Category Archives: Military

Britain, Military, Russia, Ukraine, United States

A daring strike. Reason why we must keep sending arms

UKRAINE-RUSSIA

THE surprise factor has always been critical in war. And once again, Ukraine has displayed it with audaciousness – just as the country did when fighting back so valiantly against the world’s second biggest military power 30 months ago after Vladimir Putin tried to crush their country with his invasion.

Kyiv’s troops have made a lightning-fast thrust into the Kursk region of Russia with tank and mechanised units that no one anticipated – especially not the Kremlin.

It was clearly well prepared and planned, with cyber attacks stifling Russian communications and drones, aided by substantial artillery firepower. These are regular Ukrainian military forces – not the militia involved in previous incursions.

Russian convoys hastily transferring troops to the region after the initial raid seem to have been hit hard by Ukraine. Minefields were laid to protect the attack force. Social media suggests more Ukrainian tanks and troops are going in, plus significant captures of enemy soldiers.

It is difficult to determine precise numbers of the troops involved, let alone the aims of this daring strike that has taken them possibly 20 miles over the border. Whatever the case, it all shows an impressive level of operational planning and diligence.

It also bears similarities in style to the rapid advance by Ukraine two years ago that recaptured big chunks of the Kharkiv region. That was led by General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who has since been promoted to overall commander of Ukraine’s armed forces.

To take the fight into Russia with the first invasion of its terrain since 1941 is a bold and risky move. And it seems Western allies were left as surprised as the Kremlin when it was launched from Ukraine’s Sumy region.

Putin, the architect of so many bloodstained atrocities in this hideous war, has been silent so far. His aides are appealing to the United Nations for support, and bleat pathetically about “large-scale provocation”, and seemingly are threatening a “tough response”.

Only time will tell if this was a brave and foolhardy move by Ukraine – or a smart move that will force Moscow to shift forces from other parts of the frontline, thereby aiding Kyiv’s defence of its terrain while raising much needed morale among citizens and Western allies.

The attack certainly demolishes any suggestions that the war was settling into a stalemate, with Russia’s remorseless military steamroller making grinding gains in eastern Ukraine despite massive causalities.

Kyiv has demonstrated its military capabilities again when sufficiently equipped with modern weapons – just as it has in its remarkable defeat of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, where it used drones and missiles to sink or damage at least one third of the ships, forcing the rest to retreat from Crimea. This has frustrated Moscow’s ability to bomb Ukraine from warships.

In this latest operation, Ukraine has hit two airbases used to launch the glide bombs that are causing horrific carnage among Ukrainian civilians and soldiers with massive blasts.

The sluggish Russian response shows (again) the failings of a top-down, Soviet-style command structure under a power-crazed dictator. Moscow’s propaganda has been reduced to showing footage of “successful” strikes repelling Ukraine in Kursk – footage that was in reality filmed elsewhere.

We do not know if Ukraine intends to press on or try to hold this captured terrain for trading in future negotiations for its own stolen lands – or to retreat having shaken the enemy, rattled the Russian regime, and forced it to place more security and troops all along the border regions.

Military strategists are, however, right to point out that Moscow has held a big advantage in this war until now because it has not needed to commit military resources to defend its border – that’s an amazing thing during any war.

This advantage was down to the West’s ridiculous determination from the start to restrain Ukrainian efforts to fight back inside Russia. Washington even complained to Kyiv about attacks on fuel dumps supplying the Kremlin’s military machine.

The West’s pathetic fear of escalation, stoked ceaselessly by Russian threats of nuclear war, has been a powerful weapon for Putin because it has limited military aid for Kyiv and severely shackled Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

Now, though, Kyiv has dramatically challenged this stance and shown the absurdities of such timidity in this epochal confrontation between dictatorship and democracy. It feeds into the dictum expressed by Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who said: “Enemy blows must be returned in war”.

. 14 August 2024

A sign negotiated peace is edging closer

IN the last few weeks, Kyiv had been signalling it was open to peace talks with Moscow. This was not an attempt to surrender, but to arrange a settlement that preserves Ukraine’s independence and by recovering as much ground as possible.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, had even gone to see Vladimir Putin’s allies in Beijing to sound out whether China would act as an intermediary.

If Putin took Zelensky’s willingness to talk as a sign that his resolve to fight was weakening, he surely suffered the greatest shock of his presidency in the early hours of August 6.

A week ago, an elite Ukrainian unit stormed the border and its forces have since seized some 400 square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk region.

It appears that the Ukrainians have adopted the great Soviet art of “maskirovka” – deception in warfare – and taught the Russian tyrant a lesson in over-confidence.

