Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the independent-minded noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem. The Royal Air Force that I had the privilege to lead in the mid-1980s was close to 100,000 personnel and more than 30 combat squadrons. Today’s Chief of the Air Staff has a force of less than a third of that in personnel, and a quarter in squadrons. Yes, airframes and perhaps even people are more capable than their predecessors, but with such small numbers, they lack a key fighting quality: resilience in combat against other than a very poorly equipped or incapable foe.

The Army and the Royal Navy have faced similar reductions in the past 30 years in their musclepower. What, then, should the Armed Forces be expected to do? Rule out unforeseen operations of the scale or intensity fielded in 1982 to recover the Falklands, or in 1991 to throw the Iraqis out of Kuwait? Indeed, enduring operations on the scale of those in Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer feasible without strong Allied involvement. Even the more limited scale of offensive operations now in hand, mainly by the RAF, is stretching the human side of this activity.

Brexit adds a new dimension for the Armed Forces. We must surely maintain the many excellent military-to-military contacts we enjoy with forces in Europe and North America. The increasing vision of trade with Commonwealth and overseas partners should be matched by greater contact with their military units.

A good start was the recent visit by RAF Typhoon aircraft to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, and by the successful Red Arrows displays in the Middle East and China. These deployments demonstrated operational reach and logistic support over thousands of miles. They made many new contacts and were widely noted and appreciated.

What is the bottom line? We lack strength in numbers. We are not well placed to deal with an inevitable unforeseen, least of all against a capable foe. The more independently minded we become, the more capability we need in a dangerous world. Surely the two must go together.

The first choice in threat resolution has to be soft power, whether by diplomatic, economic or other non-military means. But success in such endeavour will surely be strengthened if it is backed by well-found hard power. We do it for the ultimately adverse scenario with the nuclear deterrent. We need more conventional hard power for the rest.