’s armed forces are too weak to fight Russia and cannot rely on the US in the event of a European conflict, MPs have been told.
>The UK must step up production of munitions now to prepare for a “window of vulnerability” in about 2026-2028, when the US could be distracted by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, military experts have warned.
>They said a recent £11 billion increase in defence spending was not enough and ministers should commit 3 per cent of GDP if they wanted the British armed forces to be ready to fight in Europe later this decade.
>Simon Anglim, a military historian at King’s College London, told the defence committee that the British Army could field only one “understrength” division made up of two brigades. He compared that with Poland’s capacity to put four divisions into battle and Turkey’s ability to muster five.
>“It seems to be a central planning assumption that we won’t have to fight a major war now,” he said. “We’re not ready to fight one now.”
>Anglim questioned the decision to reduce the number of main battle tanks from 227 to 148 and to shrink the size of the army to 73,000 soldiers. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has ordered the cuts as part of a review of military priorities.
>“The days of mass tank battles on the European continent are emphatically not over,” Anglim said. “Mass of forces and firepower still matter. All the information management and cyber whizz-bangs in the world are completely irrelevant if you can’t have your forces controlling the ground that you need to control.”
>Professor Justin Bronk, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said procurement decisions needed to be made now to prepare the UK for threats later in the decade.
>He said the “most likely time” President Putin would test Nato’s commitment to Article 5 would be when the US was “in over their heads in the Indo-Pacific”.
>“The Pentagon assesses that China will think it is ready to invade Taiwan or any other clash within the first island chain in about 2027,” he said.
>“We must plan on the danger that if the Americans are more than occupied [in Asia], they won’t just not be able to reinforce Europe. They will be pulling out things in all domains because the threat is really huge in the Indo-Pacific.
>“I would ask people in the country: how secure would you feel against Russia in Europe, given they will continue to mobilise long after Ukraine fighting stops, and if the United States isn’t coming to save us?”
>Bronk said the UK could get away with a “relatively
modest” increase in defence spending if it concentrated solely on the threat from Russia and decided “to pull the plug” on other commitments — but that a rise to 3 per cent of GDP would be needed to ready the British armed forces while averting cuts elsewhere.
>“If the planning assumption was that we might have to fight a European defensive war under Nato in three to five years’ time, I don’t think you would see the investment and planning decisions being made that you do see being made,” he said.
>Nick Childs, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the twin threats of China and Russia left Nato members trying to make their military commitments in the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific “add up”.
>He warned that “a lot of US assets would depart” from Europe if a simultaneous war broke out in Asia.
We’re flat out broke. We don’t have the money to spend overhauling our entire military. Luckily, our government been trying a bold new strategy of making the country so shit, no one will want to invade us
We wouldn’t fight a war against Russia alone in Europe. Those Polish tank brigades would be on our side. Main battle tanks have been less and less relevant since WWII, and that’s why countries that can, have been moving away from them for 40 years. It’s a poor investment, it’s better to invest in cheaper, more mobile systems. Artillery, ATGM, mines, and drones.
Russia is not in any state to fight another war in the next 10 years, we will now see major losses in the war they’re currently in. They’ve lost most of their modern equipment, their economy is terrible, and the equipment they have has proven to not be reliable.
We’re not going to be fighting WWII in the 21st century.
[removed]
Too weak to fight Russia? The joke that can’t even invade Ukraine next door? What is this fear mongering.
They sell it to themselves by talk of niche warfare and made up intellectual arguments. Russia ain’t anywhere near done. Warfare and avoiding it, is as much about deterrence as anything else. Niche will not deter and other nations won’t always do the fighting for you.
The issue is, while things can change, the only possible country we’d fight in Europe right now (given the vast majority are in NATO with us) would be Russia, and any conflict between NATO and Russia would be nuclear war in 24/48 hours. Max.
So while not ideal, it isn’t really a problem we’ll have to face in reality.
Too many white pilots and white tank drivers and…yeah… Terribly white army.
Has anyone read the article? It is behind a paywall
This is really poor reporting. The whole sphere has changed since Ukraine and no military force expected it to be fought like it has. Current battlefield involves all arms capability, something very few countries can do and do, well. Just picking one strand of that and comparing it to another that solely has limited capability, is very misleading
If there is a European war its most likely against Russia. With their army that the propaganda liked everyone to think could fight Europe and yet they can’t even get through the first neutral country between them and NATO.
