January 10, 2025 - 7:00am
The recruitment crisis in the Armed Forces has reached new heights (or rather depths). For whatever our previous difficulties in recruiting adequate numbers of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, Britain has to date at least been able to find someone to be in overall charge of things.
No longer, apparently. General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, a former Royal Marine and the leading candidate, faces questions over his knowledge of alleged summary executions by special forces troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile Admiral Sir Ben Key, the other most obvious candidate, isn’t planning to apply: he’s said he “can’t fix the Navy” given resource constraints and is apparently going to resign next year. The Government is therefore casting about for old hands.
We may thus soon be graced with the absurd sight of General Sir Nick Carter — Britain’s very own Comical Ali, bigging up the heroic Afghan resistance to the Taliban even as it failed to materialise — being called back to service, like Cincinnatus from his plough. More serious than vacuous PR blunders, Carter is also heavily implicated in much of the gross mismanagement of the military in recent decades.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, a former head of the Army, seems a more sensible choice, if only because he’s been very frank about the extremely challenging circumstances facing it. But while such honesty is an essential first step towards finding a solution (and more than some of his peers can manage), it is not enough.
British commanders operate within two hard constraints. The first is that grand strategy (or if that flatters the politicians too much, grand ambitions) is set by the elected government. The second is that so too are the resources assigned to the military to meet those various ambitions.
The core problem is that, as in so many other areas in modern Britain, there is a wide and growing gulf between what the politicians expect the military to be able to do and the means they provide to do it. Decades of steep cuts since the end of the Cold War have not been accompanied by any clear-eyed re-assessment of what role we want the Armed Forces to play.
A nation that spent a 1980s share of GDP on defence could maintain a strong blue-water navy and a capable, albeit expeditionary rather than mass, army. A country spending what we spend today could possibly do one of the two.
But we refused to make the choice, and so now we can do neither. On paper we have an impressive two-carrier navy; in practice, we can’t field an independent carrier group, less than half our ships are operational at any one time, and we’re divesting of critical capabilities such as marine amphibious assault ships.
The Army is in an equally poor state, beset by hiring shortfalls and grossly mismanaged procurement. But its situation is made worse by the changing strategic situation. Traditionally, the UK has operated a relatively small “expeditionary”-style army, capable of global deployment and (relatively) well suited to decisive wars against inferior opponents, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Yet following the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war and Donald Trump’s vocal scepticism of Nato, Europe is having to face the prospect of large-scale conventional warfare between peer militaries — a prospect for which we are neither materially nor psychologically equipped.
Whoever ends up becoming the next Chief of the Defence Staff will have an impossible job, because the most important decision for their tenure has already been taken. The previous government had earmarked around £20 billion in real terms, over six years, to boost defence spending; Rachel Reeves cancelled it.
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SubscribeThe Treasury managerialism view is if it can be imported, then so be it. They are managerialists with models and the tangibles of what they manage and model are irrelevant. The tangible things just happen to be the essentials needed to sustain an industrial society of 70 million people. Steel. Cars. Chemicals. Food. Energy. People. No preference for the development of the nation and citizens it supposedly serves, no strategy to ensure essential capabilities are developed and preserved.
Ukraine has shown the Treasury they can take this approach with defence too. It has been very easy to send a large cheque to Ukraine every month and have someone else worry about the details. And the politicians have noticed too: Ukraine has been able to fight a war heavily endorsed and sponsored by UK leaders but without any blowback at all. The NATO strategic objective of containing Russia met simply by a keyboard and a budget allocation. £20bn more no longer needs to be spent every year to pay for defence we might not need, we can buy defence from someone else when we need it!
It is in this shortsighted context that the gnomes in the Treasury have run the armed forces for decades. Just another financial burden to be managed, minimised wherever possible, without any sense of the long-term ramifications of dead-eyed managerialism. The nation is just an irksome detail in the (blind) eyes of the Treasury managerialists.
I can’t really disagree with any of that, Nell. It seems to be much the same throughout government. It doesn’t surprise me that the Labour Government neglects our defence in order to spend on the NHS, train drivers or minimum wages. What really depresses me is the the Conservatives did too.
All of their statements about more money for defence were just and only that. They never actually did any of it. Not meaningfully.
Ultimately this is probably down to voters’ priorities. We seem to value our butter over our guns. Comfort over safety.
Writing cheques to pay others to fight wars against our strategic enemies is hardly new. It is how Britain did things for a couple of centuries.
It is certainly better to fund Ukraine to eradicate the male population of Russia than have to fight them ourselves.
Of course, we did that with an economy strong enough to pay, and with a navy that could defend our shores and our international trade.
Absolutely true. It’s how we fought most of the Napoleonic Wars. By paying other countries with the large continental armies to do the fighting for us. A step on from the previous model of recruiting mercenaries (a practice still in widespread use in Russia).
