Sunday, May 31, 2020

A different angle to difficult choices



First, a premise. I really hate the “difficult choices” refrain that is constantly brought up when talking about UK armed forces. It’s right up there with “sacred cows” and other rhetoric figures which 99% of the time are empty of actual meaning other than making the speaker sound real deep and wise. In the end, it seems to only ever lead to arguing in favor of cutting off everything but your pet project of the day. 

If there is something that years of cuts have made clear is that in the UK the problem is not making “difficult choices” (its Draconian acts of self-mutilation are "admired" worldwide), but making difficult choices that make sense in an integrated defence policy and not in isolation. 
What the UK constantly fails at is taking difficult decisions that adhere to one coherent vision. Again and again, Defence starts investing on one particular area, then eventually, when it is more or less ready to reap the benefits of decades of work and investment, ruins everything by going with another short-term knee jerk decision in the desperate attempt to save some money. Savings which are often ridiculous compared to the damage inflicted to capability.

I’ve already written some time ago a longer dissertation on the cyclical suggestion of “cutting the PARAs and Royal Marines”, and explained just why that makes very little sense, so I’ll just point you to that article, while repeating once more that the really difficult and key question the UK must finally find an answer to is what kind of country and military power it wants to be. 
You can’t separate ambition from how much you are willing to spend.

Once a level of ambition is defined, the new SDSR should completely ignore the empty rhetoric of sacred cows, which are mostly just the latest evolution of inter-service bickering, and assess instead what the UK absolutely needs to do, first of all, and immediately after determine what it can do well, and specifically what it can do with what it already owns. Instead of wasting capability that already exists in pursuit of nebulous new ambitions, it should ensure that the maximum possible output comes from what is already available, for once.

If it is not possible to do everything, you should stick to what you are good at. If your money is not enough to purchase all you’d need, at least start by using well what you already have, and have already paid. The UK is extremely well positioned to deploy a very competitive and powerful naval task force; and owns most of the equipment needed to field a powerful airmobile army capability. It would be absurd not to capitalize on strengths built up with much effort and expenditure over decades.  
When you are “poor”, the last thing you should do is waste what you do have.

Instead of trying to convince the world that tanks are no longer needed; that wheeled APCs are the future; that air manoeuvres are now unfeasible and amphibious capability does not require landing craft and surface manoeuvre, and getting offended when the world does not agree; the UK should use a bit of actual realism and go for the real soul searching.

There are unpleasant questions that I never hear asked but that are staring us all in the face. One is about the wisdom of sinking so much manpower and money into 1st Division, which has more than half the Army’s infantry under command but that will have absolutely zero supports once the last set migrates to 3rd Division to enable the second STRIKE brigade. 4 Royal Artillery, 27 RLC, 2 REME, 2 Royal Signal and 32 Royal Engineer are the last CS and CSS resources that remain to enable the “Vanguard Light Brigade” that is organized rotationally from the 4 brigades that make up 1st Division (4th, 7th, 11th and 51st).

All of those regiments, and indeed presumably one of the brigade HQs as well, are going to be taken out to create the second STRIKE brigade, leaving 1st Division as truly nothing more than a container for spare Light Role infantry battalions that support Public Duty and Cyprus rotations and the “regional stand-by battalion” commitment at home, which has been expanded all the way to a 5 battalion requirement in recent times.

One actual difficult question to be asked is whether this use of precious finite resources is in any way efficient and wise. Over half of the Army tied down in “fake” brigades with no combined arms capability for complete lack of Combat Supports and Combat Service Supports is, to me, a complete folly, regardless of how many battalions you intend to justify by committing to penny packet presence projects all over Africa, or sandbag filling in the UK during floods.

And this brings me to an even harsher question that needs to be formulated: are 16 Reserve infantry battalions in any way justifiable?

Army 2020 hoped to squeeze more useability out of the Reserve. At one point, it literally cut down several infantry battalions from 3 to 2 companies each with the hope that Reserves would be sufficiently available to fill the gap.

That project never worked out, and eventually the Army has rebuilt the missing companies thanks to the manpower removed from the Specialised Infantry Battalions (which are just 267 strong and thus have released quite a few soldiers back into the system).

The Army Reserve was supposed to relieve the regulars of a number of those standing commitments that absorb so much manpower, but the results have been frankly far from stellar. Reserves have in a few occasions provided much of the Falklands Islands Roulement infantry company; and in February this year “history was made” by building up a Company group, 240-strong, with reservists from 7 RIFLES and 5 RRF for a six month UN peacekeeping turn on the Cyprus Green Line.