Lol… We aren’t the wealthiest or the largest but this is a bit of a weird take. You’d be scared by how quickly a nation can mobilise and find money when every man and woman is behind a war effort. There just has to be a reason.
We don’t need hundreds of thousands of field troops. Clearly quality trumps quantity in this day and age
Gosh. This attracted lots of frothing red-faced punters itching to push the big red button just to save face. Thank fuck we’re all a bunch of nobody keyboard warriors.
That’s why we have NATO, so that we can pool our forces together and turn one army into a massive multinational nightmare
Comparatively, our nuclear deterrent is excellent value for money 👍
Funny how you can mistreat your population for years and suddenly they don’t want to fight for a country that obviously hates them. Weird that.
Why do we always have to fight… I don’t want to fight.
Yeah, in reality, Russia probably could have rolled over most of Europe if its leadership was competent given the sheer volume of equipment they have and the shockingly levels of preparation we in europe had. Fact is, Europe isn’t focussed on fighting a major European war. The EU was seen as creating stable peace, and the main threats of conflicts were more like Iraq or Afghanistan that required different kit… kit that lasts years in those wars but days in a war like in Ukraine. No one is ready to fight a European war.
The thing is, the picture has changed since the last time a war was fought in Europe. The Army *might* not have the capability by itself to defeat Russia in a land campaign, but that’s not the point anymore. In any case, Russia would first have to land troops in Britain, which would be a *huge* ask. If they try to take Europe piece by piece à la Nazi Germany, we would be fighting alongside every country whose territory they had to cross. Those countries are vastly better equipped to repel a land invasion than they were in 1939.
Then there is NATO. This is the biggest deterrent Europe has against Russian aggression, and our armed forces are trained to integrate with the militaries of our allies, to create a more effective and comprehensive fighting force. This isn’t just a nice-to-have in the event of a conflict, it’s actually *by design*. For what it’s worth, I do think we should be cautious about making large cuts to the defence budget, but looking at the stats of the *British Army alone* and comparing those to a potential adversary is no longer relevant. That’s not to say that everyone should just rely on their allies – the 2% target exists for a reason – it’s just a fact that we would not be fighting alone in a conflict with Russia.
Expect to see an increase in military related propaganda over the next few years. They need you to die in their wars. There could be a big one coming soon after all.
I wonder if it’ll only be the men who get sent off to fight like in Ukraine. Equality and all that.
If we’re in a position to fight a war by ourselves against a modern military power, the world will already be lost, so what is the point?
Our army has been clearly designed (or picked away at) to play a strong supporting role as part of a broad alliance. And I’m fine with that. We have no need to have a standing army that can fight as a stand-alone entity in a large-scale war. We haven’t fought by ourselves in a large scale war against a major power (at the time) for over two hundred years. Probably the Anglo-Turkish war was the last such one and even then that was in the backdrop of the broader Napoleonic wars. Only (relatively speaking) small-scale operations such as the Troubles and the Falklands or the Boer War, all of which were relatively speaking small scale and relating to our Empire, so had no risk of existential threat. You have to probably go back a few hundred years more to find a war against a modern military where we faced an existential threat, probably to the Spanish Armada in the 16th century. Which begs the question, why spend so much of our scarce resources to maintain a large army that can operate totally independently when it’s so unlikely we’ll ever need that.
And if we do ever need that, then I think I’m gonna be happy to check out of the world at that point, as the whole world would be a clusterfuck unlike anything ever seen before.
I’m perfectly happy spending no more than 2% of our GDP as part of a large alliance that is doing likewise and will fight alongside eachother as an effective force if or when needed.
Has anyone got a link that’s not wanky and trying to make me sign up to a trial?
Please stop posting gate kept articles.
Keep making the military smaller, I’m sure it will help with this issue /s
What war? Ukraine are handling the only formerly credible threat pretty handily.
If we were to go by this subreddit, I am surprised it isn’t mad Max in the streets. Every post states it’s the end of days for this country.
Anyone who lives in this country is still doing better than about 95% of the planet. I. Not suggesting we cannot do better or strive to but relax.
Didn’t the Challenger tank just win the best battle tank out of NATO.
We might be weaker, maybe, but not weak.
We will need strong army in prep for labours next war.
We don’t need a big military as we’re surrounded by allied nations as part of NATO; also the idea of spending 3% of GDP is utterly insane. We should have a small but well equipped military that can partake in peacekeeping missions and that’s it.
31 comments
>Britain’s armed forces are too weak to fight Russia and cannot rely on the US in the event of a European conflict, MPs have been told.