We are blessed with abundant coal, oil and gas and are protected from invasion by the seas. And yet we can’t stop illegal immigration or keep the lights on.
The sea no longer protects us from invasion – unless we have the biggest Navy with the best missiles.
That’s my point. We have all these natural advantages but we aren’t using them. We could re-open our coal mines, get fracking and fully exploit our North Sea oil fields. That would allow us to fire up home-grown industry and export energy to foreign countries (what Germany wouldn’t do for a ready supply at the moment!) The revenues could be ploughed into building all the ships, subs and missiles we need to use our seas as protection.
It just requires the right government in power to push it through.
And one without ‘nut zero’ as their priority!
We are being invaded by medieval aliens every day. We don’t need the biggest navy and the best missiles to sort this. Just the will to act and a couple of special boat squadron teams would eliminate the problem inside of a fortnight.
Usually, I agree with you but today I don’t. Arguably, Britain fought war after war after war to maintain some kind of supremacy in the world. Now Britain has lost its oomph. People don’t see themselves as working to achieve some special future; in fact, whatever the governments do, the people will just moan about it. This government versus people battle is really raging now and it shows no sign of abating.
I think that whoever governs from now will not be able to achieve anything which will motivate the populace. There will be more and more woke attitudes as minorities try to outdo each other in specialness, demanding extra funds. Governments will spend all of their energies appeasing minorities and have no energy left for the (older) majority. Only a shock will change things. Which shock would you like to choose? Another, more severe Covid? Missiles landing on Buckingham Palace? Islam becoming dominant?
I do not believe that Economics will solve our problems.
I agree with you. Economics isn’t the underlying problem. More money wouldn’t fix what is wrong with the military any more than it has not fixed the NHS or the willingness of train drivers to put passengers first.
If we were rational we would invest the money in reforming and expanding our police forces whilst radically changing their culture. Not much point in having the ability to project power east of Suez when the machete rules on the streets of our cities.
The first thing to sort out is the defence of these islands from foreign attack. It strikes me that the worst possible thing you could do is have your entire energy supply dependent on windmill fields in the North Sea and the channel which could be destroyed in an afternoon by enemy drones. Defending a few oil rigs, coal mines and fracking sites would be a damn sight easier.
Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm (and others) acts like a giant radar invisibility cloak making protecting the wind farm, and the Suffolk coast, doubly difficult. The MoD has set aside £1bn to try and *mitigate* the impact on its ground based radars but with little success so far. Another cost of green energy that isn’t accounted for in the economics.
I didn’t know that Nell. Complete cluster….!
The weird thing is the down vote. They can literally type this into the device they use to read unHerd and read several publications by HM Government on this issue!
Anybody who has built, maintained or operated radar knows that the blades on a helicopter scatter the radar energy all over the sky. The blades in a wind farm are bound to have a similar effect.
The emasculation of the armed forces in the UK mirrors the emasculation of the British population. Harmful far left woke policies have led to an anaemic military which if challenged would be unable to defend Las Malvinas from the Argentinians. For the monolingual that is the Falklands, many lives were shed in it’s defence and soon it will disappear back to Argentina. Meanwhile in the UK the country is being run by a party that does not believe in sexual difference, the continuance of the British as a people nor the rights of indigenous Britons over that of any Tong, Sadiq or Hari who happens upon one of its beaches in a boat. It is a tragedy, the end of Empire, more so when it’s leaders and it’s military are aware of the imminence of the UK’s destruction.
Just a bit hyperbolic, whilst containing some “home truths”. In reality, the UK is far from “destruction” and there resides a core population who’re finally beginning to stir having seen what happens when they elect “more of the same” whilst the US has signalled the way in which the worm can turn.
Don’t ever give up on us Brits. We’ve been through worse; the core population showed its mettle with the Brexit vote, even if our governments (apart from the last six months of 2019) have failed us.
And the previous 14 years of Tory Right wing rule was not a bigger tragedy?
I note your racial hustle angle. Spent much of my time in the RN in latter years working with shipmates from many different backgrounds all Brits and loyal. You need to get out more.
Please, please stop congratulating yourself. It’s nauseating.
If you think the last Government was ‘right wing’, you’re deluded. When would previous generations of Tories pay people to stay at home and do nothing (furlough)?
Agree 100%. It is about zero degrees centigrade outside and none of my neighbours dares to go out of the house. Nor would they if it was raining. A nation of socially-busy wimps(wusses).
Argentina is an economic and military basket case. What little we have in the South Atlantic is more than enough to meet any current ‘threat’.
The only way Argentina will ever get control is if a UK Government forces the islanders out and hands the islands over like they did with Diego Garcia…..
