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Unshackling Training with Drones in the Army, Julian Brazier

Drone warfare has revolutionised the battlefield – it is urgent that regulatory barriers to training are modernised. Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UASs or drones) are now the principal weapons in the Ukraine War, accounting for an estimated  80% of all casualties  there, (although it is widely believed that artillery would play a larger role on the Ukrainian side, if it were not for  a shortage of suitable ammunition ). This has already transformed the battlefield, and yet the capabilities of drones are developing at bewildering speed – with the recent remarkable attacks on the Russian strategic bomber fleet by what the  Ukrainian SBU declared  to be partially autonomous drones carried by civilian trucks. Article is here
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Procurement Reform Starts with Requirement Formulation and the Supply Chain; Julian Brazier and Ryan Shea

Acquisition reform is critical, but also a well-trodden area of discussion. While improving defence procurement is a classic ‘wicked problem’ with no easy solutions, we believe there are two areas that the new government needs to focus on. The first is how requirements are generated, and what organisational reforms can improve this process. The second is supply chain management, to enable the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to take advantage of the innovation ecosystem that the UK has to offer. See article  here

A Bureaucratic Approach to Safety is Weakening the British Army’s Training.

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

Maritime Reserves: Grasping the Opportunity

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