There's No Need for Tobias Ellwood To Panic

Former Chair of Defence Select Committee Needs To Get A Grip Of His Inner Corporal Jones

As British politicians go, Tobias Ellwood is more informed on defence and security than many. After a short career in the Army he transitioned to being an MP, holding positions in Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence before chairing the Defence Select Committee. Since entering parliament in 2005 he’s had a ringside seat to witness the fatal hollowing out of the UK’s armed forces. He’s certainly sat through and examined the recent series of Strategic Defence Reviews conducted by his military and Parliamentary contemporary Ben Wallace.

Writing in the Telegraph Ellwood fretted about a tactical nuclear weapon being used in the next ten years. He then concluded “This all underlines why defence spending must increase, our grand strategy updated and our military empowered. Before any MoD budget is increased, let’s conduct a review of the full spectrum of threats so as to better appreciate how our defence posture should grow.

After seven decades of ensuring their numbers were limited and their deployment avoided, we must come to terms with a world where a nuclear bomb could indeed be fired in anger.”  

How very depressing – not least because this happened on Ellwood’s watch. Blame games are generally unhelpful, but Ellwood was in parliament, and sometimes in the FCO or MOD for four defence reviews, the last of which being the 2023 refresh of the major 2021 Integrated Review. (It needed a “refresh” as Putin rather sportingly invaded Ukraine with heavy armour that the 2021 review had deemed unnecessary). Where was his insight then? If the previous four reviews have failed to deliver a suitable defence posture for the UK my conclusion is that the Defence Review methodology isn’t working. There is no point in having another one of the same ilk (which is the current Labour defence policy ).

In the silly article Ellwood wrote that “state on state aggression is back.” When did it ever leave? Despite multiple wars since 2005, several of which have involved British Armed Forces, the one constant of all UK defence reviews is that the armed forces have got smaller and less capable. Even in the heyday of recent British military might (say 1982 to 1992) the armed forces were regarded as highly capable but rather too small. Now they’re much less capable and even smaller. The Navy is short of operational warships and struggles to crew the ones that work. The RAF will never have enough Wedgetail to maintain anything close to 24/7 airborne radar coverage. The Army lacks artillery, tanks, reconnaissance vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles and manpower. It’s good at funerals though.

While anyone using a nuclear weapon anywhere would be a terrible thing, Parliament’s prime concern is surely that such a weapon is not used on the UK.  The good (but expensive) news is that we have a strategic nuclear deterrent, albeit one that seems under pressure as its submarines are forced into longer patrols to cover for availability problems. Trident is a very big stick. While we have never launched one in anger, in the First Gulf War we and the United States informed the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, that should the Iraqis use chemical or biological weapons on coalition forces they would be nuked. Saddam didn’t use those weapons, (he DID have them then), so the threat worked. (Although all NATO troops at that time were perfectly capable of operating in chemical environments the degradation to performance, particularly of aircrew who were to be so vital in the campaign, is substantial. Had coalition air bases been hit with persistent chemicals it would have taken far, far longer to fly the 110,000 missions that so degraded Iraq’s combat power before ground operations were launched.)

Please understand that a “small tactical nuke” might be the size of the Hiroshima bomb. The only current US tactical nuclear weapon , the B61 bomb, has a variable yield from 0.3 kilotons (kt) to over 300 kt (which is far from tactical) - of which some 120 are stored in Europe - and they’re coming to England . The term tactical embraces nuclear air to air missiles (to destroy bombers and incoming missiles) and nuclear missiles and torpedoes at sea (to sink large ships or submarines), as well as on land. Battlefield uses include destroying enemy concentrations and strong defensive position. Should a tactical nuke detonate in an urban area it will convert it to rubble as surely as Little Boy (12 to 18kt) and Fat Man (18 to 23 kt) did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Any nuclear power launching such a weapon at the UK would be risking a response far, far more savage. Just one Trident missile carries up to 12 warheads, each of which could yield as much as 100 kilotons. One Trident submarine carries up to sixteen missiles. Rational people don’t contemplate starting a nuclear war, or even getting close to it.

Whether North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Iran’s mullahs (who will soon have the bomb) are rational in the context of nuclear weapons is an open question. If they reject the cold logic of mutually assured destruction we need to consider anti-missile defences.

Last Saturday Israel and its allies (including the British) gave a textbook demonstration of how this works and the risks. Modern fighter aircraft and air to air missiles downed close all the incoming drones (sent as decoys, but with a 50kg warhead) and cruise missiles. The Arrow missile system destroyed several incoming ballistic missiles. It seems some missiles did get through. If the Israelis take comfort from the efficacy of their defence systems and the willingness of their allies to support them, the mullahs know that, like the IRA, they only have to get lucky once.   

Some of the incoming ballistic missiles were destroyed by the US Aegis system and others by the Sea Viper system of the Type 45 destroyer HMS Diamond. The latter is already being further upgraded. There are land based versions of Aegis in Poland and Romania and there is usually a Type 45 destroyer in home waters (although with three of six currently in docks for maintenance, availability is a concern). All in all, therefore, it’s hard to see that Ellwood is highlighting a direct threat to the UK of being hit by a nuclear weapon, tactical or otherwise. Which is not to say that the Defence of the Realm is in a good state or that urgent action is not required.

Either Ellwood is barking up the wrong tree (again) or he is seeking to frame the public’s perception.  He is after all an army reserve Lieutenant Colonel who is part of 77 Brigade (the psychological operations unit). He might therefore have penned the silly article in support of Lord Call Me Dave’s failed mission to get the US to release more money for Ukraine.

I’m not panicking about nukes. I am thinking hard about how to fix the UK’s broken armed forces, but that’s for another day.