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The British army has three years to prepare for war, according to its new chief, as he announced an ambitious reform programme to get the force fighting fit for modern warfare.
General Sir Roly Walker said on Tuesday there was an urgent need to modernise the British army because of the “converging geopolitical threats” of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
“We are not on an inexorable path but what we do have is an absolute urgency to restore credible hard power in order to underwrite deterrence,” Walker said on the sidelines of a British army conference.
He called his reforms “a not-war plan” that would give the UK a military powerful enough to deter adversaries and make them think twice.
Walker said Russia would emerge from the war in Ukraine “very, very dangerous” and seeking revenge, however the conflict might eventually end.
“The lesson from history is the Russians don’t forget, and they will come back . . . wanting retribution for the support that was given to Ukraine,” he told reporters at the event hosted by the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.
Walker, who became head of the British army in June, said the three-year timeline was based on a convergence of factors.
First was Russia’s ability to reconstitute its army, which western officials estimate could take between three and five years following any ceasefire in Ukraine.
The second was that China’s President Xi Jinping has stated he “wants a military option for Taiwan by 2027-28”, Walker said. The third is Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.
“That’s why you get to this middle point of 2027-28,” Walker added. “A problem in one [country] is likely to trigger a sympathetic detonation in another . . . It’s a global problem.”
Walker’s sober assessment of the threats facing western countries comes as the UK’s new government last week launched a review of the British military before committing to increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, from about 2.3 per cent now.
His comments also came after Britain’s defence secretary John Healey told the conference that the state of the UK armed forces was “much worse” than he had thought while in opposition.
Walker said under his reform plans, the British army would aim to double its “lethality” within three years and treble it by 2030.
To do that, he said the UK’s land force had to shed its “big army mindset” and embrace new technologies powered by artificial intelligence-driven software.
Walker said he wanted to create “an internet of military things” that would enable the British army to sense threats from “twice as far [away], decide in half the time, and deliver effects over double the distance with half as many munitions”.
He admitted there were “numerous challenges, which I don’t want to wish away”.
But Walker cited the example of Ukraine’s military, which has repelled far larger Russian forces with the help of western military aid and “smart software that is coming from British coders”.
“This is not science fiction,” he added. “If we can double then triple our fighting power, any British land force will be able to destroy a force at least three times its size and keep on doing that.”
With just 75,000 troops, the UK army is currently its smallest size since the mid-19th century.
But Walker said modern technology and smart ammunition such as drone swarms and precision missiles with multiple warheads meant that size was an incorrect way of measuring an army’s effectiveness.
“Some still believe that raw troop numbers alone determine fighting power. That is out of date,” Walker said. “I don’t need any more troops and I don’t need any more money.”