I know I will bring even more hate upon myself for posing this question, but I think it can no longer be avoided: is this output actually enough to justify 16 reserve Infantry Battalions?

I don’t blame reservists: they should be rightly praised and thanked for offering their spare time to their Country and I couldn’t respect them more. But the Reserve must be re-assessed for overall value for money, and for functionality. The problem is easily understood: a volunteer who depends on a civilian, full-time job cannot, no matter how well meaning he might be, be available often for long deployments and operations. It’s just unfeasible, unless the volunteers and employers are supported in a whole different way, which however would make the Reserve a whole lot less cheap. It is not an easily solved problem.

But if Regulars cannot be relieved in a meaningful, enduring and assured way from the variety of secondary, enduring tasks, what is the point?

Resilience and Regeneration in times of major crisis is the other big reason for having a Reserve, but again there is an enormous and majorly unpleasant question that no one is considering: is it really feasible, for the UK, to Regenerate combat mass in a crisis in this era?
What magnitude of crisis would make it conceivable?
What would the timeframes look like?
Could it realistically be done in any scenario short of an existential struggle?

If the UK was to be involved in a large scale operation abroad, which required a Division in the field for more than the 6 / 12 months at most that 3rd Division could sustain, is there any realistic chance of rebuilding enough mass to relieve the deployed Division with another, for example?

Obviously, 1st Division would have to be rebuilt into a formation capable of actual Combined Arms Operations. What it would overwhelmingly need, however, would be the CS and CSS units it does not possess, not 16 Reserve Infantry Battalions. The Division already has regular infantry, it is everything else that it lacks.

What level of capability could be regenerated, beyond the lightest and most barebone of formations? There is not any significant amount of equipment in storage that could be brought out and issued to Reservists. For example, even assuming the Challenger 2 LEP goes ahead, which in the current budget climate is in no way a given, the number of vehicles being mentioned wouldn’t even be enough for fielding the Royal Wessex Yeomanry in the field, no matter how dire the situation. The regiment has been uplifted to have the capability to put into the field complete, formed crews, but the UK would extremely quickly run out of tanks to give to those formed crews. Do the math by yourself: we have been told numbers that range from around 140 to 167. Even if every single vehicle was issued for operations, it still wouldn’t suffice for a third Type 58 regiment to hit the field.

Warrior CSP, assuming it goes ahead, also will deliver barely enough vehicles for the Regulars, if that. There is zero margin built in into any purchase, and the UK, unlike other countries, has the habit of getting rid of the fleets it removes from active service, to avoid having to spend on its storage and upkeep.

I’ve quoted the heavy armour bits, but the situation does not in any way change by looking at lighter AFV fleets, or other major bits of equipment.
The cupboard is literally empty, there is nothing behind the glass to be broken in case of emergency. What is in storage is needed to equip the regulars, and considering that just four facilities held the majority of the stores, vehicle fleets and munitions, it is hard not to think that in a major, existential crisis the enemy just needs to land good long-range hits on Ashchurch, Monchengladbach, Kineton and Donington to not only knock back any regeneration effort but to maim the regular force itself into near paralysis.

If we are not prepared to imagine a scenario in which an enemy will try to hit those targets, by default it implies we are not prepared to imagine an actual existential scenario / new major war. With all what descends from this.



I always struggle, as a consequence, to imagine Regeneration actually happening, regardless of whether the Army Reserve ever hits its 30.000 trained personnel target (in the near term it won’t, by the way).  

Even if Reservists were called out en masse and were to be actually available for operations, the ability to kit them out for a meaningful operation is next to inexistent.

I am not in a position to know whether Telford and Merthyr Tydfil could possibly be able to start producing whole new vehicles in a hurry in a major crisis, but output and timeframes, if not overall feasibility, are doubtful at best. Even if equipment could be sourced from the US (the only Ally which might be in a position to help, thanks to the huge number of items it keeps stored and its active production lines), a lot of precious time would still be needed to actually train and prepare units.

When it comes to “difficult decisions”, instead of looking at chopping the best manned and best recruiting regular units in the Armed Forces, I’d recommend looking at how the Armed Forces actually plan to fight, and at their true resilience.