The claim that Kyiv’s allies were caught by surprise is disquieting. The presence of NATO advisers and technicians helping the Ukrainians deploy Western weaponry – including F16 fighters, French and British cruise missiles, and German armoured vehicles – must have been seen along with the preparations being made for the sudden offensive. The West is treading carefully, mindful of the cost the war is extracting from its taxpayers. Its leaders are more than happy to see Putin embarrassed by Ukraine’s surprise attack, but they’ve kept the triumphalist rhetoric to a minimum (for fear of burning bridges with the Kremlin were it to open talks on a ceasefire).

Through its successful invasion into Russian territory, Ukraine has dramatically gained more leverage for any impending talks. Zelensky now has the basis for bargaining Russian land not only for peace but also for the return of areas of the Donbas overrun by the enemy.

Seen in that light, this act of aggression is not an escalation of the war but a signal that a negotiated settlement might be edging closer. It will be tempting for Zelensky to push further. With new American F16s at his disposal, Russian targets in the Black Sea will be vulnerable.

Potential propaganda coups like destroying the bridge linking Russia to Crimea, or by targeting Putin’s palace near Sochi on the coast, could be strategic options. Such gains, however, could also be counter-productive, for they would enrage and infuriate Putin so much that any prospect of a peace deal would be dead in the water.

The important point is that being good at war is not just about fighting well.

As the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz argued after fighting with the Russian army against Napoleon in 1812, the ultimate purpose of war is to achieve a political objective.

Political and military leaders have to keep their eyes on the great prize of attaining that ultimate goal – whether they call it victory or peace – rather than just tactical victories on the battlefield.

The choice of invading Kursk was hugely symbolic given the emotional resonance the region holds over Russians.

On the very same terrain in 1943, the heroic Red Army routed the retreating Nazis in the biggest tank battle ever seen. That involved some 6,000 tanks and almost two million troops. The Battle of Kursk became a decisive turning point in the defeat of Hitler in the east.

The ill-fated submarine that was named in its honour has also imprinted itself on the Russian psyche. In August 2000, just eight months after Putin won his inaugural presidency, the nuclear-powered K-141 Kursk sank in the Barents Sea, taking with it all 118 souls on board.

Therefore the invasion of Kursk in particular, the first foreign incursion into Russia since the Second World War, will have hurt Putin.

That war ended in total victory; this one will end with a messy compromise.

Diplomacy is an unseemly business best kept secret from squeamish publics. A lot can go wrong, even with diplomacy behind the scenes. Trust is in short supply to put it mildly. Yet, there is now a glimmer of hope that Ukraine can get to hold its essential territory and rebuild its society and economy.

Standard
Britain, Defence, Government, Military, Politics, Society

Defence spends millions on woke policies

BRITAIN

Intro: The Ministry of Defence’s “diversity networks”, some 93 in total, are rightly coming under attack

COLONEL Tim Collins OBE, the former Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, wrote publicly this week and rightly attacked the multitude of woke policies that have been implemented by the Ministry of Defence in Britain.

Of all the ceremonies that bind the British people to their past, he says, none is more emotive than Remembrance Sunday.

Powerful and enduring, it pays tribute to the millions of ordinary people who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Some on the Left of politics, who fail to understand that our Armed Forces protect us all, have long sought to do away with this annual and time-honoured communion with the nation’s fallen and the poppies that symbolise our attachment to it. For them, the ceremony is seen as a jingoistic sham.

Not surprisingly, and with thankful regard, our men and women in uniform still enjoy widespread support, so any such move by the Left has always been impossible to implement.

Now, however, there is a new attempt to undermine the central role of the military – and, shockingly, it has come from within our Armed Forces.

According to a British Army document that has come to light, entitled “Policy, Guidance and Instructions on Inclusive Behaviours”, soldiers have been ordered to avoid “religious elements” in Remembrance Day services. The document states, “Acts of Remembrance should be agnostic.” Unorthodox and bizarre to say the least.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, recently appointed to Defence, who is Jewish, is said to be “furious”. It has been reported that he is not offended one bit by Christian remembrance services and believes it’s at the core of our nation’s history and who we are.

Mr Shapps is right, of course, to appreciate the central importance of Remembrance Day, but it is by no means the only target the woke warriors have in their sights.

The current fad for “diversity” and “inclusion” is one of the most effective weapons in the hands of those who would seek to undermine our military.

This week, it emerged that defence spending on personnel devoted to these causes has doubled to nearly £2 million over the past five years.

These modern virtues – which may have their own merits in certain settings – have an emphasis which is actively inhibiting the Armed Forces from recruiting the very people who have traditionally filled its ranks: white males.

