It's Down to You Lord Robertson...

The Robertson Defence Review, To Be Published Tomorrow, Must Address Armed Forces Retention....

Captain Edmund Blackadder, a professional soldier back when we had an empire, honed his skills in an army where “The prerequisite for any battle was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns.” The hero of the Battle of Mboto Gorge was not alone in this dogma. Hilaire Belloc’s Captain Blood was always content to fight native troops as “We have the maxim gun and they have not.”

Being able to kill without being killed is the basis of successful soldiering. If superior technology gives one the opportunity to kill without even risking being killed, so much the better. The longer range and high rate of fire of the Maxim Gun conferred huge advantage. As military technologies trickle down to the enemies, as they inevitably do – no confrontation is static or one sided – people adapt and overcome, as Kipling identified on the northwest frontier, where the tribesman’s marksmanship caused “ Two thousand pounds of education” to drop to “a ten-rupee jezail.”

The solution is to develop newer, better technologies, like being able to fly. In an age where few had seen an aircraft dropping bombs on recalcitrant tribesmen worked. During what became known as Pink’s War in 1925, the RAF harried rebellious tribes in Waziristan into submission through a 50 day campaign of bombing and strafing. To modern eyes it wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

The advantages of operating from the air against technologically inferior foes is a massive reduction in the risk of suffering casualties. Thus the more recent air campaigns on Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and most recently the Yemen have all been politically acceptable. Whether they have been militarily effective is another matter. Despite the US (with a little assistance from the RAF) hitting some 800 targets in Yemen, the Houthis continue to launch missiles at Israel – as they did again today. They may well be firing many fewer missiles than they did, thus reducing the burden on Israeli defence systems, but the threat has not been erased by air power along. If that is what the United States and its allies wish to achieve they will have to send in ground troops, just like they had to against Al Qaeda in Tora Bora.

Those ground troops are likely to be special forces, the highly trained and lavishly equipped elites like the British SAS and SBS. Since they burst into public awareness in 1980, when they resolved the Iranian Embassy siege with spectacularly disciplined violence, Special Forces have been at the forefront of implementing the government’s interpretation of the national interest. The success in London combined with the maxim that the British will not negotiate with terrorists ended the tiresome run of hijacks by pro-Palestinian groups. The SAS were widely consulted by other nations setting up similar forces to confront similar problems. Hard power begets soft power.

Domestically special forces turned the bandit country of Northern Ireland into a graveyard for IRA (and other republican) terrorists – to the extent that the surviving leadership abandoned terrorism and peace returned to the northern bit of the Emerald Isle.

Warfare, including the terrorist’s War of the Flea, evolves. The IRA became exceptionally proficient at bomb making and worked hard at shooting down helicopters. Other terrorists have flirted with chemical weaponry and Al Qaeda turned airliners into guided missiles. Then the enemies of the British state (and the rest of the west) discovered another weapon, human rights law.

The antics of Phil Shiner, convicted of fraud on 2024 but shamefully not imprisoned for his false allegations of war crimes by British soldiers, caused substantial damage to the British Armed Force’s reputation. The recurring legal legacy of Bloody Sunday and the surprising Coroner’s ruling that the Clonoe Ambush was not lawful (some 32 years after the incident) continue to keep the festering wounds of Irish nationalist terrorism open. The government intends to challenge the finding, but if it doesn’t win the path to SAS soldiers being prosecuted lies open.

These post dated legal threats, now dubbed lawfare, worry generals and soldiers alike. Holding armed forces on operations to international legal requirements (other than the Geneva conventions) undermines military effectiveness. The British Armed forces are particularly vulnerable as the UK militarily more active than many countries while being a signatory to both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Our principal ally, the United States, is bound by neither.

This problem has been recognised and raised with politicians by senior officers since 2015. Precisely nothing has been done to remove the risk of retrospective prosecutions of British soldiers in foreign courts for actions that have already been found legal in the due process of the British Armed Forces. It would be simple for the UK to leave both the ECHR and the ICC. It could even save money. Leftie lawyers and their sympathisers, (which probably include the former human rights lawyer currently resident at 10 Downing Street) would say that this gave a bad impression to the “international community.” They might be right, but remaining signatories undermines the ability of our armed forces to protect the UK’s national interests.

The British Armed forces have a retention crisis. The full time trained strength fell by almost 3% last year; for every 128 people who joined 148 left. The Armed forces are getting smaller and less experienced, as has been the case for several years. This is a particular problem for British Special Forces as they recruit from experienced soldiers – typically those with three to six years’ service. That pool is diminishing and the net result is that the SAS and SBS have their own recruiting and retention crisis and are under strength.

Inevitably any shortfall in personnel strength places higher workloads on those serving. That’s sustainable for short periods but as it goes on the excess workload causes more to leave and the pressure on those who remain increases. Unless commitments are cut (and for Special Forces commitments largely arise from the actions of foreign powers, not the decisions of the UK Government) then the vicious cycle continues until sufficient replacements are recruited and trained. SAS selection is notoriously tough with a high failure rate. Those who apply are seeking to be the best soldiers in the world. They’re certainly not seeking a criminal trial 20 years later for doing their job.

Tomorrow sees the publication of the Robertson Defence Review, which will set out the shaper of the armed forces for the next few years. It’s coming at a challenging time. The armed forces are in a desperate state, as I outlined in a series of articles last year. Since I wrote them the situation has not improved. Nor has the economy, the Prime Minister may have pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 % of GSP (an increase of some £12 billion a year), but government’s spending deficit is already £15 billion greater than the OBR thought it would be.

That hasn’t prevented announcements of weaponry purchases by Kier Starmer or the announcement of a new British Army cyber warfare capability all of which will be justified by the catch all “lessons from Ukraine” – with varying levels of justification.

The war in Ukraine is not yet over and currently the Russians are winning, slowly, inexorably and mostly with low tech artillery – as effective on trenches today as it was in 1914-18. What is clear is that Ukraine is running out of soldiers through a combination of casualties, corruption (the Monaco Battalion) and ineffective recruitment. If Zelensky can’t solve this Ukraine will lose the war no matter how many times it’s drones strike Russian airbases.

The British armed forces are running out of personnel, particularly the highly skilled ones that make armed forces work. The reasons most often cited by those leaving are work life balance, housing quality and pay. Recruitment is running at only 60% of what is required. They have been for years and that’s the single biggest challenge that the Armed Forces face – a high baseline given their depleted state. Lord Robertson famously was very sympathetic to the armed forces when he was Blair’s defence secretary. It’s unlikely that he will have been persuaded that AI , cyber or jargon like “network centric warfare” can cover for missing soldiers, sailors or air people anywhere.

If the Robertson Review is to have any value, and the British Armed Forces any credible future, it must confront the reality that, despite the complex technology, warfare is ultimately a human activity. People won’t sign up to serve their county if the consequences of doing their lawful job include the potential of delayed prosecution and a long stretch in jail. As Kipling put it:

But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

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