>The UK must step up production of munitions now to prepare for a “window of vulnerability” in about 2026-2028, when the US could be distracted by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, military experts have warned.
>They said a recent £11 billion increase in defence spending was not enough and ministers should commit 3 per cent of GDP if they wanted the British armed forces to be ready to fight in Europe later this decade.
>Simon Anglim, a military historian at King’s College London, told the defence committee that the British Army could field only one “understrength” division made up of two brigades. He compared that with Poland’s capacity to put four divisions into battle and Turkey’s ability to muster five.
>“It seems to be a central planning assumption that we won’t have to fight a major war now,” he said. “We’re not ready to fight one now.”
>Anglim questioned the decision to reduce the number of main battle tanks from 227 to 148 and to shrink the size of the army to 73,000 soldiers. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has ordered the cuts as part of a review of military priorities.
>“The days of mass tank battles on the European continent are emphatically not over,” Anglim said. “Mass of forces and firepower still matter. All the information management and cyber whizz-bangs in the world are completely irrelevant if you can’t have your forces controlling the ground that you need to control.”
>Professor Justin Bronk, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said procurement decisions needed to be made now to prepare the UK for threats later in the decade.
>He said the “most likely time” President Putin would test Nato’s commitment to Article 5 would be when the US was “in over their heads in the Indo-Pacific”.
>“The Pentagon assesses that China will think it is ready to invade Taiwan or any other clash within the first island chain in about 2027,” he said.
>“We must plan on the danger that if the Americans are more than occupied [in Asia], they won’t just not be able to reinforce Europe. They will be pulling out things in all domains because the threat is really huge in the Indo-Pacific.
>“I would ask people in the country: how secure would you feel against Russia in Europe, given they will continue to mobilise long after Ukraine fighting stops, and if the United States isn’t coming to save us?”
>Bronk said the UK could get away with a “relatively
modest” increase in defence spending if it concentrated solely on the threat from Russia and decided “to pull the plug” on other commitments — but that a rise to 3 per cent of GDP would be needed to ready the British armed forces while averting cuts elsewhere.
>“If the planning assumption was that we might have to fight a European defensive war under Nato in three to five years’ time, I don’t think you would see the investment and planning decisions being made that you do see being made,” he said.
>Nick Childs, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the twin threats of China and Russia left Nato members trying to make their military commitments in the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific “add up”.
>He warned that “a lot of US assets would depart” from Europe if a simultaneous war broke out in Asia.
We’re flat out broke. We don’t have the money to spend overhauling our entire military. Luckily, our government been trying a bold new strategy of making the country so shit, no one will want to invade us
We wouldn’t fight a war against Russia alone in Europe. Those Polish tank brigades would be on our side. Main battle tanks have been less and less relevant since WWII, and that’s why countries that can, have been moving away from them for 40 years. It’s a poor investment, it’s better to invest in cheaper, more mobile systems. Artillery, ATGM, mines, and drones.
Russia is not in any state to fight another war in the next 10 years, we will now see major losses in the war they’re currently in. They’ve lost most of their modern equipment, their economy is terrible, and the equipment they have has proven to not be reliable.
We’re not going to be fighting WWII in the 21st century.
[removed]
Too weak to fight Russia? The joke that can’t even invade Ukraine next door? What is this fear mongering.
They sell it to themselves by talk of niche warfare and made up intellectual arguments. Russia ain’t anywhere near done. Warfare and avoiding it, is as much about deterrence as anything else. Niche will not deter and other nations won’t always do the fighting for you.
The issue is, while things can change, the only possible country we’d fight in Europe right now (given the vast majority are in NATO with us) would be Russia, and any conflict between NATO and Russia would be nuclear war in 24/48 hours. Max.
So while not ideal, it isn’t really a problem we’ll have to face in reality.
Too many white pilots and white tank drivers and…yeah… Terribly white army.
Has anyone read the article? It is behind a paywall
This is really poor reporting. The whole sphere has changed since Ukraine and no military force expected it to be fought like it has. Current battlefield involves all arms capability, something very few countries can do and do, well. Just picking one strand of that and comparing it to another that solely has limited capability, is very misleading
>Too weak to fight in European war
>Literally won a [“my tank is better than your tank”](https://www.forces.net/nato/challenger-2-tank-wins-nato-competition-ahead-leopard-and-abrams-tanks) competition with a bunch of NATO allies with a tank that can actually boast to be invincible except to other Challenger 2 tanks
If there is a European war its most likely against Russia. With their army that the propaganda liked everyone to think could fight Europe and yet they can’t even get through the first neutral country between them and NATO.
