Category Archives: National Security

Britain, Defence, Military, National Security

Recce-Strike: A new concept in warfare

DEFENCE

Colonel de Bretton-Gordon who commanded the 1st Royal Tank Regiment has written on the new concept of warfare known as “Recce-Strike”.

The former commander, and now a writer and author, says the British Army has finally planted its flag in the ground over the future of land warfare, embracing the Recce-Strike doctrine laid out in the Ministry of Defence’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR).

In many respects, this is being seen as one of the most important conceptual shifts in British military thinking since the end of the Cold War. Crucially, it recognises the brutal realities of modern combat, witnessed daily on the battlefields of Ukraine, where drones, sensors, and rapid precision strikes have fundamentally changed warfare.

Defence has judged that future lethality will come roughly 80pc from drones and autonomous systems, and just 20pc from traditional armoured platforms and artillery. The Colonel says this is both bold and correct. The evidence from Ukraine, he says, is overwhelming. The side that can find, identify, and destroy targets fastest is the side that survives. The Ukrainians, despite chronic shortages in ammunition and equipment, have become masters of this new form of warfare and remain streets ahead of most NATO armies in understanding its practical application.

Had Ukraine received the military support it requested earlier and in greater quantity, there is little doubt that Putin would now be in a far weaker position and considerably more enthusiastic about genuine peace negotiations. That lesson should not be lost on Britain. Defence cannot once again become the sacrificial lamb of domestic political turmoil. At a time when global instability is increasing, any government distracted by internal political warfare risks placing the defence of the realm in jeopardy.

Recce-Strike itself is deceptively simple in concept but revolutionary in execution. It integrates surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike assets into a single digital ecosystem capable of identifying and destroying enemy targets within minutes, sometimes seconds. The aim is to collapse the traditional “kill chain” through the use of AI-assisted targeting, drones, sensors, electronic warfare, and long-range precision firing.

The concept comprises three principal components. First, rapid targeting, drastically reducing the time between detection and destruction through AI-enabled decision making. Second, persistent battlefield surveillance using drones, sensors and electronic warfare to create a comprehensive picture of the battlespace. This is precisely where the much-maligned Ajax reconnaissance vehicle becomes absolutely critical. Critics have spent years deriding Ajax, but they fundamentally misunderstand its role. It is not merely a reconnaissance platform; it is the digital nerve centre of the future battlefield. Third comes long-range firing, combining intelligence and precision strike through artillery, missiles, and loitering munitions to hit enemy formations deep behind the front line.

The announcement that Britain will acquire 72 new self-propelled 155mm howitzers is highly significant. Mounted on the Boxer chassis, the RCH 155 represents exactly the sort of long-range precision capability Britain desperately needs. The systems will be manufactured in the United Kingdom under a contract valued at just under £1bn, strategically vital at a time when sovereign industrial resilience matters more than ever. The remotely or manually operated howitzer can fire eight rounds per minute at targets up to 70 kilometres away and can even operate unmanned when required.

Together with Ajax and Challenger 3, Britain is beginning to assemble the foundations of a genuinely modern, digitally integrated land force. Challenger 3, in particular, will be the Army’s first truly digital main battle tank and a formidable asset if fielded correctly. Combined, these systems could provide the British Army with a highly credible Recce-Strike capability suitable for surviving and winning on tomorrow’s battlefield.

However, time is not our side. The current ambition to have these capabilities fully operational by the end of the decade may simply be too slow given the pace of global instability and military innovation. There is no doubt that integrating Ajax, RCH 155, and Challenger 3 into a coherent fighting force presents enormous challengers in training, logistics, and doctrine. Nonetheless, these are solvable problems, provided the Treasury delivers sustained funding and political leaders maintain focus.

That, ultimately, is the key issue. Defence requires long-term national resolve, not short-term political calculation. The danger is that political chaos in Westminster, and any further lurch to the Left should Sir Keir Starmer lose his grip on Labour, could once again see defence spending sacrificed in favour of ever-expanding socialist commitments.

Today, Russia remains aggressive, China increasingly assertive, and conflict in the Middle East continues to destabilise the international order. Against such a backdrop, weakening defence spending would not simply be irresponsible. It would be reckless.

Without national security, every area of public spending is meaningless. If Britain cannot defend itself, debates over welfare and health budgets rapidly become academic. History repeatedly teaches us that freedom, prosperity, and stability are only preserved when nations possess the will and the capability to defend them.

– Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s next book ‘Tank Command’, to be released on June 4, is published by Headline, 320pp

His previous memoir, Chemical Warrior, was published in 2021. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a world-leading expert on chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons

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Defence, National Security, Nuclear Weapons

Fears of a more dangerous Cold War

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Intro: As weapons limits expire, the scene is set for a new nuclear arms race between the US and Beijing

Around midday on October 30, 1961, a Soviet plane flying above the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created.

The USSR’s “emperor bomb” was 3,000-times more powerful than the US atomic attack that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima two decades earlier. On explosion, it unleashed a six-mile-wide fireball and a mushroom cloud that loomed more than 40 miles into the sky. And the Soviets were testing it at only half of its designed capacity.

Since then, decades of negotiations and arms-control treaties have massively reduced American and Russian warhead arsenals, with neither side testing a nuclear bomb in more than three decades.

But the last of these bilateral agreements has expired – and, with it, hopes that the nuclear arms race had been consigned to the history books.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which capped the number of deployed nuclear warheads held by the US and Russia, has now come to an end.

It is the first time since the 1970s that the two powers have had no agreement in place without at least negotiations for a new treaty under way.

At a time of huge geopolitical upheaval, analysts and diplomats are concerned that the stage is set for a new nuclear arms race – one that could prove even more dangerous than the world has seen before.

This is because the competition will not just be confined to Russia and the US.

China has also been developing nuclear weapons at a startling trajectory. It has more than doubled its stockpile of warheads over the last six years.

A three-way race will be hugely destabilising for the world order. If America tries to build an arsenal large enough to deter its twin foes at once, it will spur an even more dramatic increase in their respective stockpiles.

The director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says that although this is the end of an era, it is not the end of arms control “but it is definitely the end of arms control as we know it.”

Smaller nuclear powers such as Britain and France will also face pressure to bulk up, particularly at a time when US security guarantees feel less reliable. And there will likely be a proliferation of new nuclear states.

Donald Trump has insisted for decades that he wants denuclearisation. But he seems to have no strategy in delivering this. His plans to build a new missile defence system – which he refers to as the “Golden Dome” – are only fanning the flames.

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Denmark, Europe, European Union, Government, Greenland, History, National Security, NATO, Politics, United States

Solutions emerge that could solve the Greenland crisis

GREENLAND

Intro: Turning disused military facilities on Greenland into “sovereign” US bases would hand Donald Trump a territorial prize without him launching a full-scale invasion

High above the Arctic Circle, surrounded by Greenland’s frozen wastes, American scientists conducting a secret research project hit upon a brilliant and remarkable idea.

Suppose nuclear missiles could be hidden inside the polar ice cap? These instruments of Armageddon might be able to survive a Soviet strike and then wreak terrible revenge. Alas, the US military had to abandon this dream after finding that constantly shifting ice fields were never going to provide safe shelter for missile silos.

But the location of this scheme in the 1960s – a once-secret “city under the ice” known as Camp Century – may hold the key to resolving a diplomatic impasse that European governments never believed they would have to contend with. Namely, the prospect of America seizing Greenland from Denmark.

Just days ago, President Trump said: “If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will – and I’m not letting that happen… one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

The dawning realisation that he is deadly serious has triggered a scramble for solutions, intended to avoid the catastrophe of America using force against an ally.

“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including our NATO agreement – and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” said Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister. The clock on defusing the crisis is ticking.

US vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio met with the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers in the White House, but President Trump again warned that anything less than American control of Greenland was “unacceptable”.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has said that France would open a consulate in Greenland on February 6, acting on a decision taken last year during President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the territory.

Plans are also being laid for a new NATO mission to secure Greenland, which will probably involve UK forces. Yet, if that idea is not enough to satisfy Trump, the solution could lie on a small island 4,000 miles away.

Cyprus has hosted British bases throughout its 65-year history as an independent state. Today, RAF Akrotiri on its southern coast serves as Britain’s busiest overseas base, while GCHQ has a vital listening post in the eastern Dhekelia area. What makes these facilities different is that both are located on British sovereign territory. The Union flag flies over Akrotiri and Dhekelia, whose 98 square miles – or 3 per cent of the island of Cyprus – are, legally speaking, just as British as any other town or county in the UK.

