“We have, as the House is aware…a very great
problem [German and Japanese rearmament]…that will have to be met in the next
four to five years and, as we go on to meet those conditions, one of our
greatest problems will be to consider whether such measures as we have taken
hitherto will be sufficient”.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, House of
Commons, 24 February 1936
Refresh or re-hash?
March 17th, 2023. What should the
world’s fifth or sixth largest economy spend on defence and what kind of force
does it need given its location, the threat array it faces, and the alliances
and partnerships Britain needs to leverage?
On launching the Integrated Review Refresh
(IR2023) Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described Russia as the greatest regional
threat to Britain’s security which was in turn intrinsically-linked to the
outcome of the war in Ukraine. He also said that China “poses an epoch-defining
challenge”. Given the scale of the challenges implicit in those statements
compared with the money London is prepared to further invest in defence the
IR2023 is yet another down-payment on defence, a down-payment on future war, a
down-payment on future alliances, and a down-payment on the warfighting lessons
from Ukraine for which most of the British armed forces lack the critical
capability and capacity. Above all, IR2023 is yet another down-payment on
Global Britain which if it is ever to be anything more than empty political
rhetoric will require London to invest far more in defence and far more
efficiently.
Given the centrality of China to Britain’s
Integrated Review Refresh it is interesting to compare and contrast “IR2023”
with President Xi Jinping’s “Great Wall of Steel” speech this week. China’s
President was uncompromising: “We must fully promote the modernisation of
national defence and the armed forces, and build the peoples’ armed forces into
a Great Wall of Steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty,
security and development interests”, during which he announced a further 7.2%
increase in the Chinese defence budget to $224 billion (in fact China already
spends far more). This is a year-on-year increase of some $15 billion.
Britain, on the other hand, will increase its defence expenditure of $70.2
billion by $6 billion by 2025, with a “somewhere over the rainbow” promise to
spend 2.5% of a $3 trillion economy bit only if “fiscal and economic
circumstances allow”. They never do.
One could argue that given China’s official
defence budget is only some 1.5% of Chinese GDP Britain’s hike is reasonable.
That is not the case. First, China’s nominal GDP is $14.14 billion,
whilst its “usable” GDP (Power Purchasing Parity) is $27.31 trillion, whereas
Britain’s ‘PPP’ is only $3.78 billion. The map above is interesting in
that it shows GDP per capita and confirms the extent to which China is a
developing nation and Russia is close to being a failed state. Economists
would suggest that as a consequence neither China nor Russia really poses an
existential threat to either Britain or its allies. Unfortunately, economists
by and large fail to understand why wars start. Still, China is a large country
far away about which we know little so what should it matter. China is
gearing up to confront the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Given the
centrality of Washington to London’s security and defence planning assumptions,
anything that impacts on the US impacts on Britain and NATO. China is
impacting big time on US defence policy. Just read the new National Defense
Strategy 2022.
Plus ça change?
Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the
British Army, likened the state of Britain’s armed forces of today to those of
the 1930s. In fact, and as someone who wrote his Oxford thesis on that
very subject, the situation could be even worse. On March 23rd 1932, Britain
scrapped the so-called Ten Year Rule by which Britain could assume that it would
not be involved in a major war for the next decade and reduce defence
expenditure accordingly. In February 1934, Britain began rearming and
over the next eight years both modernised the Royal Navy and created the
world’s most advanced air defence system which the Luftwaffe discovered to its
cost in 1940.
The British Army by and large lost out.
There were several reasons for this, perhaps the most telling of which was a
political determination in London never to the trenches of World War One in
which several of Britain’s leaders had fought between 1914 and 1918. And,
although the British had in 1918 invented ‘Blitzkrieg’, or the ‘All Arms
Battle’ as it was known, by 1935 the British Army had resorted to being what it
had been since 1815, an imperial policing force. Consequently, in
May and June 1940 Lord Gort’s British Expeditionary Force (BEF) only
represented 10% of the Anglo-Belgian and overwhelmingly French forces defending
North-West Europe. When the French fortress of Sedan fell on May 15, 1940
Gort’s force was simply too small and lacked the necessary joint fighting power
to act as an independent force and was forced to retreat to Dunkirk where it
lost the bulk of its equipment. Whatever the quality of the BEF it was simply
too small and too under-equipped to make a qualitative difference on the ground
in the face of the Wehrmacht’s onslaught.
