Brazier on Defence

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

  The British Army faces a crucial decision on officer training, with a danger that the wrong response to short-term pressures on RMA Sandhurst and University Officer Training Corps may damage both the Army Reserve officer pipeline and the capacity for long-term force expansion . See article here

  The UK must embrace reserve forces to build affordable military mass, attract specialist talent, and meet defence needs in an era of constrained budgets. With significant military demands on a stretched budget, now is the time for Defence to look to reserve forces to build credible affordable mass and win the war for specialist talent. See article here

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

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

  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