The Russo-Ukraine war has been a wake up call for the west in general and NATO members in particular. The re-emergence of Russia as an aggressor nation in eastern Europe has sent many western nations scrambling to upgrade their military capabilities.

Many lessons have been learned and re-learned from this latest conflict; that numbers matter in both troops and materiel, especially artillery ammunition; that air superiority is crucial to enable ground manoeuvre; and that high attrition rates apply to combatants of both sides in a peer or near-peer confrontation.

A major lesson has been the utility and ubiquity of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones, and land attack cruise and ballistic missiles. Although the perceived threat vacuum into which such systems evolved and had such early success is now filling up with counter-measures, swarm attacks of drones and missiles still ensure that some still get through.

All of this has focused minds across western Europe. The risk that similar aerial attacks on other European states could be made without adequate air defence systems to defend against them has led to some interesting initiatives.

Chief amongst these has been the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) proposal. Announced by German Chancellor Olaf Schultz in August 2022, it was a direct response to increased concerns about the limited European capability to defend against such threats as the Russian 9K720 Iskander ballistic missile systems deployed in Kaliningrad and also cruise missiles.

So far 19 European states have now signed up to the project, which proposes joint procurement of air defence systems to provide a pan-European umbrella against the threat.

The system will be based, if put into effect, on a layered air defence missile matrix, utilising the German IRIS-T SLM for medium range, the American Patriot system for long range, and the US/Israeli Arrow-3 missile for very long range interceptions. It is hoped the system might be developed and implemented over the next five years, but I fear that is a tad optimistic.

France, typically, has not signed up to the ESSI, and neither have Poland, Italy, or Spain. The French have objected that it relies too much on German influence and may also by slightly miffed that the French/Italian SAMP-T missile system is not included. They have proposed an alternative and urged other countries to examine it before making up their minds.
Poland, on the other hand, benefits along with Romania in already having the US designed Aegis ballistic missile defence system (Aegis BMD or ABMD), to provide missile defence against short to intermediate-range ballistic missiles by intercepting them in post-boost phase and prior to re-entry.

Aegis has also demonstrated a limited capability as an anti-satellite weapon against satellites in the lower portion of low Earth orbit, which (literally) brings another dimension to the topic altogether. The previously mentioned US/Israeli Arrow missile apparently has the same capability.

So we have a potential for three different ballistic missile defence systems being deployed in Europe. All fine and dandy, you may say, but the proposals throw up more questions than answers.

The first and most important question is who would be in overall control? Who would decide in the unlikely event of a, say, Russian cruise missile attack on Belgium, for example, which nation would be tasked to intercept it? Would it be Belgium, the intended target, or one of the countries it would have to overfly to get there?

Then there’s the question of whether the three proposed systems are compatible and if they can be coordinated. How will they be de-conflicted and avoid shooting each other down? How will participating states “hand over” targets from one jurisdiction to another? Will NATO take overall command? None of this is clear.

Against this background I think it’s fair to say that whilst the Sky Shield initiative has been broadly welcomed commentators are sceptical about how it might function in reality. The designers and engineers can probably make it function, but it needs political will to make it happen.

In the meantime we should note that the UK is one of the countries which has signed up. Just as well, because although Britain has the early warning radars to warn of an incoming cruise or ballistic missile attack, it does not have the missile interceptors to do anything about it.

Which might be part of the reason that the Royal Navy’s T45 destroyers are in line for an upgrade to their weapons rig to give them an anti-ballistic missile capability. Although primarily for self-defence against anti-ship ballistic missiles, that is for point defence of themselves and the carriers they are designed to escort, it is thought they will have an area defence capability too.

Not before time you might think, but it won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, Britain’s skies are open.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk

 

 

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

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If the dreadful Ukraine war has taught us anything it is that big numbers matter, so why are we Hell bent on reducing Britain’s military to Dad’s Army levels.

When I joined the 4th Royal Tank Regiment (Scotland’s Own) as a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears subaltern in Munster, West Germany, in early 1980, I became part of the mighty British Army of the Rhine.

