BRITAIN is ill-equipped to deal with a potential conflict in Europe, the former head of the Army warned today.
In a sobering analysis of current UK military levels, General Lord Richard Dannatt said Ministers must invest more in its land-based military forces.
He was responding to comments by the new head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, warning that soldiers will have to prepare to fight in Europe once again.
Lord Dannatt told GB News the UK now risks being caught unprepared by further Russian aggression in Europe.
“The Army has been the poor cousin, if you will, over the last several years, really, since the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan finished,” he said.
“Now, that’s all well and good, until Mr Putin decides to start a land war in Europe.
“And that brings us up short and you have to ask the question, are we in the UK, have we invested sufficiently in our land forces, in our army that we can play our part in the future security of Europe.
“I’ve spoken twice in the House of Lords over the last two or three weeks to say we need to be increasing our defence spending from 2% to 3% of our GDP.”
“We need to be investing in more armour of both tanks and armoured infantry fighting vehicles. We need more artillery, we need more air defence artillery.
“And frankly, if we’re going to play our part, as a Nato member, and as we’re not in the European Union, but we physically are part of Europe, we must play our part in European security and invest more in our land capability.
“That’s where General Patrick has got a problem, because he wants to make the army as capable as possible but I would submit that he hasn’t got the tools that he needs to do the job at the present moment…
“It’s an age old problem, but we’ve got to keep banging the drum to make sure that this government understands its first duty, which is to protect the people in this country, or by extension the people of Europe.”
He said the Army has no hope of repelling a future invasion of the UK with the number of battle tanks it currently has.
“Look, we’ve got 148 main battle tanks, you’re not going to fight a war and win a war with 148 main battle tanks…
“If we want to be taken seriously, and we want to have the influence that our politicians want us to have…we’ve got to have a greater investment in our land capability and get on with it pretty quickly.
“But also just bear in mind we have been giving Ukraine a lot of our anti tank weapons, the NLAW anti tank weapon, very effective, but we’ve given a huge proportion of our stock away we’ve got to start re-stocking pretty quickly and expand our capability under General Sanders.
“He’s right, this isn’t a message to the government. He’s just saying to the army, we’ve got to be prepared to do our job and let’s make sure we’ve got the tools to do the job with.”
He told GB News: “Well, he’s inherited an army that is 25 to 30% smaller than the one that I handed over to my successor in 2009.
“In those days, we were well over 100,000 and now we’re coming down to somewhere around about 72,000.
“We had a much greater military capability. If you recall back in 2000, and 7, 8, 9, we were fighting two major campaigns in Iraq and in Afghanistan and we would struggle to do that [now].
“But there is nothing wrong with the leadership, the enthusiasm, the determination, the professionalism of the British Army, it is just considerably smaller than it was. ”
Lord Dannatt said a previous review on defence spending envisaged future threats emerging on the other side of the world.
“This is a critical point and myself and others have been raising this point to the Government over recent months. It is not as well equipped as it should be,” he added.
“The integration review as it was called, that was published in March last year, set out our future for this country, security and defence and foreign policy arrangements.
“There was a significant tilt as it was described to the Indo-Pacific with a greater emphasis on our maritime forces, and going along with that with our air forces as well.”
Asked if he thought General Sanders had issued a rallying call, Lord Dannatt said: “He’s looking around at the situation in Europe, the situation between Russia and Ukraine and is making a reasonable deduction that we must be prepared to fight for our independence and our and our freedom just as we’ve had to do in the past.
“Now, that’s not to say that is definitely going to happen, far from it, but what he’s really saying is that we must be prepared in every possible way to fight and this acts as a very strong deterrent to Russia becoming more ambitious and pressing somewhere else along its border.
“If you think back to February 24, before Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine, he was making all kinds of noises about wanting to roll the influence of Nato back, wanting to extend the influence of Russia.
“And by inference, he was talking about pressing, maybe in the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, pushing on Poland and other countries like that.
He added: “Now, that’s not going to happen in the short to medium term for sure, because he’s had a very bloody nose in the fight with Ukraine.
“But while he is still the Russian president he will continue with his mantra of wanting to press and extend Russian influence, and we must be prepared to stop that.
“And the best way that we will stop that is by being well armed, well trained, and having a forward presence to deter him from being expansionist like that again. That’s what General Patrick was talking about.”
