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Allan Mallinson: Our hard-pressed Army must have more manpower to win the war against new enemies
HARRY Truman, that most genuinely homespun of US presidents, put the business of neglecting defence spending succinctly: "If you're not prepared to pay the price of peace, you'd better be prepared to pay the price of war."
And General Sir Richard Dannatt, late of the Green Howards, the regiment of Hedley Verity and tens of thousands of other Yorkshiremen, warned with soldierly directness on becoming Chief of the General Staff in 2006: "I want an Army in five and 10 years' time".
For the Army was, he said, "running hot", the result of more than a
decade's under-funding and continuous operations. Although our troops have since quit Iraq, a memorial service in honour of the 179 British personnel to have died on service during Operation Telic was held at St Paul's Cathedral yesterday, the war in Afghanistan is now making even greater demands: the Army is running even hotter.
Gordon Brown has thrown money from the Treasury contingency reserve at equipment deficiencies, but has failed to tackle the systemic problems of the defence budget, which is still dominated by huge capital programmes whose origins are in the Cold War – such as Eurofighter – or by over-specified projects such as the two fleet aircraft carriers.
Meanwhile, the Army and the less glamorous parts of the RAF such as support helicopters – the people doing the actual fighting – are
squeezed ever more, for the Treasury claws their contingency spending
from the core defence budget in later years.
Which is why, two years ago, despite fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Green Howards, the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire and the Duke of Wellington's Regiment were amalgamated into one large unit called simply the Yorkshire Regiment as part of the cuts which reduced the Army's strength, almost unbelievably, by four infantry battalions.
No wonder General Dannatt feared for the future; concerns that this week saw him emerge as a likely defence minister in any future David Cameron government.
In July this year, the truth could be contained no longer, and the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, announced there would be a strategic review – but after the next election.
Mr Ainsworth is a realist and probably concluded that the job of sorting out the mess after the next election would be one for the Tories. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence is preparing a Green Paper, in Mr Ainsworth's words "a detailed examination of a range of issues including: the lessons learned from our recent operations; the changing character of conflict; the requirements on and aspirations of our Armed Forces".
General Dannatt's successor, General Sir David Richards, now has the job of arguing what should be the size and shape of the Army for the next decade – for the next two decades indeed, such is the lead-time for certain equipment programmes. What might be his conclusions?
As I explain in my new book, The Making of the British Army, the Army has suffered many defeats and setbacks during its long history, although it has always won its last battle (except the one in the American War of Independence), but rarely because it had the wrong equipment.
Almost always it was because it had not enough men, or its commanders misjudged the enemy and therefore adopted the wrong tactics.
As early as 1700, the spy and novelist Daniel Defoe was warning against the wholesale troop cuts after the war with France, arguing that it had taken three years and 30,000 lives to make a new Army – and would do so again. Since the Second World War, the Army has been getting smaller with each year that passes, so that it could now just about be seated in Wembley stadium.
So in giving a lead to the chiefs of staff, first Mr Ainsworth or the Tories have got to decide whether the war with al-Qaida, in all its Protean forms, is a short-term aberration or the defining conflict of the next two decades. If the answer is that it is not an aberration, then manpower is the foremost requirement, not machines.
The priority must be to equip the soldier to protect the civil population from attacks by al-Qaida and its surrogates, and to be able to destroy this enemy without the sort of collateral damage we have seen in the past, rather than manning expensive weapons systems whose purpose is primarily that of waging conventional war on the old inter-
state model.
In short, the Army will have to get bigger: these wars cannot be won except by patience and its military equivalent, endurance.
But what of the threat from regressive states? Was not the Russian invasion of Georgia a warning? This, of course, goes to the heart of the balance of capabilities which the chiefs of staff must strive for. But regressive states do not have to make war in the conventional fashion; indeed, with the stakes so high – not least the presence of nuclear weapons – would future inter-state conflict look so different from that in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least for the troops on the ground?
The admirably clear-minded Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Richmond MP William Hague, has no doubts. "A smart enemy goes unconventional – and most enemies are likely to continue doing so, until we demonstrate the ability to prevail in irregular conflicts such as those we are currently engaged in," he said in a recent speech.
Prevailing in irregular conflicts needs, first and foremost, the highest quality soldiers.
Whereas today, therefore, the Yorkshire Regiment has three regular battalions, perhaps in two or three years' time we shall see six?
To order a copy of The Making of the British Army by Allan Mallinson from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepost
bookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is 2.75.
