Army illequipped

Sir, – It is not cuts that have left the army 20 years out of date (November 15).

Throughout the ‘Bush’ Wars (Iraq and Afghanistan, 2001-2014) the army had huge additional funds allocated to it.

The problem is that the army sank this funding into equipping itself to deal with lowtech, discretionary and one-sided insurgencytype conflicts, rather than keeping an eye on the emerging high-end threat posed by Russia (and China).

Our army today is not so much 20 years out of date, as equipped to fight the wrong type of war.

Our armed forces have spent much of the last 20 years launching cruise missile and drone strikes to devastating effect in numerous elective conflicts.

It smacks of an astonishing lack of strategic foresight that our army now lacks the wherewithal to protect itself against such weaponry.

The Russians have learnt well from the submarine-launched cruise missile strikes conducted by the UK and US in recent years, and have now similarly equipped their own submarines with conventionally-armed land attack cruise missiles.

A handful of such submarines positioned off our coastline could devastate our nation’s air defences and key areas of our capital city with little notice (with a high degree of deniability), without having to resort to nuclear weapons.

If the ongoing National Security Capability Review addresses the UK’s inability to defend itself against this type of attack (and the proliferating ballistic missile threat) then it will have served its purpose well.

Dr Mark CampbellRoddis.

1 Pont Crescent, Dunblane.

Our army today is not so much 20 years out of date as equipped to fight the wrong type of war...It smacks of an astonishing lack of strategic foresight