A relic of the post-war occupation of Germany and very much a fixture in the Cold War years 1945-1989, BAOR boasted some 55,000 troops, out of a total British army strength of 160,000, plus an additional 3,000 in the garrison of Berlin.

The heart of BAOR, 1st British Corps (1 Br Corps), had three armoured divisions in Germany plus a reinforcing division back in the UK. The total British tank strength was roughly 1,200 Chieftain main battle tanks (MBTs), of which 900 were stationed in Europe.

Now we expect the long-awaited Defence Command Paper to confirm on Tuesday that the planned reduction of personnel in our army will go ahead, reducing numbers to just 73,000. As everybody has repeated often enough, this reduces the British army to its smallest size since Napoleonic times.

Numbers are meant to be boosted by a reserve force of some 30,000 reservists, but with the best will in the world such soldiers are never going to match the standards of the regulars. A handful of training weekends plus a fornight’s annual camp just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid.

At the same time, Britain’s tank numbers are being cut to a mere 148 which is truly pathetic. Yes, they will eventually be the new-ish, re-turret-ed and re-armed Challenger 3s with the NATO compatible Rheinmetall 120 mm smoothbore gun (at long last!) which is a plus. But 148 tanks might last about a week in a peer or near peer conflict, and there are none in reserve to replace them. It’s a one shot weapon, truly fire and forget.

And now we learn that the Government’s latest wheeze in trying to paper over the cracks is to call on former soldiers to join up to what us being referred to as a “surge force” to create a strategic reserve of troops.

The paper expected to be laid before Parliament on Tuesday will apparently outline plans for former regular soldiers, including those no longer serving as reservists, to help “revitalise” the Army and add much needed numbers to its ranks.

Forgive me for having a bit of a chortle to myself here, but it strikes me that we may be in danger of reforming Dad’s Army, the famous Local Defence Volunteers and Home Guard of yesteryear. Or possibly Germany’s Volksturrm, which was composed of old men and boys as the Nazi regime fell apart in 1945.

I haven’t seen the detail yet, though, so perhaps I should hold my fire, but it doesn’t inspire confidence in the future being planned for the British army. You can’t do defence properly on the cheap, and this smacks of desperation.

In the broader strategic context, however, the continuing diminution of our Army seems counter-intuitive. One of the main lessons coming out from the Ukraine war, if not *the* lesson, is that mass matters and victory usually goes to the big battalions.

To be brutally honest about it, and to paraphrase British inter-war thinker Basil Liddell Hart, “a battalion is, like a ship or a shell, merely a munition of war to be expended at a profit”. Wars, unfortunately, incur casualties in both personnel and equipment, and if you don’t have the numbers to keep going then you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Whilst other NATO countries like Poland, the Baltic states, and others are now actively looking to increase defence spending and the size of their armed forces in the face of the renewed Russian threat, Britain seems Hell-bent on reducing ours. It looks like a classic case of cognitive dissonance to me.

Why is this so? Well, the sclerotic and archaic mechanisms within the Ministry of Defence don’t help, and neither does a Prime Minister in Rishi Sunak who clearly doesn’t “get” defence and is more at home with a calculator than a rifle.

Nor is it ideal to have a Defence Secretary in Ben Wallace who has just signalled that he is jumping ship, standing down from the Cabinet at the next reshuffle and not seeking re-election in next years General Election. Why he is doing so is for him to know and for us to guess, but it’s not a good look for the troops.

Defence policy is like car insurance; you have to have it but you don’t really want to have to use it. And, like car insurance, you can choose fully comprehensive at one end of the spectrum and third party only at the other.

Britain’s defence forces are rapidly sliding towards the latter. You can’t do defence on a shoestring. High time to bump up defence spending to at least three percent of GDP immediately and start to expand, not draw down, our armed services.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk

 

 

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

• http://www.DefenceReview.UK
• @peoplemattertv
• @509298

 

When I joined the 4^th Royal Tank Regiment (Scotland’s Own) as a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears subaltern in Munster, West Germany, in early 1980, I became part of the mighty British Army of the Rhine.