Drill down into IR2023 and the facts are
revealing. Almost $4 billion of Britain’s $6 billion defence uplift will go
towards nuclear defence, particularly support for the clumsily-named SSN-AUKUS
(if the French get involved will it become SSN-FAUKUS?) which is planned to
replace the current Astute-class from mid-2030s even though these admittedly
excellent submarines are still in the process of being delivered. In
other words, Britain will not see the fruits of much of IR2023 until probably
the 2040s and that $4 billion is thus a down-payment on a future submarine
system with little impact today.
The cost of Ukraine
What is relevant today is the planned £2
billion to be spent on replenishing munition stocks depleted by transfers to
Ukraine, thus reinforcing the £560 million announced in 2022. The implication
being that IR2023 is also a down-payment on the lessons being learnt from the
Russia-Ukraine War. However, given the extent, scope and cost of those
lessons it is not much of a down-payment given the nature of those lessons
which explains why Ben Wallace, the Secretary-of State for Defence was seeking
a $13.25 billion hike, rather than the $6 billion on offer.
Learning the lessons of the war in Ukraine
will cost the British a lot of money if London is to transform the British Army
from counterinsurgency policing to full-on warfighting as both IR2023 and
Integrated Review 2021 suggest it will. Given the size of Britain’s population
any future war will always cast Britain as Sparta to Athens, Ukraine to Russia.
Britain’s defence-industrial capacity is woefully small compared with the
1930s. British forces will also need far more robust logistics far more forward
deployed, with enhanced and far more secure military supply chains particularly
important. That is perhaps why there are echoes in IR2023 of the 1936
Shadow Factory Plan which was critical, for example, to Britain out-producing
Germany in combat aircraft as early as June 1940. Britain will now
invest in “munitions infrastructure” to accelerate the acquisition of
ammunition which has been consumed at a far higher rate in Ukraine than
expected.
British forces will need to make far better
use of technology to authorise action at the lowest level possible of mission
command. A flat-line command and control structure will also be needed to
reinforce redundancy in command and avoid decapitating strikes against the
command structure. Land warfare is also becoming like submarine warfare
with concealment, stealth and sudden strike now at the core of warfighting
doctrine with a shift also taking place towards so-called “Über-targeting” with
the best-placed unit given command authority to strike at their discretion to
ensure a larger enemy is kept permanently off-balance. All of the above will
require force transformation and should ideally see such investment beginning
now.
Improved force protection will also be vital
with a particular need to reduce the digital footprint of force concentrations
(‘bright butterflies’). The vulnerability of armour unsupported by
infantry and helicopters in the battlespace is been all-too-apparent and
Britain lacks sufficient numbers of all three, especially so given the need to
dominate both fires and counter-fires. The vulnerability of deployed
forces to expendable drones, strike drones and loitering systems armed with
precision-guided munitions is also abundantly clear. Enhanced land-based,
protected battlefield mobility will also be a core British requirement together
with increased force command resilience given how often the Ukrainians have
been able to detect and ‘kill’ Russian forward (and less forward) deployed
headquarters.
Agility or fragility?
Beyond Ukraine? Integrated Review 2021
focussed on future agility at the higher end of the conflict spectrum,
primarily to reinforce London’s weight in NATO and Britain’s importance to, and
thus influence with, the US. At the core of the military-strategic
thinking behind IR2021 was creation of a fully-interoperable, deep joint,
global reach if need be future force able to better share transatlantic
security and defence burdens. AUKUS will be central to such future
force. That was the essential message from this week’s meeting in San
Diego, home of the US Pacific Fleet, at which Sunak stood alongside Australian
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden. The three leaders
announced that Australia will purchase between 3 and 5 US Virginia-class
submarines, as will begin work in Australia and Britain on building SSN-AUKUS
using US technology. It was also implied that Britain will increase its
future fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines from the 7 Astute-class boats
to 15 SSN-AUKUS. It is all very impressive on paper but if Britain is to
meet the procurement challenge implicit in AUKUS it will need to markedly
improve the performance of its Submarine Delivery Agency. The gap between
each of the seven Royal Navy Astute-class boats has been so long that each
submarine is literally in a class of its own!
