Armed Forces Readiness

Readiness is about acceptable risk. The decisions on what risks to take are ultimately political (based partly on military advice) rather than solely military or parliamentary decisions. Ministers will also inevitably need to reach judgments about the availability of information regarding threats and the UK’s readiness to respond 48 Meg Russell and Lisa James, Parliamentary scrutiny: what is it and why does it matter?, UCL Constitution Unit briefing, September 2023 49 Liaison Committee, Fourth Report of Session 2017–19, The effectiveness and influence of the select committee system, HC 1860, para 51 50 Liaison Committee, Fourth Report of Session 2017–19, The effectiveness and influence of the select committee system, HC 1860, para 91 16 Ready for War? to those threats, and these judgments may change as the threat landscape changes. However, Parliament’s role and our role in particular is to hold Ministers to account for their actions. We cannot fulfil this role without adequate information, along the lines that was available to our predecessors. At present there is no regular mechanism which allows us to scrutinise ministerial decisions on readiness and their impact on risk.

The Government’s reaction to this specific inquiry has also been unacceptably slow and has impeded our work. Responses to our requests for written evidence have arrived many months late and contained very little useful information. We took up the Government’s offer of a meeting in private to review classified information. This was both constructive and informative, but it took place 10 months after our initial request for this data, and there is no guarantee that it will be repeated in the future, which raises the concern about whether there is sufficient ministerial grip on readiness.

In the absence of adequate official information, public and parliamentary scrutiny of and debate about UK armed forces readiness currently relies on media reporting and corridor conversations, leading to suspicion that the forces are less ready than in fact they are. It does not need to be like this. The information flow in many of our NATO allies is far franker. Our request is not for very detailed, very highly classified information, but for information that only the most naïve would think was not already in the hands of the UK’s potential adversaries and their intelligence apparatus.

In a functioning democracy, the House of Commons Defence Committee needs to be routinely informed about the planning assumptions and readiness of the nation’s armed forces. We therefore recommend that—following the Minister’s welcome commitment to work with us—the Government propose how we and our successors can receive at least annually a meaningfully detailed update on the readiness of the UK Armed Forces, taking account of our conclusions above.

We also recommend that the Government explain why previously unclassified information about readiness is no longer published, recognise the reduction in public and parliamentary accountability that this has brought about, and seek to rectify the situation. In future, when a decision is being considered to classify previously available information, we recommend that the Government should consult the relevant House of Commons Select Committee before that decision is made. Ready for War? 17 3 Readiness of the UK Armed Forces Operational readiness

At the end of 2023, over 7,000 UK Armed Forces personnel were deployed on more than 40 operations abroad.51 Some of these operations are long-standing commitments whereas others are in response to unexpected events. In the last quarter of 2023, the Secretary of State deployed a Royal Navy task group to the east Mediterranean and both a P-8 Maritime Patrol Aircraft and a Rivet Joint to the Middle East following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October and the Israeli response. HMS Diamond was also deployed east of Suez, originally to increase the size of the UK’s ongoing Operation KIPION and later joining the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian to secure trade routes. These deployments resulted in an increase of some 1,000 personnel in the region.52 A battalion was also deployed to the NATO KFOR mission on the Kosovo-Serbia border in response to increased tensions.53 In late December, HMS Trent was deployed to Guyana in support of that Commonwealth nation which is facing claims to part of its territory by neighbouring Venezuela.54

Standing commitments and ‘flying the flag’ operations can play a vital role in building alliances and partnerships that could help deter or win a future war. The Minister for the Armed Forces highlighted the work which the Rangers carried out countering Russian influence55 and the Secretary of State cited the deployment of the Carrier Strike Group to the Indo-Pacific as being critical in building relationships with partners in the region.56

The Secretary of State told us that in relation to the additional deployments to KFOR and the Middle East, his “experience of our Armed Forces has been that when I have needed something so far, it has been there”: They will say yes, but they will also say, “But these are the compromises you will be making.” … I haven’t found any of those to be unreasonable or unsustainable decisions to make. … I have been very impressed, with more in reserve on each of these if we wanted.57 Appropriate operational readiness was essential to enable these deployments and the ability of the Armed Forces to respond to crisis situations in an effective and timely manner is evident.58

