MPs: Build up defences to combat Putin threat

Tanks, planes and ships needed

BRITAIN must rebuild defence capabilities abandoned after the Cold War in response to the threat posed by Russia, MPs will warn today.

More aircraft, warships, tanks, elite forces, and missile defence systems are urgently needed to stop a ‘descent into chaos’, the defence select committee will say.

Its damning report will suggest the UK must also train soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological – dirty bomb – attacks, which could be ordered by Vladimir Putin if tensions escalate.

It will say a failure by Britain to maintain the Nato target of spending 2 per cent of national income on defence risks undermining the Western alliance.

But even reaching that level will ‘not be sufficient’, and ‘tough choices within limited resources’ will need to be made about how to protect British shores.

Defence spending is set to fall below the Nato target for the first time next year, to an estimated 1.88 per cent of national income.

On current projections, Britain’s spending on foreign aid will rise above defence within 15 years.

The committee also pointed out that while Russia could deploy 150,000 troops in 72 hours, it would take Nato six months to match it.

Even the alliance’s new Very High Readiness Joint Taskforce – announced at the Nato summit in Wales in September and capable of deploying 5,500 troops in 48 hours – will not be ready until 2016.

In its report, the committee said the world was ‘ more dangerous and unstable’ than at any time since the end of the Cold War. It added: ‘The UK must rebuild its conventional capacities eroded since the Cold War.

‘The requirements include maritime surveillance, nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological warfare training, developing a ballistic missile defence capability, an enhanced Navy and Air Force, a comprehensive carrier strike capability, and full manoeuvre warfare capacity.

‘This will involve demonstrating a conventional and nuclear capacity and determination to deter any further threats to the European order.’

The training is necessary given that Russia retains large quantities of chemical and biological weapons and has announced it is investing heavily in its nuclear capabilities, MPs said.

Tory MP Rory Stewart, chairman of the committee, said: ‘It is vital to rethink the fundamental assumptions of our defence planning, if we are to help arrest the descent into chaos which threatens to spread from the western Mediterranean to the Black Sea.’

The report said the recent appearance of Russian submarines in UK coastal waters had exposed the ‘crucial gap’ in maritime patrol capabilities after the scrapping of the RAF’s £4billion fleet of Nimrod surveillance aircraft in 2010.

This has ‘extremely serious implications’ for the protection of the rest of the Armed Forces, they warned.

The report also raises the question on whether Britain would be better off choosing to specialise in ‘niche’ capabilities, leaving other countries to take on separate areas of defence.

For example, the UK could focus on intelligence services, cyber experts and special forces rather than warships or fighter planes.

‘Dangerous and unstable’