IR2023 and NATO? The New Force
Model at the heart of NATO’s Military Strategy calls for the enhanced NATO
Response Force of some 40,000 troops to be transformed into a future force of
some 300,000 troops maintained at high alert, with 44,000 kept at high
readiness. At American behest the new force will be mainly European. A
force of that size and with the necessary level of fighting power would
normally mean that with rotation there would always be a force of some 100,000
kept at high readiness, which will be extremely expensive for NATO European
allies grappling with high inflation and post-COVID economies. A NATO standard
brigade is normally between 3200 and 5500 strong. Given that both air and naval
forces will also need to be included, a land force of, say, 200,000 would need
at least 50 to 60 European rapid reaction brigades together with all their
supporting elements. At best, there are only 20 to 30 today. Britain?
Back to the future?
What must be done? In November 1933 the
Defence Requirements Sub-Committee (DRC) was formed to consider the shortfalls
and deficiencies in Britain’s then armed forces. A new version of the DRC
needs to be stood up as a matter of urgency. Britain’s defence
procurement is also (eternally) in desperate need of root and branch reform.
Last October’s Future War and Deterrence Conference, which I had the
honour to direct, was clear: “A new and far more interactive and proactive
partnership is needed between government, defence industries and the wider
military supply chain. Such supply chains also need to be made more
robust and secure. The pace and scale of political, economic and
military-technical change risks undermining Allied cohesion, force interoperability
leading to increasingly unbalanced security and defence planning in
democracies. Effective long-term project management is a particular lacuna”.
For both IR2021 and IR2023 to be credible
acquisition cycles will need to be markedly accelerated. There is also
profound tension between the acquisition of platforms and systems. For example,
the acquisition of new military platforms in Europe is on average 5-7 years
whilst technology evolves every 5-7 months. As the war in Ukraine is
demonstrating, European states in particular simply lack the defence industrial
capacity to ramp up production immediately and rapidly. Only something akin to
the British Shadow Factory Plan will do so. The Plan enabled London to
place the British economy on a war footing and rapidly increase war production
in September1939. And here is the crunch. IR2023 implies Britain must prepare
for war but with a determinedly peacetime mind-set.
Does the UK defence strategy implicit in
AUKUS make sense? IR2021 had much to be commended. Innovative thinking
was built into its DNA with digital manoeuvre and space reach considered across
the emerging hybrid war – cyber war - hyperwar spectrum, whilst at its core was
the vision of a US-interoperable high-end British future force. IR2021 also
considered security in the round, i.e. the effects Britain needed to generate
from the entirety of its security investment and the role of defence
therein. The key word was ‘integrated’, the use of all national means
including defence to secure Britain and its interests. Unfortunately, the ends,
ways and means of IR2021 did not add up and nor do they for IR2023. The
major lacuna is the lack of new money for the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force,
and above all the British Army. Consequently, British will continue to do
what it has been doing since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review and the creation
of the hideously misnamed ‘Smart Procurement”: the sacrifice of contemporary
mass to pay for ill-defined digital manoeuvre, the here, now and tomorrow for
some ill-defined future. In 2010, the British went further and took an
axe to Britain’s armed forces even though they were in the midst of a major
campaign in Afghanistan.
And yet, Sunak said this week that Britain’s
defence policy rests on “the quality of relationships with others”.
However, important the relationship with Australia it is the relationships with
Britain’s NATO Allies that must come first. First, because Sunak has placed
NATO at the heart of British defence policy. Second, Britain is a European
regional-strategic power. The most striking paradox of IR2024 is that by
continuing to sacrifice contemporary mass for future manoeuvre London is
effectively binning its commitment to the land component of the NATO Defence
Plan and the 2019 NATO Military Strategy.
