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Britain’s military not prepared for an all-out war, MPs warn

2024-02-04 00:00:00.0 独立报-英国新闻原网页

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The UK’s military is not sufficiently prepared to fight an all-out war, despite such readiness being a vital deterrent to Britain’s adversaries at a time of worsening global instability, MPs have warned.

Britain’s military will remain ill-prepared unless the government addresses stockpile shortages and the recruitment crisis currently hampering the armed forces, according to a new report by the House of Commons defence committee.

The military is “consistently overstretched”, with the “unrelenting pressure” on personnel exacerbating the crisis in recruitment and retention which is seeing more people leaving the armed forces than joining, MPs warned.

The army chief recently warned his forces are not large enough to defend Britain if war breaks out

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The army chief recently warned his forces are not large enough to defend Britain if war breaks out

(Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

The sheer pace of current operations means that ministers risk “being unable to build true warfighting and strategic readiness”, which could threaten the security of the UK, cautioned the cross-party group of politicians.

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They warned that efforts by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to tackle the problem are not “being carried out at the required pace”.

The committee’s inquiry heard that the “hollowing out” of the armed forces since 2010 had undermined the UK’s warfighting resilience and that their reduction in size meant they would exhaust their capabilities “after the first couple of months of the engagement” in a peer-on-peer war.

It comes after defence secretary Grant Shapps warned that the world is “moving from a post-war to pre-war world” and the UK must ensure its “entire defence ecosystem is ready” to defend its homeland.

In another ominous intervention last month, the head of the army General Sir Patrick Sanders said Britain must be prepared to form a “citizen army” of tens of thousands in the event of war with countries such as Russia.

The UK will not be ready to fight an all-out war unless the government addresses the armed forces’ capability and stockpile shortages and recruitment crisis, MPs warned

(Pepe Hogan/PA Wire)

General Sir Patrick warned that his forces, including all reserves, would not be large enough to defend the UK if there was a war, and said it was essential for Britain to lay the foundations for “national mobilisation”.

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