The UK Needs "Larger Army Reserves" To Defend Itself From Attack
3 min read
The UK must develop an army reserve big enough to defend itself from attack, a former defence minister has told PoliticsHome.
Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, a former Conservative MP who is currently director of the British Army Reserves, said the country needs a larger part-time military unit both to help defend a potential Ukrainian peace deal and protect Britain from attack.
Speaking to PoliticsHome in a personal capacity, Lancaster said that while the British Army is mostly configured to support the collective defence of Nato under Article 5, it can be "easy to forget our obligations under Article 3" — the importance of homeland defence.
"It's easy to forget our obligations under Article 3, the need to defend the home base, the UK," he told PoliticsHome.
This, the former minister said, means the UK being able to guard its own critical infrastructure and have enough military aircraft to defend itself in the air.
Lancaster said that these tasks would "naturally fall to a lower readiness reserve" and members of the strategic reserve — former military personnel who the Ministry of Defence can call up to provide additional support in times of national emergency.
He told PoliticsHome that the British Army is "expeditionary in nature" and has "always anticipated a relatively short campaign with only the need for a small reserve", something Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has "undoubtedly changed our thinking" on.
"We recognise that we need not just world-beating capabilities for a short war, but depth and mass to be able to prosecute what could be a much longer war, this is obviously where the need for access to a larger reserve is required," Lancaster said.
Lord Lancaster told PoliticsHome that the UK currently didn't have enough Army reserves to defend itself from attack (Alamy)
The military figure's remarks come as the UK and other European governments plan to increase their defence capabilities, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently announcing that UK defence spending would rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP in 2027.
Starmer has said that he is ready to send British troops and planes to Ukraine to help defend any peace deal that is agreed to end the conflict with Russia.
European governments have been put under pressure to expand their national defences by president Donald Trump's plan to reduce US military support for Western allies.
The UK, France and other European countries are in talks over forming a "coalition of the willing" — a multilateral commitment to deploy peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as part of a peace deal.
Article 5 states that if a Nato member is the victim of an attack, its allies will take the actions needed to assist them.
Nato has only invoked Article 5 once in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US in September 2001.
However, Lancaster said the government must take self-defence more seriously as part of its evolving defence policy, telling PoliticsHome that the UK's place on the map in relation to hostile actors has resulted in a false sense of security at home.
"We mustn’t underestimate the very real threat we do have though, not only to our values but the physical threat that has manifested itself in the cutting of our subsea infrastructure and constant cyber attacks on our national infrastructure."
Lancaster said that he was sure the Strategic Defence Review, which is due to make its recommendations this Spring, would have considered this.
Tobias Ellwood, a former Tory defence minister who was a soldier before entering politics, last week told PoliticsHome that the government should reintroduce national service as a way of bolstering military capabilities at home and in places like Ukraine.
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