The phenomenon first came to light in 2022 when it was revealed that the RAF’s head of recruitment had quit in protest at what was deemed to be an “unlawful” order to put female and ethic minority candidates onto training courses ahead of white men.

The top brass evidently felt that it was more important to increase the percentage of Air Force personnel who were women or from non-white backgrounds than to select the candidates best suited to carry out their duties.

Currently, white male servicemen are increasingly being made to feel deeply unwelcome by being drilled in “unconscious bias” on courses which convey the unspoken message that they are inherently racist, sexist, and homophobic.

Sure, nobody wants any of our Armed Forces personnel to be sexists, racists, or bigots. But when national security is at stake, pandering to the woke brigade should not be the priority.

To his credit, Shapps has again bemoaned this practice – seen in all three services – as an attempted takeover by activists with “a political agenda”.

The Defence Secretary has held crisis talks with military chiefs to address the “extremist culture” that promotes diversity and inclusion at the expense of national security.

And, perversely, there is already evidence that this approach is having a damaging and entirely counterproductive effect on recruitment.

Despite the fact the Army has been cut from 100,000 soldiers in 2010 to a planned complement of 73,000 today, it is troubling that it has been unable to find enough recruits to meet even this diminished total.

Worse still, so many of our service personnel are not fit for duty because of injury or other issues that the overall muster at any one time is little more than 50 per cent of the desired figure. This means that we no longer have an Army capable of protecting the nation.

The same is also true of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. The £3 billion aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales has finally departed for a major NATO exercise this week, but only after an embarrassing last-minute delay. Its sister ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is still in port with a broken propeller shaft.

The UK is also decommissioning ships, even ones recently refurbished at great expense, because too many servicemen and women are leaving. Scandalous, yes. But more than that, it is dangerous.

If the primary role of the military is to provide an inclusive experience for people of different genders and religious persuasions, then it neglects its duty of care to the nation.

If it devotes more energy like this by ensuring soldiers, sailors, and airmen/women, feel more comfortable about expressing their sexuality than defending our shores, it is simply not fit for purpose.

The MoD’s 93 diversity networks, includes seven concerned with LGBT issues, 14 with race, and ten with gender. What will these avail us in the event of a deadly attack? Easy answer. Not a jot.

Tolerance is one of the great strengths of British society – and, of course, like Colonel Collins, many of us will be proud that women, gay people, and people from ethnic minorities, serve their country in uniform.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other despotisms are all intolerant. But this great British value must not be used against us.

In an effort to increase ethnic minority representation in its officer corps, last March the British Army issued a “Race Action Plan”.

The ends may have been reasonable, but the means were not. The document advocated reducing the level of vetting for officers from Commonwealth countries.

Security-clearance vetting, it claimed, was “the primary barrier to non-UK personnel gaining a commission in the Army”. Military rigour has therefore been forced to give way.

Colonel Collins has first-hand experience of where that can lead. In March 2003, at the start of the Iraq invasion, he was with his men in Kuwait.

A series of explosions shook the air, as an Islamist renegade soldier in the U.S. 101st Airborne Division threw four hand grenades into tents where his comrades were sleeping, and then opened fire with a rifle. Two men were killed, and 14 others seriously injured.

Traitors within the ranks who evade security checks are an ever-present danger.

In the last few days in Mogadishu, Somalia, four soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, and one from Bahrain, were killed – murdered by the very recruits whom they were training to protect civilians from terrorist attacks.

How had members of the Al-Shabab terror group managed to infiltrate the camp? Because the level of security checks had been reduced – exactly what is being proposed for our own Armed Forces. Inclusivity should never trump commonsense.

Overwhelmingly, the young people who are eager to enlist and serve in His Majesty’s forces are white and male. Some will be from backgrounds where a life in the Forces is a family tradition.

Others have grown up in an education system that penalises them for being white, male, and working-class. They want the chance and opportunity of adventure, comradeship, and travel.

Britain needs these men. If we reject them because they fail to fit the military’s vision of inclusion and diversity, we will soon have no protection against our enemies.

Standard
Britain, Defence, Government, Military, Politics

The British defence budget is recklessly squandered

BRITAIN

Intro: At over £50bn a year, Britain is the sixth biggest defence spender in the world. But something has gone terribly wrong. Our Armed Forces are badly equipped and humiliatingly hollowed out. Incompetence and reckless squandering at the Ministry of Defence is largely to blame

THIS year alone, Britain will spend more than £50 billion on its military. This makes us the sixth-largest defence spender on the planet, and the biggest in Europe. That’s still not enough in these increasingly dangerous and perilous times, with wars, hostile dictatorships, and security threats on all fronts. For once, there is now a welcome consensus on the mainstream Right and Left in British politics that we need to spend more.

