Ukraine has shown the way – now Starmer must match their bravery and fund a modern military
HMS Diamond Type 45 destroyer (Credit: Ajax News & Feature Service / Alamy Stock Photo)
4 min read
It was, as Winston Churchill acknowledged, already a cliché when he used it in The Gathering Storm in 1948. “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war.”
As someone who oversaw two similar exercises, I know the challenges faced by those finalising the latest Strategic Defence Review (SDR) due for publication. Anticipating and meeting military needs while confined by domestic political realities is not easy. Layer on top the upending of the Atlantic partnership and global economic order by Donald Trump and one can see why the SDR is fraught.
But how should we judge whether John Healey has met the moment? Let’s start with that Churchill joke. This isn’t about preparing for the last war – but learning from one that is playing out right now.
There are a number of key strategic trends in warfare that have come out of the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. The first is that advanced technologies and systems must seamlessly integrate. We have to recognise that exquisite and expensive platforms that cannot communicate with anyone else and whose data belongs to another state can seriously handicap the ability to adapt to the threat and to integrate a diverse set of forces.
The second trend is the shift from large-manned platforms to smaller, expendable equipment. The days of spending millions on one platform must be over. Recently when the UK’s Type 45 ship downed a Houthi drone it took five Aster missiles to bring it down. Each cost between £1m to £2m while the drone just a few thousand.
The third important lesson is that the side which can sense the enemy and deliver a kinetic strike against it the quickest wins. The “sensor to shooter” loop when very fast allows dynamic targeting and can cripple the enemy. The sensor doesn’t need to be sophisticated and the weapon can be as cheap as a drone-dropped hand-grenade. Lastly our military leaders need to recognise that across the West people aren’t joining up. There are lots of reasons for this Gen Z reluctance: wages, parents and culture among them. It is not as simple as just blaming the ad agency. We need to design equipment in the long term that requires fewer crews. That is not the same as unmanned – it is about sustainability.
There are those who will say, “We would fight the war differently so there is no need to change.” I heard it in my time. There were those during the First World War that said there would always be a place on the battlefield for a thoroughbred horse and that we shouldn’t worry about submarines. History teaches us that the enemy has a say in how we fight.
Ukraine provides those lessons. There is no excuse in this SDR to simply offer to replace new for old and to put force structure above innovation.
Will ministers be brave enough to scrap big ticket items to create the headroom to invest in new equipment? Will they be brave enough to admit that what is happening in the US and Ukraine means we need to change fundamentally, not only with the equipment and allies we choose but also perhaps in our fighting doctrine?
There is, finally, a sense of complacency about Britain’s leading role as a European military power. Poland is very quickly emerging as a leading player and will be joined in short order by Germany. Others too are stepping up. Promising to spend an additional 0.2 per cent of GDP two years early, while trying to tuck into MI6 and GCHQ budgets is not remotely impressive nor honest. No 10 can’t strut across Europe boasting defence leadership and not fund it. To others in Nato, we will start to look like we are “all mouth and no trousers”.
Britain’s military strength is her people. If we trust the new generation of officers and leaders to actually lead the change then I believe we can once again be a leader in Nato. If we leave it to yesterday’s men to fight yesterday’s wars, then we shall betray the citizens were are pledged to protect.
