The British army is so depleted it could only “seize a small market town on a good day”, a former top military commander has warned amid growing concerns over the UK’s ability to defend itself.
Giving a damning assessment of the military, General Sir Richard Barrons, who was one of the authors of a major defence review published last year by the government, warned that none of the services could do “anything substantial”.
“The Armed Forces that we have now, because of their size, but also because of their sophistication, can make a very small contribution on land, in the air and at sea, to an enterprise either led by the US or more likely a Nato undertaking. What it cannot do is anything substantial”, he told the BBC.
The former top military commander explained that the UK has promised the Nato alliance a strategic reserve corps of between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, ready to deploy anywhere in the alliance.
But he claimed that “the army has not got the equipment or the training or the support to get anywhere close to delivering that yet”.
“Today’s army frankly could do one very small thing, essentially it could seize a small market town on a good day”, Sir Richard added.
Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), agreed with the brutal assessment.
“The Ukrainians trying to defend Bakhmut lost 10,000 people, killed and wounded over the course of the defence of Bakhmut, which is a small market town, and that would almost be the entire infantry force in the British military”, he warned.
The researcher also warned that the UK is critically short of artillery, after having given large amounts to Ukraine.
It comes after Israel issued a stark warning on Saturday that Iranian missiles are a threat to European cities – including London, Paris and Berlin – after two ballistic missiles were unsuccessfully fired by Iran towards the UK-US Diego Garcia military base on the Chagos Islands.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer faces accusations of “complacency” amid concerns over the UK’s lack of preparedness for the war in the Middle East.
The prime minister clashed with both Labour and Tory MPs as he appeared before the Commons liaison committee on Monday – made up of the chairs of parliamentary select committees – where he was challenged with claims that the UK is already at war.
The appearance came ahead of the prime minister’s chairing of an emergency Cobra meeting on Monday afternoon to prepare for the war’s impact on the cost of living, and he admitted to MPs he was unable to give a timetable for the end of the conflict despite Donald Trump’s declaration of a ceasefire.
Sir Keir was also challenged over the lack of Royal Navy ships in the Mediterranean when President Trump launched his war on Iran, amid questions about why the UK was so ill-prepared to protect its crucial bases in Cyprus.
In a particularly tetchy exchange, veteran Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin suggested the government had a “lack of war-fighting mentality” and claimed defence decision-making “smacks of enormous complacency”.
He argued that the UK “is at war” and asked why “the government is not just getting on with it”.
Sir Keir responded: “Because the strategic review commits us to a war footing, and we now need to put the funding in place to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent, something that didn’t happen under the last government, and where at the election a credible proposition wasn’t put forward by your party.”
The questions have been mounting since Iran launched drone attacks on Cyprus, with one hitting the UK base RAF Akrotiri at the start of the conflict.
While the destroyer HMS Dragon was deployed, it has only just arrived in the Mediterranean and needed six days’ hurried preparations before it could set sail. There were no other ships in the region.
The issue has been embarrassing for the UK after the Greek and French governments were able to deploy naval assets to defend Cyprus before the UK.