A majorly unpleasant decision to be taken might indeed involve the Army Reserve, because those 16 infantry battalions look like a true white elephant. 

The SDSR might want to reassess Reserve numbers and, even more importantly, roles. 
Excellent results come through reservists contributing their specializations to the Army (medical units being just the most visible of examples); but the outcome from the infantry units seems hard to justify.

Moreover, Resilience / Regeneration should be approached in a more systemic and realistic way. A good way to start could be to try and provide 1st Division and its Brigades with the supports they lack, using Reserve or Hybrid formations. 
If even that proves unfeasible because of low availability, the future of the Reserve might be smaller and more niche. 

No matter how comparatively “cheap” the Reserve is, if it can’t deliver a meaningful output outside a few specific areas, it might still not be worth its cost.

24 comments:

  1. Yup, good piece. Wearisomely familiar process, apparently never ending. No realistic vision, no damn sense, no sustained commitment, neither brains nor balls

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  2. Another great post Gabrielle. Until the MoD and indeed HMG as a whole improve procurement processes by adopting Dispute Avoidance Boards (better called Collaboration Facilitation Boards) as used by major funders, such as the Multilateral Development Banks, including the World Bank, I do not see the management and affordability of these projects going anywhere soon.

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  3. Yeah bang on bracing myself for another nonstrategic review. This will inevitably lead to more short term nonsensical decisions

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  4. Gabriele, thank you for a clear and incisive article.

    The strategy for 1 Div is far from clear to me. There are general indication in this statement by Lt. Gen. Jones, Commander Field Army.
    https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/news/2019/08/army-restructures-to-confront-evolving-threats/
    1st Division provides specialist soldiers and equipment to develop other nations’ armies, deal with disaster and humanitarian crises worldwide and enable our war-fighting division.

    The relation of 1 Div to the Specialist Infantry Group in 6 Div to develop other nation's armies is not clear.

    Each Brigade of 1 Div has has 3 regular infantry battalions. 4 & 7 Bde each have 3 reserve infantry battalions; 11 & 51 Bde each have 2 reserve battalions. 4, 7, & 51 Bde each have have 1 light cavalry regiment and 1 reserve (yeomanry) regiment. I think the primary role of the reserves is to bring the regulars up to strength.

    The quarterly personnel statistics have just been published today. I'll have a look at how strengths are going.

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    1. An interesting example of a reserve infantry battalion is 8 Rifles. The MoD web page says: The Battalion is paired with 2 RIFLES and its principal mission is to train and prepare Reserve Riflemen for front line Light Infantry operations, where they serve alongside and integrated within Regular RIFLES units.

      The plural "units" is spurious. The other Rifles regular light infantry battalion has its own paired reserve battalion.

      8 Rifles is quite new, having been formed in 2017. At the start of 2017 all regular Rifles battalions together had a workforce requirement of 2,725 and a trade trained strength of 2,710. It does not appear that a new reserve battalion was needed to make up strength to the workforce requirement. The reserve battalion is used when some of the regular strength is perhaps not available or more strength is required for a specific operation.

      The primary output of the reserve battalions is the regular battalions. I don't think the reserves will be cut unless the regulars are cut. Even then, the reserves may be kept and the pairing transferred.

      The Army Reserve has steadily increased in strength and, although the target has not been reached, that is a partial success. That is another reason I don't think the reserves will be cut.

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    2. Personally i very much welcome the Future Reserve 2030 Review, because there are areas of the Reserve which just do not convince me as a good use of precious, finite resources. Reserve infantry battalions being the main question mark; the operational output seems really way too modest to justify 16 battalions.

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    3. I agree that the way the Army is using the reserve battalions is way too modest, or just wrong. There is 1 reserve para battalion for 2 regulars but in the infantry brigades it is generally 1:1. I can't see any justification for that 1:1 but really can't see it changing. One possible route is to get some Assault Pioneers into reserves. These are traditionally infantry but trained by RE.

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  5. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/quarterly-service-personnel-statistics-2020/quarterly-service-personnel-statistics-1-april-2020

    Army full time trade trained strength 73,720
    Workforce requirement 82,040 deficit 8,320 (10.1%)

    Army reserve trained strength 27,300
    Target 30,100 deficit 2,800 (9.3%)

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    1. I know, i've read it as soon as it came out. It is a relief to see green for the first time in years and see that recruitment numbers are indeed looking up, but of course it will be a while still before trained strenght trend can actually change. It is not pretty.

