Today, the British ground forces cannot be considered as a first-level combat force. Overall, the British Army will not be able to provide effective protection of its country if necessary. Such theses regarding the British defense capability are expressed by Sky News with reference to British generals.
Among the problems are the lack of ammunition, which would be enough for only several days of the full-scale war, limited opportunities to protect the sky from missile strikes such as those currently being launched by russia on the territory of Ukraine, and rather limited plans to equip the army with modern weapons and military equipment.
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It is noted that Britain must take decisive and urgent actions in order to "launch" the processes of strengthening the army. First of all, to increase financing the defense industry by at least 3 billion pounds per year ($3.6 billion). Although back in 2020, ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson did it, increasing by £16 billion (over $19 billion), it is still not enough for now. However, the Ministry of Finance states that there is no money for defense, despite the understanding of the urgent need to rearm the troops in the conditions of a full-scale war in Ukraine.
The next thing is to suspend the plan to reduce the army. In 2010-2015, the British Armed Forces went from 102,000 servicemen to 82,000. Currently, the active army consists of 76,000 people, and there are plans to reduce it even more, namely to 73,000, because, they say, full-scale combat operations remained in the past.
A separate issue is the country's obligations to NATO: currently Great Britain will not be able to provide as many troops as NATO allies expect from it for the new large-scale structure that the Alliance is creating to strengthen its defense. We are talking about more than 300 thousand soldiers who would be "in a much greater degree of readiness."
At the same time, Britain can field no more than one brigade from 5 to 10 thousand fighters equipped with armored vehicles and helicopters in a short time, when 30 thousand fighters or even more are expected from it. In addition, even this brigade will not have enough equipment, medical supplies and ammunition reserves.
There are also problems in the air force, which does not have the required number of pilots for the fifth generation F-35 fighters, due to the delayed training.
Also in Britain, they insist on the need to soften the requirements for public procurement in peacetime, which hinder the rapid acquisition of weapons and ammunition. As noted, the picture with weapons is rather gloomy, but this is most relevant to the ground forces, which have plans for modernization and equipping with new and modernized equipment, but they are very narrow-specialized and stretched in terms of time.
Speaking about such problems in the defense industry, the article talks about the passivity of the country's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in solving this issue. In particular, it is noted that he has not made any specific promises regarding increasing the defense budget, and 10th Secretary General of NATO Lord George Robertson is seriously concerned that despite the security situation in Europe, the country's government does not realize the full threat posed by russia, and says that today the Prime Minister should act like a wartime Prime Minister.
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