Suppose America’s military installations in Greenland were to be converted into “sovereign base areas” on the Cyprus model. Given that this arrangement has worked for nearly seven decades on a small and crowded Mediterranean island, it should be relatively simple to replicate on a vast and largely empty territory like Greenland. Could this be the answer?

Michael Clarke, a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, says it might be a way of giving Trump the sort of victory that he wants, and so it has plausibility.

Any possible solution has to deal with the fact that Trump’s public reasons for taking Greenland make no objective sense: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” he says, apparently unaware that America already has an agreement with Denmark signed in 1951, allowing the US to “construct, install, maintain and operate” any military base on Greenland and to “station and house personnel”.

The US military also enjoys free access to the seas around the island. If Trump is right to claim that Russian and Chinese ships are now prowling these waters, then America can already counter this threat. There is simply no need for Trump to “have” Greenland.

During the Cold War, the US used its rights under the 1951 accord to build at least 17 installations across the island, ranging from airfields to radar stations and weather observatories.

In the high north, more than 1,000 miles from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, American engineers tunnelled into a glacier to create Camp Century in 1960. Powered by a nuclear reactor, this secret maze of living quarters and research facilities – codenamed “Project Iceworm” – housed 200 specialists studying the possibility of hiding missile silos beneath the snow. When that proved impossible, Camp Century was shut in 1967. Later, as the Cold War came to an end, America dismantled all but one of its military installations in Greenland, withdrawing virtually all of its 6,000 personnel.

Today, the only remaining US facility is Pituffik Space Base on the shores of Baffin Bay, 138 miles west of the carcass of Camp Century. It is here where about 200 personnel watch for incoming ballistic missiles as part of the US Early Warning System. If Pituffik were to become US sovereign territory, then Trump would be able to say that he had planted the Stars and Stripes in the snow and gained new land for the United States. If the same status were to be accorded to the abandoned tunnels and unusable silos of Camp Century – and perhaps the locations of all the other former military sites – then 17 US flags might appear on the map, and a few hundred square miles of Arctic ice cap be added to America. Given that Greenland covers more than 836,000 square miles and has only 56,000 people, this would make little practical difference. No-one’s life would be changed if the Stars and Stripes were to fly over some uninhabited inlets far above the Arctic Circle. Even if the boundaries of any sovereign base areas were to be drawn as expansively as possible, and Trump gained a few thousand square miles, that would only amount to a fraction of Greenland.

“The real issue is that Trump wants to add a big chunk of territory to the United States so that he gets his face on Mount Rushmore,” says Prof Clarke. “He’s not going to get the Nobel Peace Prize, so he wants another sort of prize.”

About 40 per cent of the current territory of the United States was bought, with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 being the most famous examples, and Trump seemingly yearns for something comparable. Granting America sovereign base areas in Greenland may be a way of handing him the prize that he craves – without, in practice, changing very much.

The International Security Programme at the Chatham House think tank certainly agrees that this could be a solution, while adding that any territorial concessions made under US pressure would be a bitter pill for Denmark and Greenland.

Chatham House believes that although this would still be a big concession for Denmark and Greenland to make, it would be a better concession than risking an American attack. It stresses, that for Denmark and Greenland, this is now such a matter of national security that they probably could make far-reaching concessions in bringing this impasse to an end.

There must be a danger that Trump may act unilaterally and simply declare US sovereignty over Pituffik, and perhaps the chain of defunct installations, including Camp Century.

Denmark’s best option could be to pre-empt him by offering to convert these facilities into sovereign base areas as part of an overall settlement.

Some possibilities are infinitely worse. Rubio has said that America wants to buy the entirety of Greenland, reviving Trump’s proposal from his first presidential term. But the Danish government has neither the legal power nor the appetite to sell its territory.

If no solution is possible, Denmark could stand firm and rally its European allies, hoping that Trump’s attention may turn elsewhere. But that option increases the risk of America resorting to military action – and just about anything would be better than that calamity.

Yet, even if the confrontation could be resolved by giving the US sovereign base areas, Prof Clarke believes this outcome would still weaken the West. “NATO will have suffered because of that – the fact that they’ve had to buy him off. And Denmark will have suffered. So NATO would still come out of this weaker,” he said. “But it would not be as destructive as the possible alternative.”

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