If the UK went into battle today, I doubt we’d survive, warns defence expert FRANCIS TUSA 

The British Army is broken. It doesn’t have the manpower to commit for a year to a mission such as Nato‘s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). The resources, the numbers, the training and the equipment just aren’t there. To cover the gaps, the British Army tries to pretend that a unit can somehow be committed simultaneously to multiple missions. People choose to accept this at Army Command and in Main Building [MoD’s Whitehall headquarters] but the UK’s allies are less convinced.

Since January 1, the Bundeswehr, as the German military is called, has commanded this multinational Nato unit.

But Table.Media, a respected German publication, has reported that Nato had expressed concerns that the UK, which is due to take over command on January 1, 2024, might not be able to do so, and that Nato had informally asked Berlin if it might be able to continue to command the VJTF into 2024 while the UK got its act together.

Is the issue simply budget? Well, this is what Army Command bangs on about. And to an extent, the UK almost took an extra ‘peace dividend’ after the retreat from Afghanistan, and this hit the Army. One small problem about this complaint: over the past decade, Army Command has received more than £15 billion for armoured vehicles, but it has brought no new armoured fighting vehicles into service.

FRANCIS TUSA: The British Army is broken. It doesn’t have the manpower to commit for a year to a mission such as Nato’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) (file image)

The problem is that if the current incapability of the British Army to fight intensive wars is accepted in the Army Command – and that is up for question – little is happening to rectify matters.

Key modernisation projects are still years away from entering service, and with no sign of much in the way of change.

When you have a personal problem, it tends to be your nearest and dearest who tell you that you are going wrong. And believe you me, there are plenty of people – former Army commanders, overseas armies – who are really worried about the state of the British Army. They are trying to nudge the MoD and the Army, politely trying to say that they can see the trouble that the UK is in.

The head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has let slip that the provision of 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine would ‘weaken’ the British Army. Yes: 14 tanks. That is because despite claiming that the UK has more than 200 Challenger 2s, fewer than 50 are useable on a battlefield, so sending a third of even these to Ukraine is, actually, a serious issue.

Artillery? In less than a week, the MoD dialled back its commitment to Kyiv. It started with 30 AS90 self-propelled artillery guns being offered; then it was 24 (which is the strength of a British Army artillery regiment); and then it was eight, with 16 more ‘held at various states of readiness’ elsewhere, not in Ukraine.

The issue? The Army could not put 24 AS90 into operation, despite having close to 100 in stock.

FRANCIS TUSA: If the UK has to commit forces for intensive combat operations, such as those in Ukraine, they would be lacking the equipment, the ammunition and the training to be able to survive

Ammunition stocks? There was so little artillery ammunition in the bunkers that the UK had to go and buy shells on the open market, often at high cost. The UK has its Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup, comprising about 900 personnel) in Estonia, with a handful of AS90 artillery guns. So bad is the ammunition issue that ‘war stocks’ of shells, which would be needed if Russian forces were to come over the border, were not sent to Estonia but kept in the UK. There were too few to deploy.

France has spent about the same on its Army as the UK, and has brought a whole new artillery system into service, hundreds of armoured fighting vehicles, upgraded tanks – you name it.

Poland has an economy less than half the size of the UK, yet at the start of 2023, Warsaw announced that it was setting up a fifth armoured division. Last month the Defence Secretary admitted that the British Army cannot deploy a single recognisable, war-fighting division. But Poland can offer four. All on a budget a fraction of that which the UK spends on its Army.

The current state of the Army is so parlous that if the UK has to commit forces for intensive combat operations, such as those in Ukraine, they would be lacking the equipment, the ammunition and the training to be able to survive.