UK Defence Forces

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for arranging this timely debate. Of course, we should strive for a better world order. But to do so demands achieving and sustaining a position of strength, both moral and physical. The moral strengths are for others with greater insight to profess, but in recent years our physical combat strength has much reduced and is now too often belittled by friends and allies. Numerous pleas to correct this decline have failed to gain much traction in the minds of Governments. Yes, some financial uplift is forecast, but its promised benefit is greatly reduced, even nullified, by a mismatch between the essential purchases of new equipment—much funded by more expensive dollars—and unachievable economies in support and running costs. Constant claims about the 2% input do not focus minds on the one thing that really matters: the fieldable strengths and enduring capabilities that today’s Armed Forces can muster.

If we take history as our guide, this country has failed to be well prepared for conflict when it came. But, like the digital age in which we live, the outburst and speed of conflicts today will far outstrip experiences of the past. This critical point should highlight our current most serious weaknesses. Today we must face a foe with just what is to hand in the front line. It is the scarcity of key fighting tools, the stocks of weapons with which to arm them, and sufficient manpower to keep them going, even when taking casualties, that most concerns and alarms me.

Fortuitously, since the 1982 Falklands conflict, when six high-value ships were sunk and others crippled, aircraft brought down, and hundreds killed or wounded by a small and far from Premier League air force operating at extreme range from its bases, our expeditionary operations have enjoyed unrivalled air superiority in all subsequent conflicts. There is thus a danger in concluding that, like rebooting some virtual digital game, the next conflict will again be fought in a benign air situation. That is far too complacent a view.

What then? Our air forces would face losses in conflict; surface, and sub-surface forces too, might become vulnerable to loss if we could not provide mastery of the air. Unit losses counted on the fingers of one hand, let alone on the scale of those we suffered in three short weeks of combat in the Falklands, would amount to significant percentage setbacks to available strengths. Even small daily rates of loss could not be sustained.

Within a matter of days, not weeks, withdrawal or worse might become the only options available to government. Nor should Governments forget that the deterrent relies not solely on the horror of nuclear war, but on the capability first to resist an aggressor conventionally and with strength. How else should we show national resolve? Surely it would never be by quickly deciding to launch a Trident or two.

So my plea, even while supporting the many worthy activities that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, and others will espouse, is for all to realise how much such success depends on a vital precursor and enabler for this work: our assured ability to deter, and if necessary to fight off conventionally, any foe that challenges our military strength and resolve and threatens our freedoms and our ways of aiding others.