Lol… We aren’t the wealthiest or the largest but this is a bit of a weird take. You’d be scared by how quickly a nation can mobilise and find money when every man and woman is behind a war effort. There just has to be a reason.
We don’t need hundreds of thousands of field troops. Clearly quality trumps quantity in this day and age
Gosh. This attracted lots of frothing red-faced punters itching to push the big red button just to save face. Thank fuck we’re all a bunch of nobody keyboard warriors.
That’s why we have NATO, so that we can pool our forces together and turn one army into a massive multinational nightmare
Comparatively, our nuclear deterrent is excellent value for money 👍
Funny how you can mistreat your population for years and suddenly they don’t want to fight for a country that obviously hates them. Weird that.
Why do we always have to fight… I don’t want to fight.
Yeah, in reality, Russia probably could have rolled over most of Europe if its leadership was competent given the sheer volume of equipment they have and the shockingly levels of preparation we in europe had. Fact is, Europe isn’t focussed on fighting a major European war. The EU was seen as creating stable peace, and the main threats of conflicts were more like Iraq or Afghanistan that required different kit… kit that lasts years in those wars but days in a war like in Ukraine. No one is ready to fight a European war.
The thing is, the picture has changed since the last time a war was fought in Europe. The Army *might* not have the capability by itself to defeat Russia in a land campaign, but that’s not the point anymore. In any case, Russia would first have to land troops in Britain, which would be a *huge* ask. If they try to take Europe piece by piece à la Nazi Germany, we would be fighting alongside every country whose territory they had to cross. Those countries are vastly better equipped to repel a land invasion than they were in 1939.
Then there is NATO. This is the biggest deterrent Europe has against Russian aggression, and our armed forces are trained to integrate with the militaries of our allies, to create a more effective and comprehensive fighting force. This isn’t just a nice-to-have in the event of a conflict, it’s actually *by design*. For what it’s worth, I do think we should be cautious about making large cuts to the defence budget, but looking at the stats of the *British Army alone* and comparing those to a potential adversary is no longer relevant. That’s not to say that everyone should just rely on their allies – the 2% target exists for a reason – it’s just a fact that we would not be fighting alone in a conflict with Russia.
Expect to see an increase in military related propaganda over the next few years. They need you to die in their wars. There could be a big one coming soon after all.
I wonder if it’ll only be the men who get sent off to fight like in Ukraine. Equality and all that.
If we’re in a position to fight a war by ourselves against a modern military power, the world will already be lost, so what is the point?
Our army has been clearly designed (or picked away at) to play a strong supporting role as part of a broad alliance. And I’m fine with that. We have no need to have a standing army that can fight as a stand-alone entity in a large-scale war. We haven’t fought by ourselves in a large scale war against a major power (at the time) for over two hundred years. Probably the Anglo-Turkish war was the last such one and even then that was in the backdrop of the broader Napoleonic wars. Only (relatively speaking) small-scale operations such as the Troubles and the Falklands or the Boer War, all of which were relatively speaking small scale and relating to our Empire, so had no risk of existential threat. You have to probably go back a few hundred years more to find a war against a modern military where we faced an existential threat, probably to the Spanish Armada in the 16th century. Which begs the question, why spend so much of our scarce resources to maintain a large army that can operate totally independently when it’s so unlikely we’ll ever need that.
And if we do ever need that, then I think I’m gonna be happy to check out of the world at that point, as the whole world would be a clusterfuck unlike anything ever seen before.
I’m perfectly happy spending no more than 2% of our GDP as part of a large alliance that is doing likewise and will fight alongside eachother as an effective force if or when needed.
Has anyone got a link that’s not wanky and trying to make me sign up to a trial?
Please stop posting gate kept articles.
Keep making the military smaller, I’m sure it will help with this issue /s
What war? Ukraine are handling the only formerly credible threat pretty handily.
If we were to go by this subreddit, I am surprised it isn’t mad Max in the streets. Every post states it’s the end of days for this country.
Anyone who lives in this country is still doing better than about 95% of the planet. I. Not suggesting we cannot do better or strive to but relax.
Didn’t the Challenger tank just win the best battle tank out of NATO.
We might be weaker, maybe, but not weak.
We will need strong army in prep for labours next war.
We don’t need a big military as we’re surrounded by allied nations as part of NATO; also the idea of spending 3% of GDP is utterly insane. We should have a small but well equipped military that can partake in peacekeeping missions and that’s it.