HARRY Truman, that most genuinely homespun of US presidents, put the business of neglecting defence spending succinctly: "If you're not prepared to pay the price of peace, you'd better be prepared to pay the price of war."
And General Sir Richard Dannatt, late of the Green Howards, the regiment of Hedley Verity and tens of thousands of other Yorkshiremen, warned with soldierly directness on becoming Chief of the General Staff in 2006: "I want an Army in five and 10 years' time".
For the Army was, he said, "running hot", the result of more than a
decade's under-funding and continuous operations. Although our troops have since quit Iraq, a memorial service in honour of the 179 British personnel to have died on service during Operation Telic was held at St Paul's Cathedral yesterday, the war in Afghanistan is now making even greater demands: the Army is running even hotter.
Gordon Brown has thrown money from the Treasury contingency reserve at equipment deficiencies, but has failed to tackle the systemic problems of the defence budget, which is still dominated by huge capital programmes whose origins are in the Cold War – such as Eurofighter – or by over-specified projects such as the two fleet aircraft carriers.
Meanwhile, the Army and the less glamorous parts of the RAF such as support helicopters – the people doing the actual fighting – are
squeezed ever more, for the Treasury claws their contingency spending
from the core defence budget in later years.
Which is why, two years ago, despite fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Green Howards, the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire and the Duke of Wellington's Regiment were amalgamated into one large unit called simply the Yorkshire Regiment as part of the cuts which reduced the Army's strength, almost unbelievably, by four infantry battalions.
No wonder General Dannatt feared for the future; concerns that this week saw him emerge as a likely defence minister in any future David Cameron government.
In July this year, the truth could be contained no longer, and the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, announced there would be a strategic review – but after the next election.
Mr Ainsworth is a realist and probably concluded that the job of sorting out the mess after the next election would be one for the Tories. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence is preparing a Green Paper, in Mr Ainsworth's words "a detailed examination of a range of issues including: the lessons learned from our recent operations; the changing character of conflict; the
requirements on and aspirations of our Armed Forces".
General Dannatt's successor, General Sir David Richards, now has the job of arguing what should be the size and shape of the Army for the next decade – for the next two decades indeed, such is the lead-time for certain equipment programmes. What might be his conclusions?
As I explain in my new book, The Making of the British Army, the Army has suffered many defeats and setbacks during its long history, although it has always won its last battle (except the one in the American War of Independence), but rarely because it had the wrong equipment.
Almost always it was because it had not enough men, or its commanders misjudged the enemy and therefore adopted the wrong tactics.
As early as 1700, the spy and novelist Daniel Defoe was warning against the wholesale troop cuts after the war with France, arguing that it had taken three years and 30,000 lives to make a new Army – and would do so again. Since the Second World War, the Army has been getting smaller with each year that passes, so that it could now just about be seated in Wembley stadium.
So in giving a lead to the chiefs of staff, first Mr Ainsworth or the Tories have got to decide whether the war with al-Qaida, in all its Protean forms, is a short-term aberration or the defining conflict of the next two decades. If the answer is that it is
not an aberration, then manpower is the foremost requirement, not machines.
The priority must be to equip the soldier to protect the civil population from attacks by al-Qaida and its surrogates, and to be able to destroy this enemy without the sort of collateral damage we have seen in the past, rather than manning expensive weapons systems whose purpose is primarily that of waging conventional war on the old inter-
state model.
In short, the Army will have to get bigger: these wars cannot be won except by patience and its military equivalent, endurance.
But what of the threat from regressive states? Was not the
Russian invasion of Georgia a warning? This, of course, goes to the heart of the balance of capabilities which the chiefs of staff must
strive for. But regressive states do not have to make war in the conventional fashion; indeed, with the stakes so high – not least the presence of nuclear weapons – would future inter-state conflict look so different from that in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least for the troops on the ground?
The admirably clear-minded Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Richmond MP William Hague, has no doubts. "A smart enemy goes unconventional – and most enemies are likely to continue doing so, until we demonstrate the ability to prevail in irregular conflicts such as those we are currently engaged in," he said in a recent speech.
Prevailing in irregular conflicts needs, first and foremost, the highest quality soldiers.
Whereas today, therefore, the Yorkshire Regiment has three
regular battalions, perhaps in two or three years' time we shall
see six?
To order a copy of The Making of the British Army by Allan Mallinson from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepost
bookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is 2.75.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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