Yet, even those most enthusiastic about bigger defence budgets, are troubled by a vexing and nagging question: where do the billions we currently spend on defence actually go?

On the face of it, we don’t seem to be getting much for the billions spent.

After all, despite being a big spender on defence, Britain somehow has a navy – which once laid claim to rule the waves – with fewer frigates and destroyers than its French, Japanese, or South Korean counterparts.

The British Army, which is now the smallest it’s been since Napoleonic times, is about to get smaller still. It is apparent that it would currently struggle to deploy one fully equipped armoured division.

The RAF, meanwhile, which thirty years ago could proudly boast of 31 fast-jet squadrons, can now muster only seven.

Underpinning our weakness is that all three services are crippled by serious shortages of skilled manpower.

The United States, our most important ally, regards Britain as a declining military power with limited resources that are spread too thin. That’s a view that is shared by many of our other NATO allies. They fear our forces are now so small that they would lack “critical mass” in any major military confrontation.

A recent report by the House of Commons defence select committee concluded that our military is “hollowed out”, and seriously “overstretched”. Not a healthy state of affairs for £50 billion a year.

So, what are we actually getting for that money? Quite clearly, the answer is not nearly enough.

Any competent auditor would quickly point to the waste, incompetence, mismanagement, stupidity, and reckless squandering of our money by those at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) responsible for the procurement and servicing of the military equipment and weapons systems our forces need to defend us and project British power.

On just about every major defence project, the MoD’s default operating stance is to deliver late (sometimes very late) and over budget (often way over budget).

There’s nothing new about this. This is how defence in Britain has been conducted for decades: Never on time, always above budget. Despite bromides that “lessons have been learned”, nothing ever seems to change. The Department is populated by congenitally slow learners – if they ever do indeed learn about anything.

The culprits never face any penalties for their staggering incompetence or extravagance. Nobody is ever demoted, disciplined, humiliated, much less fired. It’s just on to the next disaster or through the revolving door to a lucrative job in the private sector with a defence contractor who’s no doubt been complicit in some botched programme. The whole farrago is a public-private sector cosy club funded by the taxpayer.

TWO

THREE YEARS AGO, the National Audit Office reviewed 20 defence projects costing a combined total of £120billion. In nine of them, costs rose substantially between the moment the initial case was made for them and the decision was taken to proceed – in other words, before they even got off the ground.

Thirteen of them showed cumulative delays of 254 months between contract signing and entering service. The longest delay was for the A400M transport aircraft – 79 months late.

A litany of recent disasters stretches as far as the horizon and beyond. Where do we start?

Let’s begin with something very visible, the Royal Navy’s pride and joy, its two massive new aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth II and HMS Prince of Wales. Pride and joy? They’ve become a national embarrassment.

Costing £3.5 billion each (excluding the expensive aircraft to be deployed on their decks), naturally they were delivered late and over budget. Both ships have been bedevilled by problems, mostly to do with their propulsion systems. The Prince of Wales has spent more time during its short-commissioned life in repair docks than it has on the high seas.

The Queen Elizabeth did make it out into the North Atlantic and the seas off Norway last autumn as part of a NATO Carrier Strike Group. Though it has capacity for 36 F-35B fighter jump jets, it was only able to carry eight, minimising the lethal force it was designed for. But it was better than the year before, when more often than not it went to sea with no fighter jets at all.

Going to sea, with or without jets, is currently not an option. The Queen Elizabeth was earmarked to lead the maritime arm of Steadfast Defender, one of NATO’s biggest ever exercises involving 40 allies. The aircraft carrier has been unable to leave Portsmouth because of propeller shaft issues, the same issues which took the Prince of Wales out of service 18 months ago.

The autumn of 2023 was not the Royal Navy’s finest hour. All five of its nuclear-powered Astute class attack submarines were docked awaiting essential repairs, as was its Trafalgar class submarine.

With all six out of action the Kremlin was basically given the freedom of the North Atlantic. Two new Astute class submarines are on their way. But not before 2026, late of course.

Sometimes matters descend into farce. Two Royal Navy minesweepers managed to bump into each other while in port in Bahrain, making them inoperable to continue doing the vital work of keeping the sea lanes in the Gulf, through which much of the world’s oil moves, open and safe.

You’ll see now why many of our allies sometimes despair.

