Strategic Defence Review

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for introducing this debate. I agree with almost everything that every noble Lord has said and I see no reason to repeat or amplify what they said. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, was the architect of SDR 98, which we have talked about. I took part at a very junior level in Exercise Saif Sareea 2 in Oman, in which exercise we used the laydown from SDR 98. We went on to Operation Telic, but it was so important for us to learn the lessons from the mistakes we made on Exercise Saif Sareea and avoid them on Telic.

Like many noble Lords, I have confidence in the process, apart from the financial constraints that many noble Lords have talked about. My worry is that events may overtake the review. My fear is that a drastic change in the international situation may make full rearmament unavoidable, and if we were to do that I think the howls of pain from the population will be very great indeed. I entirely agree with some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, on that.

Another challenge, if we have to rearm, will be to do it quickly. Perhaps the review might look, if we do need to rearm, at how we would do it. I also think it is important to consider what the United States wants from us. Whenever I talk to anyone from the United States, they always say they want a full-spectrum capability. I am not clear that we can actually do that, but we should make sure that we can support the United States because it is an absolutely key ally.

All noble Lords know that the land component is seriously neglected. Many noble Lords referred to the situation in 1938. It is interesting that, in 1935, the cavalry was still seen as an important land component. The future of land warfare is uncertain. For instance, at the moment there is no dead ground, so you cannot form up an armoured battle group to attack without the enemy knowing where you are and what you are likely to do. That situation might change with changes in technology—there may be some way of defeating mass drone surveillance or satellite surveillance—but we simply do not know what the outcome in the conflict in Ukraine will be. Therefore, it will be extremely difficult for the review to work out what to do about the land component.

What is clear, and I have banged on about this many times, is that we need large-scale overseas exercises at divisional level, so that commanders can exercise moving whole brigades round the area of operations. We need to do that to test our capabilities so that we can find out what our weaknesses are when they have been covered up, with some junior officers from SO2 jumping up and down saying, “We’ve got this weakness but no one will listen”. When you do an exercise, you find out what your weaknesses are, but you also demonstrate to an opponent that you have a capability. My comments about weaknesses apply particularly to combat service support—the logistics. I would say that because I am a logistician.

We know that our armoured fleet is inadequate—that is no secret—but, recently, the Daily Mail published an article about the Bulldog armoured vehicle, descended from the FV430 range. The previous Labour Government took the precaution of re-engineering the vehicle with a completely new power train, so I do not recognise the article at all.

We must make sure that the capabilities we do have work and are deployable. For instance, at the moment—this is down to the previous Government, not the current one—our LPDs, or landing platform docks, are not available for operations, simply because we do not have the ratings to man them. We must make sure that we have the terms and conditions of service so that we do not have important platforms unavailable to go to sea, because, if they cannot go to sea and our opponents know that, there is no deterrent. The deterrent relies on the fact that we have significant conventional forces. Some time ago, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, made the point that, if your conventional deterrent is too weak, your nuclear trip-wire is too low.

I also make the point that, in several military headquarters, there are too many gapped posts, especially at SO2 level. This puts unfair pressure on the other staff officers.

The aircraft carrier was a controversial part of the strategic defence review in 1998. I will not comment on whether it was a good decision or a bad one; the facts of the matter are that we built them and that they have strategic utility. The United States has only 10 or 11 aircraft carriers, while we have two, so that is a significant contribution to the Americans’ effort and enables the UK to mount a significant operation while the US is either doing something slightly different in the area of operations or is otherwise engaged. I think that the review will have to think very carefully about aircraft carriers but, in my view, they have significant strategic effect and leverage.

My final point concerns nuclear, recently touched on in the debate. I say, “Thank God for the deterrent”, because, although we do not ignore Putin’s sabre-rattling, we are not terrified into submission, because we know that we have the nuclear deterrent.