Army ‘can’t keep up with Russia’

Chief of the General Staff warns that more resources are needed to match Moscow on battlefield

BRITAIN is struggling to keep up with Russian military advances, the head of the Army will say today as he makes the case for more funding.

Gen Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the General Staff, will say Vladimir Putin’s aggressive modernisation of Russian forces means the Kremlin already has battlefield abilities that the UK would find it difficult to match, and that we risk falling further behind. He will tell the Royal United Service Institute: “The time to address these threats is now – we cannot afford to sit back.”

Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, is currently involved in an ongoing Cabinet fight with the Treasury to avoid cuts to the Armed Forces. But today’s intervention from Sir Nick makes a strong case for increasing military funding.

It also echoes a recent warning to MPS from a senior former general that cuts had already left the Army 20 years out of date and unable to deal with Russia’s military. Sir Nick will underline the threat from Russian long-range missiles, but Army sources said generals are also worried about Russian dominance in areas including artillery, electronic warfare and cyber skills.

Senior officers say 15 years of fighting low-tech insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by MOD cost cutting, has forced the UK to neglect skills and equipment to counter hi-tech, capable armies. At the same time, rivals including Russia have invested heavily in upgrading and modernising.

Army leaders have emphasised Britain’s inability to defend against modern long-range Russian artillery, which has been used to devastating effect in Ukraine, or against precision missile strikes seen in Syria. Russia’s electronic warfare skills, including allowing forces to jam or lock on to enemy signals, are also feared to have caught up with, or surpassed, those of the West.

Yet generals fear a plan to modernise the British Army, by buying rapidly deployable armoured vehicles for new strike brigades, as well as updating ageing Challenger battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, could be delayed or cut to find savings.

Money for research by defence scientists has also been dramatically cut.

Sir Nick will warn that as Russia has built an increasingly aggressive and expeditionary force, which has been showcased in the Kremlin’s support for Bashar al Assad in Syria and separatists in Eastern Ukraine, it already boasts capabilities that the UK would struggle to match. “Our ability to pre-empt or respond to threats will be eroded if we don’t keep up with our adversaries,” he will say.

He will also warn that as well as its campaigns in Syria and Ukraine, Russia has used war games and exercises to simulate attacks across northern Europe, for example against Lithuania.

Britain must also look closely at how rivals are able to use unconventional campaigns of cyber warfare, disinformation, proxies and subversion to “exploit the seams between peace and war”. Sir Nick will say: “State-based competition is now being employed in more novel and increasingly integrated ways and we must be ready to deal with them. The threats we face are not thousands of miles away but are now on Europe’s doorstep – we have seen how cyber warfare can be both waged on the battlefield and to disrupt normal people’s lives – we in the UK are not immune from that.”

Gen Sir Richard Barrons, who until 2016 led Joint Forces Command, told the Commons defence committee late last year that the Army lacked air defences, unmanned drones and cyber warfare capabilities.

He said it was no longer able to deal with modern battlefield threats, such as the Russian artillery and drones that had destroyed two Ukrainian mechanised infantry battalions in the space of 15 minutes.

The Conservative Party is synonymous with certain values and certain issues: strong defence, law and order, the free market and enterprise. Ignoring or tampering with its reputation on those issues is perilous in the extreme. So it is a matter of deep concern that we report today on a dramatic rise in burglary statistics over the past few years. In that time, breaking into someone’s house – an appalling and terrifying violation – has come to be seen as a crime without sanction. Inevitably, numbers have risen. At a time when the Government is already on the back foot over the release of the serial rapist John Worboys, and a spate of violent attacks, often using acid, the story is particularly damaging.

One would think that the Prime Minister would be determined to address this key issue, reiterating a traditional, no-nonsense, Conservative approach. As a former Home Secretary, she is notably vulnerable to criticism. Instead, she has chosen to express her backing for an interventionist state determined to “play a role” and “rebalance the system” of private enterprise. This may sound blameless, but it adds to suspicion that Mrs May looks out over the nation and perceives a population of victims who need to be rescued from misery by the state doing more, rather than helped to prosper by the state doing less.

The one, true, unquestionable duty of the state is the defence of the realm. Today, the head of the Army, General Sir Nick Carter, delivers a shocking estimation of our capabilities, noting how far and fast they are being outstripped by Russian armed forces that have been the beneficiaries of significant spending recently. Of course, all Armed Forces chiefs make the case for more money: that is part of the job description. But Britain is clearly more underpowered today than it has been for many years. And politically, this military malaise contributes to a sense that the Conservatives are taking their eye off the key questions to focus instead on the concerns of the Left.

The price for doing so could be immense, as a report yesterday costing Labour’s renationalisation plans at £176billion, made clear. So Conservatives must get a grip on core issues and deliver a positive, enabling policy programme. After all, if the country is so unfair, voters may be entitled to ask after more than seven years of Tory rule: “Whose fault is that?” Making people safer and richer is the real route to ballot box success.