The Minister for the Armed Forces acknowledged that the UK Armed Forces were deployed in excess of what the force structure was designed for, noting that “there is absolutely no pretending that we are not spending resource more keenly than our 51 X (formerly known as Twitter) post by the Ministry of Defence, 21 December 2023 [Accessed 26 January 2024] 52 HC Deb, 20 November 2023, col. 3; Defence Secretary visits Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories to explore options to boost humanitarian aid, Ministry of Defence Press Release, 7 December 2023 ; HC Deb 19 December 2023; HCWS163 [Commons Written Ministerial Statement] 53 Defence Secretary deploys UK forces to Kosovo for NATO peacekeeping mission, Ministry of Defence Press Notice, 1 October 2023 54 Guyana: UK to send warship to South America amid Venezuela tensions, BBC News, 24 December 2023; Royal Navy patrol ship visits Guyana amid border claim, Royal Nay press release, 18 January 2024 55 Q406 56 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q35 57 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q12–13 58 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52 Q12 18 Ready for War? current force levels would require, but in an age as unstable and insecure as this is—and worsening—we have no choice but to do that”.59 When we questioned how sustainable crisis response deployments were, the Minister declined to tell the Committee what the opportunity costs of such deployments were, beyond acknowledging that the UK Armed Forces had a finite number of personnel and platforms.60 However, the CEO of DE&S cited the high operational tempo as the reason that a number of platforms have not entered planned maintenance.61

Professor Michael Clarke told us “British forces over the past 30 years have done a great deal of operating, but have not prepared for war fighting, and there is a big difference between operating efficiently and well, and preparing for war fighting. The Ukraine war has brought the spectre of industrial warfare back to Europe in ways that have been relatively surprising, I think.”62 Warfighting readiness

All three witnesses in our first evidence session questioned the warfighting readiness of the UK Armed Forces.63 General Lord Houghton later told us that the “hollowing out” of the Armed Forces since 2010 had led to shortfalls in the UK’s warfighting resilience: one of the ways in which we were able to cope—take risk with less money— was to take risk against the warfighting consumables, or stocks, that we held for major warfare. Arguably, you could say that at the time—2010— that was a fair risk to take; clearly, in the judgment of the Government of the day, it was a fair risk to take. By the time I was writing my first letter on arrival to the [then] Prime Minister, from memory, I was warning him then that the threats of the possibility that we might be called on to cross the threshold of formalised warfare against an aggressive Russia were no longer latent but patent, to use my language. And they were acknowledged.64 General Sir Nick Carter noted that the reduction in the size of the Armed Forces undermined their resilience, with the lack of mass and scale meaning that in a peer-on- peer conflict, the Forces would have exhausted their capabilities “after the first couple of months of the engagement”.65 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman told us that if we had to fight a come-as-you-are war, the Armed Forces would have difficulty given their current resilience in relation to equipment and stockpiles.66

The MOD have acknowledged that there are gaps in their warfighting readiness. In written evidence submitted to this inquiry, the MOD highlighted that investment is required in: • Defence rail outload theatre capability; • Infrastructure and warehousing munitions; 59 Q427; 365 60 Q429;431–2; 435 61 Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 451, Q114 62 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q11 63 Q1 64 Q75 65 Q167 66 Oral evidence taken on 5 September 2023, HC (2022–23) 1804, Q33 Ready for War? 19 • Infrastructure at key ports and airbases; • Operational medical capacity; • Armoured vehicle equipment support; and • Interim and future strategic lift concept phase.67

The Chief of the Defence Staff also told us that the MOD was investing in capabilities such as “complex weapons, general munitions, and operational spares stocks to meet the needs of sustained operation”.68 The Minister for the Armed Forces argued that decisions taken to make savings at the expense of warfighting readiness were correct when they were taken but recognised that “there is a whole load of stuff that we disinvested in that we urgently need to reinvest in”.69 He acknowledged that the MOD “have an awful lot of work to do to recover the … readiness that we enjoyed during the cold war, and that we require again now”.70

Using open source evidence provided to us, we have below set out a range of capability gaps and readiness shortfalls in each of the Front Line Commands. We do not doubt that the Government will be able to point to procurement programmes and arrangements with Allies which alleviate the situation. Nevertheless, the evidence we have received demonstrates the scale of the issue. The British army

