France responded to the 2015 Bataclan terror attack by sending 10,000 soldiers on to the streets and an aircraft carrier towards the Middle East. After the recent Manchester atrocity Britain briefly deployed barely 1,000 troops. While that turned out to be an appropriate response, it raised the question of how ready the country would be in the future to tackle simultaneous domestic and global crises.
The Times reports today on deliberations in Whitehall as to whether to cut the army from its present baseline of 82,500 to 65,000 in an attempt to plug a funding hole of at least £10 billion. If the army were to shrink, it would quickly alert Britain’s alliance partners to a pattern of decline. The army has already been slashed from 102,000 in 2010 and 2011.
By contrast, France runs an army of 109,000. After Brexit, it will be the dominant military force in the European Union and the EU’s sole permanent member of the UN Security Council. Little wonder that leaders are paying court to the newly minted president of France, Emmanuel Macron. Last month a long roll call of former senior officers sounded the alarm that the defence of Britain was being underfunded in a world of multiple threats. Rather than a piece of special pleading, it was a serious warning to the government that emerges from next week’s general election. The last strategic defence and security review (SDSR) in 2015 squarely addressed the need of all services to modernise equipment but it also made unreasonable assumptions about possible savings.
The new government must urgently update the 2015 review. The fall in sterling since the Brexit referendum will have an impact on the purchase of planes for Britain’s new aircraft carriers, and the upgrading of Apache helicopters. The recent public accounts committee report on defence procurement suggests that some £19 billion of Britain’s foreign military purchases are exposed to currency fluctuations.
Waste must be cut and project management streamlined. The Army Reserve could be better used. Some tasks in the army supply chain could be contracted to ex-servicemen and women. And it is reasonable to trade off a limited number of army jobs to fund the purchase of a new fleet of fast armoured vehicles. Yet troop numbers do still count; the advent of “smart soldiering”, the replacement of soldiers with a smaller number of highly trained fighters, does not always give the necessary flexibility to the armed forces.
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The tensions with Russia over Ukraine still menace eastern Europe. New connections between the collapsing states of the Middle East and jihadist activity in Britain will be a challenge for defence planners, as will the cyberthreats from Beijing and Moscow. The global projection of power is not a luxury for a country so dependent on the stability of trading routes and international commerce. Brexit will make this more important than ever.
The defence of the realm is at the heart of the compact between government and citizen. Our new leaders must find the funds to support a substantial army in troubled times.