Good article: thanks! The title of the piece says “leaderless”, but if we look at the Royal Navy, five years ago they had 34 admirals (including vice- and rear-) to supervise 64 ships, but today they have 41 admirals supervising 62 ships. With the MoD employing more than 60,000 civilians, when there are only 180,000 service personnel, defence is nearing that Sir Humphrey situation of the hospital without patients.
Oh, we had those too. They were called Nightingale hospitals.
Don’t forget that a huge amount of the defence budget is spent on defence contractors like BAe, Babcock and QuinetiQ. It goes to their civilian employees and shareholders…….
We all know that both the armed forces and MoD are far too top-heavy (way too many chiefs) and the defence procurement is scandalously inefficient.
As with any unreformed bureaucracy, throwing more money at it is not the real answer.
This is what the absence of actual wars to fight does – organisations become overweight and get distracted by apparently more interesting activities. When the rewards are for making good PR rather than fighting, you’re going to breed PR people and not soldiers.
Top heaviness after a long period of relative peace is a perennial problem in the armed services, but is inevitable in order to avoid an even worse problem: bottom lightness!
To attract recruits of the right calibre they must be assured and incentivised by a reasonable hope of steady promotion over the years. But if the chain of command is too “pyramidal”, it will soon become clear to the lower officer ranks, and ever more so after what modest promotions they manage to obtain, that the vast majority are going nowhere. This in turn will mean that most will resign their commissions, when it would benefit the service, and in fact would have been essential, to keep them.
Good point and also need to remember that while lower ranks can (if people have love for their country and society) be relatively quickly recruited senior ranks take decades of experience. Still 42 Admirals for 62 ships does sound a bit top heavy!
It’s not just Admirals. Count the Commodores, 4 ring Captains and 3 ring commanders as well!
Got to wonder – what do these officers do all day?
The Tories made lots of promises on Defence spending, especially in lead up to the GE, but nothing on how they were going to pay for it. And then a further black hole in the nation’s finances uncovered. One can critique the approach of Reeves in her first 6mths but let’s not kid ourselves her inheritance was anything but a pile of the proverbial.
Now as ex-RN I know I have an inbuilt bias to the Service but £3b a year on maintaining Trident? And potentially Billions more on a replacement for a deterrent we know we can’t use without US approval. Yes perhaps nice to have a fixed seat on UN Security Council but part of the reason UN less and less influence is perhaps bigger players now are not e.g India. I’m not for unilateral nuclear disarmament though and want to keep some capability, but I’ve always had doubts about the veracity of the arguments for Trident.
Slight aside but recommend reading Anna Jacobsen’s best seller in 2024 ‘A Nuclear War’. A little overplayed but certainly thought provoking.
Of course I also have a bias that the Top Brass often been pretty useless and more about fighting for their specific Service than really helping develop a coherent overall strategy. Politicians have to make the key decisions but they have to rely on the advice and options put to them.
Investing billions in conventional war fighting capabilities only makes it more likely we’ll have to fight. Putin (and others) are only going to leave us alone if we make it clear that we’ll go straight to nukes. It’s all a huge distraction from the real issue: the collapse of our civil society due to the abject failure of the current governing class. That’s where the billions need to be spent.
I do have my suspicions HB you are a Russian FSB plant given how many of your comments are exactly what Putin would want. You got investments there or something?
Going straight to Nukes immaturity is why you ought to have a read of the Book I suggested.
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Lol…
Except they aren’t…and likely never were.
I’m also ex-RN. I don’t agree with some of what you have written. The issue isn’t so much with having a nuclear deterrent but with the cost and strain of CASD. CASD was necessary when there was a Soviet Union. It hasn’t been necessary for the past 30 years. No-one is going to make a preemptive nuclear strike. There will be a build-up of tensions. We can easily have a lower pace of training and patrols without having CASD. That simple philosophical change would have a big impact on cist.
Britain needs a military for defence of the UK and assistance with others in its obligations to the UN and NATO…nothing more.
Britain is not a world power despite the political pretensions otherwise.
Therefore a small expeditionary army, and defensive navy with a potent airforce. It doesn’t need Trident which it can’t use without US consent.
Britain should not be involved in the Middle East or Ukraine, from which meddling it derives no benefit whatsoever.
The ‘Cold War premium’ was always a foolish, short-term dream. Did the dreamers really believe the world was rid of all psychopathic autocratic regimes?
I was in the RN when ‘Options for Change’ was published. About that time I was deploying to the Persian Gulf for Operation Granby (Desert Storm). Options for Change should’ve been ripped-up at that point.