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    2. I don't doubt that you were on this. I put the link in for those readers who may not be picking up official releases. That's me as well, I had seen a release date but it was just a thought - is it today?

      It may be negative that I gave the deficits but it is the strengths that are often discussed.

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  6. Hello Gabrielle,
    On a Land Power article comment section N Drummond talked about the individual price of each upgraded Challenger 2. He said , ' If the price goes above £12 million each ''. That sounds very high, have you any idea how much each upgraded tank will cost. Great blog as always
    Many Thanks

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    1. Hello,

      i don't think anyone can know for sure how much a CR2 LEP will cost until we have a contract and a known number of vehicles to be upgraded.
      The budget for Armour (MBT) 2025 in these years has always fluctuated in estimates between 700 million and around a billion pounds, for, we are told, between 140-some and 167 tanks.
      We are a long way away from "12 million each".

      If different numbers do come out later in the year, we'll discuss them. But the more this story drags on, the more i believe the Army is split in a tracks/tanks faction and in a wheels factions. Between 2008 and 2014 (FRES UV put on hold, AJAX put under contract, Army 2020 centered on 3 armoured brigades), the tracks faction was in the lead. Since 2015, the wheels faction has been calling the shots...

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    2. Thanks for that reply, if the price did come out as being very high would you say, better off buying the Leopard 2 new build, for example
      Thanks

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    3. Maybe...? Depends on the numbers.
      The likely outcome would be a British Army without tanks, anyway. We are dangerously close to that point.

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  7. Hi Gabrielle
    Another question / your opinion, recent news from usa about reaper replacement, where does leave protector which will come into service you hope in around 5 years time. The message there saying is that Reaper is to slow and vulnerable to modern surface to air threats.
    Many Thanks

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    1. It is a well known fact that Reaper is pretty literally defenceless once found and engaged, and Protector does not seem to be any better under that point of view. Personally i hoped to see at least something as basic as trying to salvage the self-defence pods from Tornado GR4 and adapt them to give Protector some chances.

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    2. Yes am i am guessing its replacement will be turbofan / jet powered, and much quicker than reaper / protector?.

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    3. Eventually it might happen, but not anytime soon. Besides, speed in itself isn't really going to make it survivable. Countermeasures, low observability, that kind of things is what makes an actual difference.

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  8. I agree with your assessment 100%. It makes far more sense to convert reserve units from infantry to CS and CSS roles and pair them with regular infantry brigades of the 1st UK division.
    On your recent twitter post, you made a bold statement, UK can no longer afford further cutting its conventional capability. You would rather give up nuclear deterrence. Again I agree with you but we all know that's highly unlikely outcome. More likely we will witness across board reductions.

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    1. Foxhound is a good vehicle but it only carries a fire team of 4 and needs a lot of drivers in a light infantry battalion. I believe it is not popular among the infantry to have to train and work as truck drivers. I believe the same might apply to training as a joiner or the many other trades offered by the RE, not what the infantry reserve has volunteered for although others might want the training.

      That is not what the MoD want. They want to "share the skills" with business.
      https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ministry-of-defence-seeks-to-maximise-reserves-contribution-through-new-review

      If they are expecting lorry drivers to spend their spare time as lorry drivers in the reserves the MoD may be disappointed but they are asking for ideas.

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    2. If the Reserve proves unworkable, stop wasting so much money on it. If there is no return, cut.
      Either way, something needs to be done.

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  9. Personally I would prioritize RN and RAF funding needs over the Army. Personally I won't mind divesting heavy armor formation and giving up on Strike, re-tooling the Army into an all light force, if and only if money saved from such measurement can be fully guaranteed to the other services.

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  10. "... the really difficult and key question the UK must finally find an answer to is what kind of country and military power it wants to be. You can’t separate ambition from how much you are willing to spend."

    Spot on. The UK has responsibilities stretching as far as Pitcairn, but that doesn't mean the UK needs to project power worldwide.

    The other big question is how much longer can NATO survive? Would the organisation survive a second Trump term?

    One more question: if A2AD is so emasculating for aggressors, and bearing in mind NATO's possible demise, shouldn't robust defence of these islands be a cash-strapped government's focus.

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  11. The last Democrat president was a weaksauce appeaser in matters of western security and this one will be likely be worse. He is a globalist of course of favours a less robustly defended west and like Obama will be pussywhipped to the point of being totally ineffective.

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