Interrogating the Strategic Defence Review

What the questions tell us about the challenges facing Britain's armed forces

Royal Marines exercise in Australia. © MOD LPhot Finn Stainer-Hutchins

The UK’s Strategic Defence Review, billed as a “root and branch” reassessment of the country’s military capability under the new Labour government, issued its initial call for evidence on 28 August.

Instead of soliciting lengthy position papers the three-person review team headed by Lord Robertson, the veteran Labour peer and former NATO secretary general, has opened a portal, where interested parties are invited to submit 500-word answers to specific questions.

As with any interrogation, you can actually learn a lot from the interrogator’s line of questioning and their language. In this spirit, here’s my take on what the 23 questions posed by the SDR team signal about the potential scope of the review.

Broaching the M-word

First, the SDR is asking participants to propose solutions from the get-go. The understand phase and the solutions phase are being undertaken simultaneously – this is not a pen-sucking exercise.

Second, it is taking the Integrated Operating Concept, first introduced by Sir Nick Carter in 2020, as a non-negotiable starting point. When it comes to solutions for the single services, we are asked for example to:

“Propose how the land domain is developed to contribute to an Integrated Force, recommending measures that accelerate modernisation and transformation and identifying existing capabilities and programmes that do not support this.”

Third, there are two basic states assumed for the armed forces between now and 2050: one where the forces are meeting “enduring, standing commitments” and another where they are “on mobilisation in times of crisis”.

This concept of “on mobilisation” occurs four times in the questionnaire. The non-euphemistic meaning for this is, of course, “at war”.

Thus, for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine the MOD is framing its future plans around the possibility of a peer-vs-peer conflict in which the UK armed forces fight.

This is particularly clear from the context of the specific questions about the mobilised state: what forces do we need if we fight a war; how do we transition the reserves, the civil service etc from normality to warfare; what does homeland resilience look like in a war; and what do medical services need to look like?

The political import of these questions could not be starker. Because any range of professional opinion, from ultra-panglossian to doom laden, would have to conclude that the UK armed forces, and their defence budget, are too small to fight a peer adversary like Russia.

If they are now to be redesigned for scalability in a war of necessity, rather than choice, this has to entail the biggest rethink since 1991, and a change of attitude to funding.

Basically, the framing of the SDR’s questionnaire opens up the possibility of full-scale rearmament. Which is welcomed by this newsletter, which has been calling for unapologetic rearmament since February 2022. But there will have to be a political battle to make this happen.

Prioritising roles and tasks

There are other interesting framings in the questionnaire. Take question #2:

“Propose, in order of priority, the roles UK Defence must be capable of fulfilling 2024-2040.”

If answered honestly, this will blow away for good the MOD’s practice of double counting its military assets. There is a legitimate debate about what should go on that list, and in what order – for example, do we need an Integrated Air and Missile Defence system; and do we need the capability to field a heavy manoeuvre division in Europe?