Warfare is changing by the day, but Britain is still decades behind
When Lord George Robertson led the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in 1997, the GDP of the UK was greater than those of China and India combined. America reigned supreme, the only other superpower, the Soviet Union, having slowly dissolved after losing the Cold War eight years previously.
Lord George is back as one of three leads of the latest SDR, widely expected to be published on Monday. But the geostrategic landscape is very different now. No longer can we afford to luxuriate in that uni-polar moment of Western and Nato supremacy. China, Iran and North Korea are functioning surprisingly well as a de facto alliance in supporting Russia in its war on Ukraine.
And that is a real war of national survival, not the politically caveated, limited military interventions of the global war on terrorism. This is war at speed and scale, a war mixing the timeless requirements of industrial production with the cutting-edge technologies of the digital age: smart sensors, big-data, cloud connectivity, artificial intelligence, robotics.
The new ways of warfare are evolving at dizzying speed. Technical evolution, the obsolescence cycle, is now measured in weeks. Dual-use technology – that with civil and military utility – is blended with more conventional munitions; decades-old assumptions are upended overnight; the ways and means of warfare are being comprehensively disrupted. Historically, this is a change that happens every century or so: Napoleon's Levée en Masse, sail to steam, the aeroplane. That a superpower's navy has, in the Black Sea, been defeated by a country without a navy is a wake up call to all.
And here lies the big risk – the victor's paradox. 'Top Dogs' are loath to shed that which put them on top, that in which they have made big investments and of which they are masters. Paradigm shifts are the opportunity for smart challengers to abandon the previous, flagging chase and master the emerging world quicker than the current champions can adapt.
China, especially, has had a plan to do exactly this for the last few decades, with massive investments in, inter alia, cyber, AI and hypersonic missiles to add a technological edge to the military mass it has built in parallel: its navy now has more ships than America's. It is using Ukraine, and Kashmir, as a proving ground. Russia has learned (slowly, as it is a corrupt kleptocracy) with grim determination the lessons of modern warfare – exemplified by its recent invention of fibre-optically steered drones. It also knows how to mobilise a war economy.
In contrast, and despite much pumped-up rhetoric, most of Nato, including the UK, has demonstrated a reluctance to abandon the old paradigm. Yes, we have bought some drones, but we have bought them as if we were buying sophisticated manned warplanes. We may be buying them slightly quicker now, but these are percentage changes on a system that still takes years, and millions of pounds, to buy tens. Ukraine is on schedule to make four million drones this year.
Allied to that is that Western militaries have mirrored a society that has become ever more regulated and risk averse. The British Army is down to 14 artillery pieces, which were bought as stop-gaps. There is still no certification and so no clearance to fire them on a UK range. Similar restrictions apply to innovative drone training – but what if one crashes?
The paradox here is that by trying to eradicate every small risk we make the big one – war – more likely. Ultimately we aim to deter, and deterrence depends on credibility. Credibility hinges on the proven military capability to win and the political will to engage with force and see it through. Small forces, a limited production capacity and supply chain to rapidly expand and evolve them, and a risk averse culture that trains and employs them will not impress allies or deter enemies.
The SDR's other authors alongside Lord George are Fiona Hill, a proven free-thinker, and General Richard Barrons who was one of the first to write about this changing paradigm ten years ago. Their SDR should not be read as recent reviews have been – a relative tally of platform numbers and the size of the residual, 'bonsai' military. That paradigm was already broken several defence reviews ago – tweaking it is but to fiddle with the increasingly irrelevant.
The reader should ask instead: to what extent is this a root and branch reform of our now sclerotic system, and to what extent is it going to re-orientate our whole Defence Enterprise – MOD Head Office processes and accountabilities, agile adaptation and procurement, secure supply chains, rapid adoption of technological advances, expansion of reserve forces?
If it charts a clear path to a revised 'theory of winning' that can credibly generate a wartime force with the mass and lethality to defeat our foes then it will be a good review. If it continues the usual horse-trading between the individual services over their peacetime structure then it will have been a missed opportunity. With the US making it clear that Europe must look after its own defence we have no safety net if we get it wrong. But America's position gives us an opportunity as well: the chance, the obligation, to show genuine leadership in Europe.
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