A relic of the post-war occupation of Germany and very much a fixture in the Cold War years 1945-1989, BAOR boasted some 55,000 troops, out of a total British army strength of 160,000, plus an additional 3,000 in the garrison of Berlin.

The heart of BAOR, 1^st British Corps (1 Br Corps), had three armoured divisions in Germany plus a reinforcing division back in the UK. The total British tank strength was roughly 1,200 Chieftain main battle tanks (MBTs), of which 900 were stationed in Europe.

Now we expect the long-awaited Defence Command Paper to confirm on Tuesday that the planned reduction of personnel in our army will go ahead, reducing numbers to just 73,000.  As everybody has repeated often enough, this reduces the British army to its smallest size since Napoleonic times.

Numbers are meant to be boosted by a reserve force of some 30,000 reservists, but with the best will in the world such soldiers are never going to match the standards of the regulars. A handful of training weekends plus a fornight’s annual camp just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid.

At the same time, Britain’s tank numbers are being cut to a mere 148 which is truly pathetic. Yes, they will eventually be the new-ish, re-turret-ed and re-armed Challenger 3s with the NATO compatible Rheinmetall 120 mm smoothbore gun (at long last!) which is a plus. But 148 tanks might last about a week in a peer or near peer conflict, and there are none in reserve to replace them. It’s a one shot weapon, truly fire and forget.

And now we learn that the Government’s latest wheeze in trying to paper over the cracks is to call on former soldiers to join up to what us being referred to as a “surge force” to create a strategic reserve of troops.

The paper expected to be laid before Parliament on Tuesday will apparently outline plans for former regular soldiers, including those no longer serving as reservists, to help “revitalise” the army and add much needed numbers to its ranks.

Forgive me for having a bit of a chortle to myself here, but it strikes me that we may be in danger of reforming Dad’s Army, the famous Local Defence Volunteers and Home Guard of yesteryear. Or possibly Germany’s Volksturrm, which was composed of old men and boys as the Nazi regime fell apart in 1945.

I haven’t seen the detail yet, though, so perhaps I should hold my fire, but it doesn’t inspire confidence in the future being planned for the British army. You can’t do defence properly on the cheap, and this smacks of desperation.

In the broader strategic context, however, the continuing diminution of our army seems counter-intuitive. One of the main lessons coming out from the Ukraine war, if not *the* lesson, is that mass matters and victory usually goes to the big battalions.

To be brutally honest about it, and to paraphrase British inter-war thinker Basil Liddell Hart, “a battalion is, like a ship or a shell, merely a munition of war to be expended at a profit”. Wars, unfortunately, incur casualties in both personnel and equipment, and if you don’t have the numbers to keep going then you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Whilst other NATO countries like Poland, the Baltic states, and others are now actively looking to increase defence spending and the size of their armed forces in the face of the renewed Russian threat, Britain seems Hell-bent on reducing ours. It looks like a classic case of cognitive dissonance to me.

Why is this so? Well, the sclerotic and archaic mechanisms within the Ministry of Defence don’t help, and neither does a Prime Minister in Rishi Sunak who clearly doesn’t “get” defence and is more at home with a calculator than a rifle.

Nor is it ideal to have a Defence Secretary in Ben Wallace who has just signalled that he is jumping ship, standing down from the Cabinet at the next reshuffle and not seeking re-election in next years General Election. Why he is doing so is for him to know and for us to guess, but it’s not a good look for the troops.

Defence policy is like car insurance; you have to have it but you don’t really want to have to use it. And, like car insurance, you can choose fully comprehensive at one end of the spectrum and third party only at the other.

Britain’s defence forces are rapidly sliding towards the latter. You can’t do defence on a shoestring. High time to bump up defence spending to at least 3% of GDP immediately and start to expand, not draw down, our armed services.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk

 

 

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

• http://www.DefenceReview.UK
• @peoplemattertv
• @509298

 

The UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has just published its report on China.

