The Healey Defence Review Faces Some Hard Choices

The World Is More Dangerous, The Armed Forces Are In A Parlous State and There Is No Money.

This article was originally written for Global Britain and Think Scotland. It appears here with their kind permission. It’s the first in a series of five, and sets the context for the review.

OUTSIDE of the media frenzy of the government’s public spending plans and ministers’ delight in freebies, the Secretary of State for Defence, The Rt Hon John Healey MP,  is conducting a defence review. It is the fourteenth such review since the end of World War Two and the ninth since the Falklands War. All of them reduced the armed forces in size and capability.

The last one was in 2021 and “refreshed” the next year, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine having destroyed the premise that heavy armour was obsolete. It isn’t – as the Israelis are demonstrating in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Only a fool would conclude that it was.

Well conducted defence reviews are a vital part of the process of updating armed forces. They’re usually triggered by military disaster. After the Royal Navy’s disastrous performance in the Anglo Dutch Wars Pepys laid the foundations for Nelson’s navy. The Crimean misadventures led to Cardwell ending promotion by purchase, creating the Staff College and laying the foundations of the Regimental system. Following the Second Boer War, Haldane’s reforms delivered the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the best military force in the world at the time. (The BEF’s near destruction in 1914 is irrelevant. It stood and fought, impressively, although vastly outnumbered, buying vital time, thereby defeating the Schlieffen Plan.)

That the current armed forces are in a parlous state is not news, although few grasp how weak they are. The Navy can’t crew its warships, many of which are plagued with reliability problems ranging from  propellors falling off aircraft carriers to the Astute submarines unable to sail due to lack of maintenance facilities. The Army lacks tanks and has little artillery. For all its 75,000 nominal strength it would be hard pressed to send a 5,000 strong brigade to war, let alone keep it there. It has 18 light role infantry battalions, some 10,000 soldiers, whose chances of surviving on a modern battlefield are about the same as Tommy Atkins’ on the Somme in 1916. The air force finally has one airborne early warning aircraft (not yet operational). It needs more than the three on order. It has yet to order more F-35s and while it waits, the reliability of the aging Typhoons deteriorates. There are huge delays in the pilot training programme. Risibly, OFSTED graded RAF flying training “Good” while noting that “in the worst cases, trainee pilots are waiting several years to start their flying training. Trainees report that this delay affects not just their careers but their motivation.”

All three services have discipline and moral problems, from drugs to sexual misconduct. It’s hardly surprising that for every 12 who join the armed forces 16 leave. In the past year the armed forces headcount again fell by 3 per cent, despite Grant Shapps easing the policy on beards. That’s not sustainable.

The Healey review, therefore, is crucial and probably the last chance to stop the rot that his predecessors, Fallon, Williamson, Mordant, Wallace and Shapps, abjectly failed to end. Inevitably there is no money. Defence was not a priority in the election, with Labour committing to raise defence spending only when there were sufficient funds. Mr Healey will need to get creative and butcher some sacred cows. He could perhaps axe a couple of militarily useless light role infantry battalions to pay for ten desperately needed warship crews. Billions of pounds worth of warships are unable to go to sea as they lack a crew.

Russia’s resurgence and belligerence is obvious, as is the failure of economic sanctions to paralyse Putin. Many western commentators may, with some justification, point to the enormous losses Russia is suffering in Ukraine with its crude tactics, reliance on mass and (mostly) unsophisticated weaponry, yet Russia is winning and its surviving soldiers and commanders are battle hardened.

China now probably could seize Taiwan, albeit at some peril. Iran too is demonstrating the effectiveness of ballistic missiles. The UK has no counter to them. London may not be in range of current Iranian missiles, but much of Europe is. Throw in the nuclear dimension and there is plenty to fret about. (For much of my life Iran has been “within a few months” of having an atomic bomb. One of these days the “few months” will run out). Even while they haven’t, their proxies the Houthis have the capacity to interfere with world trade, even if Hamas and Hezbollah have been destroyed.

Like most countries the UK lacks the force to act decisively against any of these threats alone. Rather it must work in partnerships and (ideally) alliances. Chief among these is NATO, although that in itself is largely dependent upon the United States. Whatever else Putin’s invasion has achieved, it did demonstrate the difference in global view between the US and the Europeans. It also throws a spotlight on vast differences in military capability and commitment.  America has delivered about US$ 110 billion of military support to Ukraine, some ten times what the UK has pledged, and more than the rest of Europe combined.

Notwithstanding this largesse, the Ukraine War has crystalised the long-running and understandable American frustration that Europe gets much of its security for free by hanging on US coat tails. The UK has fared worse, slipping from the US military partner of choice in the 1990 Gulf War to one whose participation reduces overall military capability and adds political complexity. We’re invited to shed blood. This led to the NATO wide demands for increased defence spending and the previous government’s commitment to increase the spend to 2.5 per cent of GDP (from the current 2.2 per cent or so).

There, in a nutshell, is the problem with not just defence, but most of western government spending and economic thought – conflating inputs with outputs. Military capability is not measured in percentage of GDP but in weaponry, logistics, training states and the will to fight. Cutting to the chase, what military capability does the UK need? Briefly:

1. Keeping the nuclear deterrent at sea. It’s about the only justification of our seat on the UN Security Council.

2. Maintaining the freedom of the seas. We rely on imports.

3. Protecting The Realm from all military and terrorist threats, whencesoever they come.

4. Possessing sufficient sea, land and air power to ensure the success of allied military operations.

5. Providing support to the civil power, authority and community as the need arises.

6. Using its credible military capabilities to deter aggression and encourage cooperation across the world in support of the UK’s foreign policy.

We’re currently only managing the deterrent with US assistance (as most of our submarines are broken) Points (2) to (4) are patchy at best, while (5), a secondary role, is more demanding than delivering a funeral, and (6) is an abject failure as Mali demonstrates.

The Healey Review must find, fund, furnish and field the necessary forces. If, as may be the case, the UK can’t easily deliver on all capabilities, Healey must decide which to abandon. Forsaking any capability means the experts move on to other roles. While this is a problem for all organisations, the UK armed forces relied heavily upon institutional expertise to “punch above their weight”. That cliché has been evaporating for years; the service personnel leaving are the experienced ones, those joining are novices.

Deleting a capability also hits the military industrial complex. The Royal Navy stopped buying submarines for some ten years before ordering the Astute Class, so the manufacturer deployed its staff elsewhere. Management consultants might advise that documentation and software will prevent institutional skill fade – they’re all wrong – as the problems building the Astute Class demonstrated. The British Army is, in fact, having to rehire former officers as consultants to explain how to do reconnaissance in new Ajax vehicle.

The UK defence industry was once substantial and successful. While it still exists – notable with  BAE Systems unprecedented partnership in the American F-35 programme and Thales continuing production of NLAW – running the UK’s armed forces down has cost exports and jobs. Worse, the government is now paying to recover the manufacturing capability lost when the Royal Ordnance factory in Nottingham closed 20 years ago.

The international arms trade is lucrative, generating soft power as well as export earnings and profits. The run down of UK armed forces, particularly the Army, has been accompanied by a loss of export sales, to the delight of our competitors. That particularly includes PESCO – the EU’s military procurement operation, who must be delighted with the recent UK-Germany defence cooperation agreement.

The Healey review will face some very unpalatable choices. He should perhaps first ask whether the UK wants armed forces or not.

In subsequent articles I will consider the armed forces in turn and identify potential solutions to their myriad problems. This will include discussion of how they got into this mess, and how we prevent recurrence.

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