The entire British Army would be devastated in “six months to a year” in a major war – underlining the importance of rebuilding the UK’s reserve forces, a defence minister has said.
Al Carns, the veterans minister, who is also a reservist, said the casualty rate suffered by Russian forces in Ukraine – killed and injured – is around 1,500 soldiers a day.
He said this ability to absorb such losses and keep fighting is part of Russia’s plan and is why Britain needs to rebuild depth when it comes to the layers of fighting forces it has available, highlighting the need for a wider pool of reservists from across society.
“In a war of scale – not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine – our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended – as part of a broader multinational coalition – in six months to a year,” Mr Carns said in a speech at a conference on reserves at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
Military commanders often say that war is started by professional armies but ended by civilians – who take up arms as volunteers and reservists as has happened in Ukraine.
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Mr Carns, a former full-time Royal Marine colonel until he switched his military career for politics this year, noted that Russia would soon be moving onto its third army in Ukraine.
“That doesn’t mean we need a bigger army, but it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis,” Mr Carns said.
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“The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process. Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks.”
Military analyst
72,500, which will soon be the number of troops in the British Army, is a controversial figure.
Because whatever the right number for the army is, that number will not be 72,500.
It is either too big – if we want a minimal force that just deploys one high-tech, low-footprint, light division.
Or it is too small – if we want to deploy one or more divisions that could do multiple things, “heavy metal” and all.
Our NATO partners are fascinated by Britain’s pursuit of a high-tech, transformational army.
But they worry that without broader competence, and above all, staying power, a future British Army might make little real difference to NATO’s collective defence if we really are now in the foothills of a track towards a bigger European war.
And the way to avoid that is to be powerful enough to deter the war we want to prevent.
That will require a British Army that is big enough to make a strategically significant contribution to NATO’s defence somewhere in northern Europe, and act as a hub that smaller countries can fit around with their more limited forces.
We won’t go back to 1990 when the army was 180,000, and included 60,000 in the British Army of the Rhine (the BAOR).
But something upwards of a sustainable, and properly supplied, 100,000 army is probably now required, so that the transformational nature of the 2030s British Army will sit within a basic force that our allies – and our enemies – will take seriously.
The UK has over decades underinvested in its previously much larger reserve forces as limited funding since the end of the Cold War was prioritised towards the full-time army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
It means the reserves are undermanned, do not receive all the training they need and lack equipment, from body armour to weapons and fighting vehicles.
There are also different categories of reservists – those who train weekly as well as what is known as the “strategic reserve”.
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The strategic reserve comprises all former service personnel for a set period after they leave regular service. This previously significant pool of capability – which the country can turn to at a time of war – used to be trained annually during the Cold War with the Ministry of Defence keeping track of who was in the strategic reserve and where they are located.
That training stopped after the Cold War finished. Today, the MoD does not even know who or where everyone in the strategic reserve is located or whether they would return to service in a crisis.
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A push to revitalise the reserves would require a significant increase in investment and a new effort to engage with the wider public to highlight the importance of service.
“There is a requirement across government to remind people that freedom is not free,” Mr Carns said.
He said he hoped a major review of defence – due to be published in the spring – would provide an opportunity to “write a new deal for our reserves”.
“We need to catch up with NATO allies and place greater emphasis on reserves,” Mr Carns said.
“We need to grow our active reserve – trained volunteers to respond at short notice.”
He said it was also important to “understand where our strategic reserve is and indeed grow it”.
