Armed Forces: Resilience

Lord Peach Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peach (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I want to speak for the first time in this House on such an important topic, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, in a debate with so many noble and noble and gallant speakers. I am grateful to the courtesy shown me since my arrival. I express my gratitude to Black Rod and her team, the clerks, the officers, the police and security staff of the House, especially the doorkeepers who helped me and my family on the occasion of my introduction. On that day, I was very fortunate to have as my supporters my noble friend Lord McDonald of Salford and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach.

I served for almost 50 years in His Majesty’s Armed Forces, in the Royal Air Force, flying as a joint officer. I held command in every rank, deployed in many operations in many countries and have served extensively overseas, including as chair of NATO’s Military Committee. Therefore, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and I wish to emphasise the centrality of our alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which grew from the wisdom—including much British wisdom—of those who saw the ugly reality of the Soviet Union’s expansion in eastern Europe.

Once again, over 70 years later, we are seeing the consequence of President Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, with Russia revealed to all of us as an aggressive, full-scale military dictatorship. The war continues, with no immediate prospect for peace. As we have already heard eloquently described, there are many lessons for us in the UK and for all our allies. Some, if not all, are not new. One I would highlight is the critical importance of unity among allies. As the war approaches its grim first anniversary, sustaining unity in support of Ukraine will require sustained effort.

As we debate our resilience, we should bear in mind that President Putin continues to challenge any narrow definition of national security by weaponising energy supply and energy infrastructure, especially pipelines and the cables and other under-sea capacity upon which we depend and which must be protected—even food security and concepts the UK fought to establish, such as international waters and international airspace. Sustaining freedom of navigation is now at risk and is vital to the prosperity of the UK. Therefore, we need to widen our definition of national security and integrate our efforts to secure our national resilience, as was eloquently described by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. In this, defence, our outstanding intelligence agencies and others need to play a part.

Many of our Scandinavian friends and allies practise total defence, which is a blend of defence, regular and reserve, national reserve, border security, protection of infrastructure, cyber defence and integration of what some noble Lords may recall as civil defence. If our infrastructure needs to be protected, we should organise our national security to do so. As the geographical consequences of the climate emergency to our own north threaten the high north and the Arctic, where geopolitical disturbance threatens us directly, one way we should respond is to develop the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, created 10 years ago and many of us have evolved ever since.

This force embraces our close allies in Scandinavia, the Baltic states, the Netherlands and Iceland. I would argue that this idea’s time has come. With shared values and culture, the Joint Expeditionary Force is NATO-facing, flexible and has the potential to do more. We could digitise it with a UK-created secure, future-proof command and control network—an important lesson from Ukraine. We could continue to integrate and share intelligence and co-operate on future capabilities. In short, we have created something special; we should exploit it.

As noble Lords have heard, other lessons from Ukraine are also not new: the importance of intelligence-led operations; manoeuvre and armour; air-land integration with artillery at the rates of exchange that we have heard; and agile, empowered command and control at the tactical level. Above all, I emphasise the importance of logistics. My first predecessor as chair of the Military Committee was General of the Army, Omar Bradley, who said famously,

“Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.”

Any discussion on UK defence resilience has to include stock replenishment and sustainment.

As we have heard today, there is a place for innovation and new technology which, through research and development, is being brought rapidly to the battlefield by, with and through NATO, and there is a new centre to do that in London. However, as we have also heard, technology is not a substitute for the Armed Forces. As we focus on logistics, we need to understand technology’s additive to the qualities we need of mass, motivated people, equipment, and a sense of mission and purpose.

The war in Ukraine is not the only challenge we face. The rise and global ambition of China, including as a military power, continues to be an issue. There is instability in Africa and there are unresolved issues in the Middle East. Closer to home—and here I declare my interest as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the western Balkans—we need to remain vigilant to President Putin’s wider ambition to sow division, create instability and undermine NATO. The Russians remain very active in the Caucasus and the Balkans. We and our allies need to be active in response and remain strong to prevent the political crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and especially between Serbia and Kosovo, becoming security issues. As I have been taught on many visits to that troubled region, the price of freedom is not free.

The problems we face have been highlighted by many eloquent speeches, and many of the solutions have been tried before. I would argue that the time we are in makes implementation of those solutions urgent in the interest of our national security. The British Armed Forces continue to attract regular and reserve wonderful people, and they need our support. To paraphrase another famous speech from Winston Churchill, we need to brace ourselves to our duty. I am personally grateful for the patience and courtesy that has been demonstrated to me, and I hope to contribute to the important work of this House.