Brazier on Defence

The growth of an overly burdensome safety regime is restricting opportunities for the British Army to train at scale. This poses risks of higher casualties and reduced capability if it is called on to fight a war, and of reducing safety through undermining confidence.  In recent years, a number of fatal accidents involving UK service personnel have been reported, each a tragedy in its own right. At the same time, since the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the armed forces have become a significantly safer environment than the wider civilian world; service personnel are  56% less likely  to die each year than their civilian peers. While statistics are no comfort to a grieving family, this provides some perspective for the evaluation of Defence’s approach to safety. See articles: Spectator here RUSI  here

Given the growing risk of a wider military confrontation with Russia, it is imperative that the UK puts in place affordable structures to increase the Army’s fighting strength and offer a pathway to further expansion. Central to this should be a focus on boosting reserve numbers both as its second echelon and as a partial provider of the means to the third one.  Read Here

  The decision to end rank-based housing entitlements and to instead allocate all service accommodation on the basis of family size is threatening to decimate officer numbers in the Army and RAF. I have been involved with this issue, on and off, since helping lead the opposition to the original sale of service family accommodation to Nomura (later Annington Homes) in 1996 Read here

This paper illustrates how Britain has once again neglected its vulnerable ports, coastal CNI and littoral, with all its pipelines and cables, despite a modest investment in HMS Proteus, and that the only affordable way to fill the gap is with reserves, including by drawing on those who earn a living from the sea.  It pays tribute to the quality of the men and women in the Maritime Reserves and charts some recovery since the grim, unplanned cuts of 20/21, with a particular strength emerging in information warfare, but suggests that much more could be done for very little cost, by making more use of reserves as our major Five Eyes partners do.   https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/occasional-papers/maritime-reserves-grasping-opportunity

This paper argues for the increased use of Air Reserves as one important and affordable response to the challenges and developments that now face the air service. Control of the air, enjoyed by British and allied forces for many years, is vital in any operation, but cannot be taken for granted against peer adversaries. The war in Ukraine shows how critical air power is, but also how complicated the air dimension has become, including with the widespread use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) and civilian drones. The RAF faces the combined challenges of a heightened and diverse strategic threat, difficulties in securing the right talent, and heavily constrained resources. In the case of aircrew, it is also wholly dependent on a slow and costly pipeline for producing pilots that can consume roughly half the average career the RAF gets from its pilots. Furthermore, there is evidence that post- Covid, shortages are emerging in the civil airline sector, threatening a new drain on b

In learning lessons from Ukraine, most of our major allies have recognised that the affordable route back to providing mass on the battlefield in war is the development of reserve forces in peace. This study compares our Army Reserve to the reserve ground forces of our major Five Eyes allies, who share our expeditionary focus - and volunteer tradition. It shows how expanding our reserve capability and learning lessons from our sister countries can deliver mass, draw on civilian skills and reconnect Defence with the wider nation. Papers on air and maritime reserves are to follow. Paper is  here