Britain’s down-payment defence review
The strength of the Integrated Review
process is that it envisions security, intelligence, influence and defence in
the round and attempts to understand and respond to the changing character of
the new hybrid, intelligence, and cyber ‘permawar’ the Britain is daily
fighting, as well as deterring a possible future war. The weakness is a culture
of government in London that sees Britain’s public finances as the first line
of defence rather than Britain’s armed forces. This basic misconception
exaggerates the importance of soft power and underestimates the utility of hard
power as the essential commodity in national influence. Consequently, funding
for defence is what is left over after other instruments of power – economic,
diplomatic and development – are afforded. And, even though defence is the
fifth largest expenditure from the public purse it is simply not enough to meet
the ambition implicit in IR2023. This is because Britain and all the
developed democracies are engaged in a clash of wills with autocratic powers
such as China and Russia. Russia might be down but it is certainly not
out, particularly as a hybrid and cyber warrior. China is not Russia and may be
reasoned with but Xi’s Great Wall of Steel speech still reveals a Middle
Kingdom only just beginning its Long March to geopolitical power.
Furthermore, the reasons a country like
Britain invests in defence do not simply concern national defence. A
relatively strong British defence effort buys influence inside NATO, with
partners, in the UN and G7, and above all in Washington. In other words,
visible defence has a value far beyond steel and must be seen as such. Sadly,
the ‘refresh’ still reeks of strategically-illiterate Treasury economists who
only ever see defence as a cost that must be limited. Even 3% of
Britain’s GDP spent on defence would be barely enough given the strategic
circumstances because of the way Britain spends on defence. Given events
and decisions being made by the likes of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and
others 2.25% GDP on defence, even if it is enough, could only ever be enough if
the British spent far, far better.
IR 2023 is thus a down-payment on
alleviating the eternal short-term funding crisis from which Britain’s armed
forces suffer, and AUKUS is clearly a down-payment towards a new
intelligence-led Five Eyes-based alliance fit for the twenty-first century. The
problem is that the first is little more than a fix and the second is a
structurally strategic shift that will require both investment and delivery,
neither of which Britain’s High Establishment is renowned for. Critically,
AUKUS will require a sustained and joined-up security, defence and industrial
policy. In other words, whilst AUKUS implies a profound change in Britain’s
view of its role in the world and the utility of defence as a value rather than
a cost, IR2023 seeks to limit the very defence investment central to the AUKUS
vision. The result? Ever more tasks over ever greater distance for
Britain’s dangerously hollowed-out and over-stretched armed forces. .
Politics at the expense of strategy.
Too small with too much to do
The hard truth is that in relative terms the
British armed forces are too small and too ill-equipped for the missions and
tasks the British Government has signed up to in NATO let alone Global
Britain. They have neither the quality nor the quantity. This is
particularly the case for the British Army which has become a leitmotif of the
dead-end which for too long British defence policy has been parked in. It
is precisely for that reason the British Army of today faces a very similar
challenge to Lord Gort’s force back in 1940. For all its illustrious history
the British Army of 2023 is an ‘anything but warfighting force’ compared with
the forces that could soon be arrayed against it in the kind of war it might be
called on to fight. Much the same can be said for the Royal Navy and the Royal
Air Force.
Therefore, the essential inefficiency in
British defence policy and investment is both caused by, and a consequence of,
profound misalignment between the ends, ways and means of Britain’s security
and defence. Such chronic defence-strategic inefficiency is magnified by
a High Establishment seemingly incapable of generating the deep synergy across
government that would be vital to turning relatively low defence investment
into high effect. IR2023 is thus the latest iteration of a process that began
back in 1998 which seeks to give the impression of ambition but in fact reveals
Britain’s lack of it due to a woefully incoherent between national strategy,
defence strategy and public finances. Smart defence it ain’t.
IR2023, like its forebears, is a thus
another well-meaning attempt to square the eternal circle of Britain’s security
and defence failure in the twenty-first century, but it is no more nor less
than that. Rather, it is another one of those increasingly iterative
‘Microsoft’ security patch defence reviews that London routinely likes to
download for political effect rather than strategic influence. IR2023 or
Muddling Through 2023? As we Yorkshire folk are prone to say, IR2023 is a bit
like putting a bay window on a brick s***house!
Julian Lindley-French