Yet, perhaps most significant of all in terms of naval waste and inefficiency, was the recent experience of Vanguard, one of our four nuclear-armed submarines, the very core of our independent nuclear deterrent. It was taken out of service for a major refit. It took 89 months, longer than the 83 months it took to build her, at a cost of £500 million.

All four of our nuclear-armed submarines will eventually be replaced by a new class of Dreadnought. These are already subject to delay and huge cost overruns – up by an incredible 62 per cent in just one year. A third of the MoD’s £306 billion budget for its Equipment Plan over the next 10 years will go on the future nuclear deterrent. That starves our conventional forces of much needed investment.

It is probably right Britain remains a nuclear power, but it cannot do so at the cost of undermining our non-nuclear capabilities. We boast politically of spending over 2 per cent of GDP on defence, among the highest in NATO. But exclude nuclear spending and it equates to about 1.75 per cent.

When it comes to delays, cost overruns, and squandering of scarce resources, the British Army takes Olympic gold. The forlorn and sorry story of Ajax, its troubled armoured vehicle project, is emblematic of all that is wrong with British defence – and indicative of why it goes wrong.

Ajax was meant to be an off-the-shelf replacement for the ageing Warrior armoured vehicle, based on an existing Austrian-Spanish model, and to be in service by 2018.

But defence chiefs and the MoD added 1,200 additional requirements, including a unique 40mm gun placement, during its development. It has become a bespoke project.

As a result, after 12 years and more than £3 billion spent of a £5.5 billion project, led by the UK arm of General Dynamics, a US defence conglomerate, not a single Ajax is yet fit to be deployed. And none is likely to be ready for at least a couple of years yet.

True, some have been handed over for training. But the noise and vibration inside these vehicles was so bad that crews manning them suffered various ailments, including hearing impairment. None have been declared fit for the battlefield.

The grim saga and debacle of Ajax is revealed in all its gory detail in a devastating and damning 172-page investigation entitled “Lessons Learned”, which is optimistic since lessons are never learned when it comes to defence procurement.

THREE

With China and Russia currently developing hypersonic missiles which can travel at speeds of 6,500 mph, we need to work with our allies to develop the technology to stop them. But it hardly builds confidence in our ability to do so when we can’t even get an armoured vehicle right.

The lessons are transparently clear. It is the propensity of the British top brass, with the MoD’s complicity, to want everything gold-plated, customised precisely to their needs. That is the root of the problem.

In its constant fiddling with the specifications, or by insisting that because “the Americans have it, so must we”, costs are pushed up and delays are inevitable. All kit has to be high-end – and then they complain when we can’t afford enough of it.

Our friends in Poland are in the midst of a massive rearmament programme following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is buying hundreds of tanks and fighter jets “off-the-shelf”, mainly from South Korea.

Poland will soon have the most formidable land forces in Europe, having acquired over a thousand new tanks and 600 artillery pieces. Britain is upgrading its Challenger tank but at such expense we can only afford 148 of them and they will be delivered from 2027. The numbers were cut because the cost rose by 60 per cent. A familiar story of British defence procurement.

In similar fashion, Poland will soon have 1,000 new fighter jets. Britain have ordered only 48 F-35Bs. They are hugely sophisticated, state-of-the-art jets. But they are also very expensive and 48 isn’t even enough to give our two aircraft carriers a full complement of fighters.

More will no doubt be ordered, slowly, in the years ahead. But it is these sort of measly numbers which make US generals wonder if, even as a small military, we are any longer a top fighting force.

For the foreseeable future, our carriers will depend on F-35s provided by the US Marine Corps.

In the past two decades there have been five attempts to reform defence procurement. On each attempt, it has been nothing more than a rearranging of the deck chairs, and none made a demonstratable difference. Radical action is needed.

FOUR

THE largely useless Defence Equipment and Support Unit within the MoD should be scrapped and replaced with a new powerful Procurement Agency, one which operates at arms’ length from the MoD (which should lose power over procurement) and run by people – professional project managers – whose careers, positions, and level of remuneration, would depend entirely on overseeing projects that are delivered on time and on budget.

There really isn’t any time to waste. In 2021, the UK Government decided to reduce some of our military capabilities, including the early retirement of Typhoon fighter jets (so they could be cannibalised for spare parts), phasing out the C-130 heavy lift aircraft, and inexplicably cutting the number of new early warning aircraft from five to three – even though they are an integral and vital part of any deployment in a war zone. That’s difficult to understand given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the growing threats across the globe.

Britain needs to do better than this. It needs to rapidly increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP. But only if that is accompanied by the radical reform of our pitifully poor procurements processes.

Political parties need to have a clear plan about how to do this in these perilous and dangerous times. It is a serious matter.

Standard