It has its origins in a previous inquiry by the Committee into whether the Chinese company Huawei should be allowed to supply equipment for Britain’s 5G telecommunications network, with the prime consideration here being our seeming over-reliance on Chinese technology.

The ISC inquiry continued thereafter and considered the nature of the threat more broadly. This new report is the result of the Committee’s further work and has been split into two parts. Part one considers the overall intelligence threat from China to the UK and the Government’s response to that threat. Part two looks at case studies on the threat to three specific areas; academia, industry and technology, and civil nuclear energy.

Let’s look at both consecutively. It’s clear from Part One that the ISC considers the intelligence threat presented by China to be considerable. China’s ambition and capability have allowed it entry to every sector of British life, and Chinese money has flooded the UK.

China probably has the largest state intelligence apparatus in the world –even bigger than Russia’s – and presents a challenge to its adversaries. The problem is exacerbated by China’s holistic approach.

This means in effect that Chinese state-owned and non-state-owned companies, as well as academic and cultural establishments and ordinary Chinese citizens, “are liable to be (willingly or unwillingly) co-opted into espionage and interference operations overseas”.

So Chinese influence is all-pervasive and its tentacles have penetrated all aspects of life in the UK and other countries. Accordingly, the obvious question is what is Britain doing to counter the threat and limit the spread of Chinese influence and propaganda?

Sadly the answer seems to be “not enough”; at least that’s the ISC’s point of view. The Government says its response is “robust” and “clear-eyed” but they would say that, wouldn’t they? (the “Mandy Rice-Davies response”.)

Others are not so sure and were rather less complimentary.

Some expert commentators felt very strongly that the UK did not really have any strategy on how to deal with China, and that it was failing to deploy a ‘whole-of-government’ approach when countering the threat from China.

Such action that has been taken by Britain’s security and intelligence agencies tends to focus on China’s ‘covert’ activity in the UK, says the report, noting that historically China has not received as much attention from them as, say, Russia has.

The ISC says the UK is now struggling to understand and counter China’s ‘whole-of-state’ threat. It goes on further to say that up until now Government’s focus has been dominated by short-term or acute threats. It recommends that the Government adopts a longer-term planning cycle with regards to the future security of the UK if it is to face Chinese ambitions.

The dangers of doing too little too late are too obvious and significant to be ignored. As the report states, “For a long-term strategy on China – thinking 10, 15, 20 years ahead – the Government needs to plan for it and commit to it now: the UK is severely handicapped by the short-termist approach currently being taken.”

So much for Part One of the report. The second part consists of three case studies, of which the one looking at Britain’s academic sector is of most interest to me. I have to confess that I am one of those awful people who sent their kids to private school (or public school if you prefer, but that’s a daft term) and was well aware years ago of a marked influx of Chinese pupils.

For Britain’s private schools this is now a major revenue stream. Indeed, many of our hallowed institutions have opened satellite operations across Asia and in China itself. No names, no packdrill, but it’s easy enough to find out who they are.

But it is in our universities that the influx of Chinese students has had its major impact. Here China seeks to control the narrative about China within British universities by exerting its influence over institutions, individual academics, and Chinese students, and by obtaining intellectual property (IP) by directing or stealing academic research to add directly to Chinese expertise.

The ISC considers that the UK academic sector has not received sufficient advice on, or protection from, either axis. Again, to quote directly from is report:

“This must change: there must be an effective cross-government approach to Academia, with clear responsibility and accountability for countering this multifaceted threat. In the meantime, China is on hand to collect – and exploit – all that the UK’s best and brightest achieve as the UK knowingly lets it fall between the cracks.”

The problem is, as ever, competing priorities for funds. Which sector will be raided to provide the required finances; defence, the NHS, education? I don’t know the answer, but in the finest traditions of British commentary I will say that “something must be done”, and quickly.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk

 

 

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

• http://www.DefenceReview.UK
• @peoplemattertv
• @509298