Why Britain needs a New Model Army now

A powerful report published today by the NewBletchley Network will pile on the pressure for a significant change in British defence effort and funding. Its starting point is asserting a well known but wilfully ignored imperative — that in order to prevent war you need to genuinely prepare for war. In other words, be ready to go to war to achieve your primary aim of avoiding war. The report’s main conclusion is that we need a New Model Army now.

The report is powerful on account of the authority and clout of the panellists who are behind the report. Under its Chair, Lord (George) Robertson, former Nato Secretary General and Defence Secretary, the panel included a former national security adviser, a former defence and army chief, former commanders of Joint Forces Command and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, plus academic, defence media, and defence business representatives.

It is significant that the report is specifically addressed to any post-election Prime Minister and Defence Secretary. The scale of the overall change required is big. All this will only be achieved, the report says, with appropriate top political (PM) level ownership and engagement across government.

Deterrence is based upon credibility. But the problem is that British Army credibility has been weakened by 20-plus years of hollowing out and diminished fighting power. The Army is at its smallest in 150 years. Morale is fragile. Recruiting and retention of sufficient experienced personnel remain persistent challenges. A serious wake up call has come from a senior figure in Nato, who said that the British Army was no longer graded “Tier 1”) (Nato’s “ready to fight now” level).

The report recognises that the New Model Army must focus on being the land component of an integrated/combined/joint/allied 5 domain force (Land, Sea, Air, Cyber, Space), principally within Nato and built around the foundation of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and Joint Expeditionary Force. Within this 5 domain force context, the report outlines two key Army level action priorities.

First, the hollowing out of the regular and reserves ready force has to be reversed. The aim should be to provide the modern equipment, enablers, ammunition, support, and sustainment to regain Nato Tier 1 “ready to fight now” accreditation and to ensure the ability to properly train that force at scale.

Second, the Army really must deliver on putting its people – its centre of gravity and greatest strength — first. This has been a mantra for at least a decade. However, until outcomes match this mantra, it risks reaching a dangerous tipping point. The recent uproar over recent plans to downgrade officer accommodation once again demonstrates that a radical, no holds barred, end to end diagnosis of the people system matched with the contemporary needs of personnel and families is urgently needed.

A profoundly important issue raised in the report is the fast-changing dynamic between rapidly evolving technology, innovation, and agility with mass. We are fortunate that we can factor in NATO/Allied mass and have no need to replicate continental land force design. But as anyone who has been on a battlefield knows, and wars in Ukraine and Middle East once again prove, mass matters. New technologies, including AI, drones, and robots, will be a constantly changing factor. But the relationship between the size of forces and technology needs to be far better understood and articulated, the report says.

Drones may not have replaced the need for mass in Ukraine, but new technology provides a vital opportunity. The New Model Army should be a global pacemaker and, in partnership with government and industry, restore effectiveness at a sustainable price and help drive export-led prosperity.

The report also focuses on the need to recreate the capacity for resilience and mobilisation. It says that we need to move to a “whole of nation” scalable readiness approach.  “Overhauling our reserves, including industrial capacity and in extremis capacity, is at least as important as overhauling the Regular Army”, the report says. Yet successive governments have consistently failed to implement any of the reviews of the Reserves over recent decades. An army ready for war needs a strong regular cadre, but a much bigger, mobilisable reserve of volunteers and former regulars. In 1939, there were four reserves for every regular. Today our much smaller army has two regulars for every volunteer reserve.

There is much else in the report that will attract close attention. It says that we need “war ready” new command and control arrangements, and to realign responsibility, accountability, authority, and budgetary chains. It talks about having to make difficult, sometimes unpopular, decisions if we are to meet the time imperative. Not mentioned in the report, but stand by for consideration of radical proposals such as establishing new positions of Commander Defence Forces and a “whole of nation” Commander Home, with crisis and wartime responsibility for mobilised reserves, critical national infrastructure, and defence industries.

The NewBletchley report concludes with a telling proviso. It says that delivering all this vital change in these “pre-war”, days after decades of decline, will require a Covid vaccines-style task force. Unsaid, but needs saying: will the post-election PM and Defence Secretary put Whitehall’s house in order and tackle its record of blunders and the unhealthy culture which does everything it can to stifle strategic debate and valid discussion? This latter point, if allowed to continue much longer, will constitute a national security risk.

The NewBletchley New Model Army report will be available to read at www.newbletchley.org

Nigel Hall is a former 1* Army officer who twice served in the MOD directorate responsible for Army Size & Shape and Resource Allocation. He is the founder of NewBletchley.

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