Money Money Money
And you ain’t got any of that
Along with the Money Markets most reluctant to Lend to you
A currency of £ Sterling which literally now a Spiv currency upon which to hedge and speculate upon
Tis like a dripping toast to them
Fortunes easily made upon Brexit., Liz Truss and Now Rachel Reeves
Never ending one crisis one after the other
No way out other than terminal decline
No real manufacturing capability
With all the supporting and absolute critical infrastructure gone
A Education system heavily skewed in favour of the Wealthy
And upper Middle Class
Scot’s, Welsh and Northern Ireland
Now having little faith in the UK
Militarily modern weaponry upon Land ,Sea and in the Air and Space has been making Quantum Leaps
With great R & D growing expodentially
All of Which rapidly leaving UK forces more and more behind
Keep going and soon The RN will only have Canoes , The Army Bow and Arrows and the RAF with no more than .40 to 60 first rate Aircraft
Wake up LITTLE England
It’s over for you now
And a high chance that Civil War 2 is the only viable solution to finally
Resolve Where you been , now are
And what you desire to become
As a tiny little insignificant piece of land and a population completely inadequate and Not fit for Purpose
In the fast developing Modern era
Not believe me well Rachel. Reeves
Makes Whoopee upon that She’s signed a Deal.worth over 5 yrs £600 million with China
That equates to £ 27397 / day boost to your economy
Not even enough to Service the Interest on your debt pile for 1 HR
A society fractured along its multicultural fault lines begs the question of what its military defends and who is to defend it. Are the newcomer “victims” of colonial exploitation expected go into harms way for their oppressors? Should the descendants of ancient European heritage be eager to die defending those who fully intend to supplant them? It seems obvious that a society whose values are in such a state of flux must first resolve: what are we asking people to potentially die for?
The question also looms as to how a bankrupt post-industrial nation that cannot afford the social welfare system it expects can also find the enormous resources required for modern defense. None of this can be resolved by tweaking policy or innovating recruitment schemes.
If the choice is between Army and Navy there is only one option. Keeping these islands (and our allies) safe can’t be done without the Senior Service. If the United Kingdom can’t control the North Atlantic in a war it is done for. Funding Ukraine is portrayed as somehow unbecoming of a first rank military nation. It is the best military budget we could spend – British advisors getting a good hard look at our enemies’ capabilities. If the author thinks Russia is a peer nation he is delusional. They can’t even beat a tiny, economically deprived Ukraine. What would happen if they tried to march into Poland? Or Germany? Or France? (to be fair the last one would be easy enough).
Trump was never sceptical about NATO. He just wanted the countries that weren’t paying their dues (we were only one of 2 or 3 that were) to cough up for the defence of their own continent. There wasn’t this european bedwetting in Asia. Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines heard Trump and upped their military/naval budgets which is now standing them in better order to face China (the only potential peer military on earth). The military might of the West which includes Aus, Japan, Turkey, UK, France, Taiwan, Israel all behind the American juggernaut is unstoppable in a conventional war of defence; in attack nothing is going to be better.
Don’t know about France’s army but can’t believe it’s weaker than Germany’s. If only because they have a national pride now that few Germans do.
Defending an island primarily requires a Navy and an air force. Yet the combined strength of the RN and RAF is about the same as the Army. Our defence structure after WW2 was based on facing the threat from the Soviet Union (Warswaw Pact) in a mainly continental war. Half if the Warsaw Pact is now in NATO!
There’s need for a massive ‘reset’ of strategic thinking. We import 50% of our food. We are totally reliant on undersea cables for trade and electrical power….
We in the UK face a similar problem today, albeit one step removed, as King Alfred the Great: It’s little use beefing up the army if your adversaries (in his case Vikings) can come and go at will by sailing round the coast and raiding without warning here there and everywhere, from the shore and even far up rivers. This is why King Alfred founded the first navy worthy of the name.
Fast forward around a thousand years and our problem is analogous: These days a navy without space assets, for both observation and offence, is almost useless, with its ships little more than sitting ducks! Up there in space is where it’s at now, as the Chinese know all too well.
If the great reforming admiral Lord Fisher was around today, I’ve no doubt he would be pressing for a space service, and tweeting furiously to that end (the modern equivalent of writing to the Times, as he often did, under a pseudonym, in campaigning for naval reform)
Misc trivia: Admiral Fisher is the first recorded person to use the acronym OMG to mean “Oh my God” (in a letter to Winston Churchill) 🙂
We already have a UK Space Command. It’s tri-service.
If GB stopped making enemies and ceased it’s silly, slaveisih adherence to US aggression worldwide.. it might have no need of a powerful army? A force sufficient to defend mainland GB would be adequate, surely? ..now the Empire is gone (and NI almost gone)..
you do know the Empire is gone, right? It is, really..
if they don’t find the funds what happens next?
The solution is clear. Smother what little remains of the pretense to imperial grandeur and world importance and resign Britain to being a middle-of-the-pack power dependent on other countries in the same situation to stand up to the Bear and the Dragon. There will be enough soldiers to march in Royal parades and ships to show a flag or two.