{"id":73525,"date":"2022-06-30T15:00:32","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T05:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=73525"},"modified":"2022-06-30T14:39:07","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T04:39:07","slug":"chief-of-british-army-says-it-must-mobilise-to-deter-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chief-of-british-army-says-it-must-mobilise-to-deter-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Chief of British Army says it must mobilise to deter Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The British Army\u2019s main effort is now mobilisation to deter Russian aggression, and it must accept \u2018ruthless prioritisation\u2019 to this end, General Sir Patrick Sanders has said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute\u2019s Land Warfare Conference<\/a> in London, the British Chief of the General Staff (CGS) articulated his army\u2019s immediate answer to the war in Ukraine and reflected on the longer-term responses that will be required. His address came just prior to the commencement of a major NATO summit in Madrid<\/a>, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> is attending.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is our 1937 moment,\u2019 Sanders said, appealing to members of the audience to do all they can to deter further conflict. He cautioned against the assumption that the war in Ukraine would remain limited, or that Russia was destined to fail, observing instead that battlefield defeat catalyses rapid learning. Any respite for Ukraine and its partners is temporary, he said, and Russia has demonstrated the capacity to regenerate forces and win in the past.<\/p>\n

The CGS also framed events in Europe within the global geopolitical moment. \u2018In meeting a revanchist Russia, we cannot be guilty of myopically chasing the ball\u2019, said Sanders. \u2018Defence cannot ignore the exponential rise and chronic challenge of China, not just within the South China Sea but through its sub-threshold activities across the globe. Beijing will be watching our response to Moscow\u2019s actions carefully.\u2019<\/p>\n

The CGS spoke about the limits of deterrence by punishment that have been exposed by the Russian invasion. Deterrence by denial in the European theatre therefore has a new importance, and the British response, according to Sanders, must be a mix of forward basing and very-high-readiness forces. Land power and armies are central to this response.<\/p>\n

The burden for this adjusted posture must fall increasingly on European NATO members, said Sanders, because \u2018taking up the burden in Europe means we can free more US resources to ensure that our values and interests are protected in the Indo-Pacific\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ukraine has also shown that engaging with our adversaries and training, assisting and reassuring our partners is high-payoff activity… With the right partner and in the right conditions persistent engagement and capacity building can be really effective. [The UK\u2019s] Operation Orbital<\/a> has made a key contribution to preparing the Armed Forces of Ukraine for this fight and it continues to expand exponentially\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sanders repeatedly warned against trying to do everything: \u2018we will need to suppress our additive culture and guard against the \u201ctyranny of and\u201d\u2014we can\u2019t do everything well and some things are going to have to stop; it will mean ruthless prioritisation\u2019. He said the force must \u2018deprioritise where necessary.<\/p>\n

Explaining the way forward for the British Army\u2014and noting concerns that should sound familiar to an Australian audience\u2014the CGS said that \u2018we must be honest with ourselves about future soldiers\u2019<\/a> timelines, capability gaps and risks\u2019. Long-term efforts are important but must occur in conjunction with must faster change occurring \u2018from the line of march\u2019.<\/p>\n

The CGS identified four immediate \u2018focused lines of effort\u2019 for his army.<\/p>\n

First, and most importantly, boosting readiness. NATO needs highly ready forces that can deploy at short notice for the collective defence of alliance members. Deterring Russia means more of the army ready more of the time, and ready for high-intensity war in Europe. So we will pick up the pace of combined arms training, and major on urban combat. We will rebuild our stockpiles and review the deployability of our vehicle fleet\u2026 The time has come to be frank about our ability to fight if called upon.<\/p>\n

Second, we will accelerate the modernisation outlined in future soldier\u2026 We will seek to speed up the delivery of planned new equipment including long-range fires, attack aviation, persistent surveillance and target acquisition, expeditionary logistic enablers, ground based air defence, protected mobility, and the technologies that will prove pivotal to our digital ambition: communications and information services and electronic warfare. Most importantly, this will start now\u2014not at some ill-defined point in the future.<\/p>\n

Third, we will rethink how we fight. We\u2019ve been watching the war in Ukraine closely and we are already learning and adapting\u2026 Many of the lessons are not new\u2014but they are now applied. We will double-down on combined arms manoeuvre, especially in the deep battle, and devise a new doctrine rooted in geography, integrated with NATO\u2019s war plans and specific enough to drive focused, relevant investment and inspire the imagination of our people to fight and win if called upon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fourth and finally, Sanders said he is \u2018prepared to look again at the structure of our army. If we judge that revised structures will make the army better prepared to fight in Europe, then we will follow Monty\u2019s advice and do \u201csomething else\u201d. Now of course adapting structures has implications for the size of the army\u2026 Obviously our army has to be affordable; nonetheless, it would be perverse if the CGS was advocating reducing the size of the army as a land war rages in Europe and Putin\u2019s territorial ambitions extend into the rest of the decade, and beyond Ukraine\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sanders reiterated that people remain central to the army and its effectiveness. He observed that apparent technological superiority has not translated into a will to fight by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. He observed that Russian forces are suffering from \u2018moral decay\u2019 and that the British Army must protect its own \u2018moral component\u2019 and \u2018fighting spirit\u2019. \u2018To put it simply\u2019, said Sanders, \u2018you don\u2019t need to be laddish to be lethal\u2014in a scrap you have to truly trust those on your left and right\u2019.<\/p>\n

He asked members of his army to cut through unnecessary bureaucracy: \u2018like any public institution we have accumulated some barnacles that slow us down\u2014but we are not just any institution, so it\u2019s time to strip them back\u2019.<\/p>\n

General Sanders also noted that mobilisation is not simply an internal activity, and that industry is a key partner, remarking that \u2018We can\u2019t be lighting the factory furnaces across the nation on the eve of war; this effort must start now if we want to prevent war from happening\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The British Army\u2019s main effort is now mobilisation to deter Russian aggression, and it must accept \u2018ruthless prioritisation\u2019 to this end, General Sir Patrick Sanders has said. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute\u2019s Land …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1519,"featured_media":73529,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3313,261,163,714,141],"class_list":["post-73525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-british-army","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChief of British Army says it must mobilise to deter Russia | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chief-of-british-army-says-it-must-mobilise-to-deter-russia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chief of British Army says it must mobilise to deter Russia | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The British Army\u2019s main effort is now mobilisation to deter Russian aggression, and it must accept \u2018ruthless prioritisation\u2019 to this end, General Sir Patrick Sanders has said. 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