General Sir Nick Carter told us that the Army was the “weakest service” and that it had “significant capability deficiencies”.71 Both Dr Simon Anglim and General Lord Houghton questioned whether the UK could field the heavy division which is committed to NATO without an Ally providing a Brigade.72 Professor Malcolm Chalmers questioned whether any such division could be deployed given that the British Army lacked both equipment and the logistics required to support it.73 Dr Rowan Allport of the Human Security Centre listed the capability resource and readiness shortfalls of the Army which he described as “substantial”. These included: • The lack of Infantry Fighting Vehicle once Warrior is replaced by Boxer (which is an Armoured Personnel Carrier); • The lack of funding for new and upgraded systems with resources only available to procure 1,016 Boxer APCs out of a requirement for 1,305 and 61 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) of a requirement for 75, plus only eight recovery vehicles out of a requirement for 10; • The reduction in the fleet of Challenger tanks as they are upgraded to Challenger 3s and ammunition shortages for the Challenger 2’s 120mm rifled main gun; • The delay in the delivery of the Ajax Armoured Fighting Vehicle; 67 Ministry of Defence (AFR0009) 68 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 69 Q392; 410 70 Q350 71 Q174; 176 72 Q22; Q107 73 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q37 20 Ready for War? • The readiness of the AS-90 self-propelled artillery fleet which has been reduced by the (necessary) donation of 30 vehicles to Ukraine. The announcement that the UK will purchase 14 Archer artillery systems is not a full recapitalisation; • Inadequate domestic air and missile defence capabilities. The British Army holds responsibility for the majority of UK ground-based surface-to-air missile unit but only one medium-range and one short-range SAM regular regiments, plus one short-range Army Reserve regiment, are in existence. Ballistic missi

Many of Dr Allport’s assessments of the capability shortages regarding the Army’s fighting vehicles align with what we discovered when we produced our 2021 Report on the challenges faced by the Army in updating its heavy armoured capability.76 When we suggested that there were serious deficiencies in the Army’s capabilities to the Chief of the Defence Staff, he told us that: We have a warfighting division that we put forward to NATO, and we recognise that we need to strengthen that division. That is what is in existence now, and we will strengthen it even further. … I have to be careful when it comes to specific numbers, but I absolutely acknowledge, on the Challengers that we provided to Ukraine and the AS-90s, that we had, on 74 As outlined in the 2021 Integrated Review and the subsequent Defence Command Paper. 75 Human Security Centre (AFR0004) 76 Defence Committee, Fifth Report of Session 2019–21, Obsolescent and outgunned: the British Army’s armoured vehicle capability, HC 659 Ready for War? 21 paper, quite large fleets, but the number of tanks and batteries of guns that we could put forward with confidence was lower than we anticipated. … We accept that the vehicles are really old. We are investing like crazy in our warfighting division to improve it for 2030. It is still a warfighting division; it is not the one that we want.77

These capability shortfalls exist despite the fact that the Army budget has increased over the past decade and investment in the Army as an overall proportion of Defence spending has been maintained. Between the financial years 2013–2014 and 2022–2023, the Army’s overall budget grew in real terms by 15%78 and over the past three years the Army consistently received around 25% of the overall budget, which represented the largest area of spending within MOD. The Chief of the Defence Staff told us that the British Army’s budget is currently £12 billion a year and will soon rise to £14 billion. This will “amount to more than £130 billion over the next 10 years, of which over £40 billion will be spent on equipment”.79

When we discussed the current state of the Army with the Chief of the General Staff, he acknowledged issues existed but pointed to the work which he had done to “mobilise the Army so that it would be ready to fight with what it has in the course of the next two or three years” which included “significant uplifts in investments, in our workforce, in improving the availability of our equipment and in accelerating modernisation, to significant investment in training and increasingly—not at the pace I would like and not at the volume I would like, but increasingly—to investment in stockpiles”.80 He gave examples of actions taken—the replacement of gifted artillery pieces within a two-month timeframe and doubling the amount of logistic lift.81 On training, he emphasised that whilst in 2020–21 only 10% of the Army’s battle groups had undertaken combined arms training, this will have risen to 90% by next year. Furthermore, the Army had carried out a divisional-level exercise in 2023 which consisted of 4,000 troops, 2,000 vehicles and 40 sub-units at 22 different training sites. He also announced that investments in stockpiles would result in “sufficient stockpiles for fighting, among the brigades that would make up a division, within a year or two”.82 He went on to highlight that the British Army was the most productive in Europe and currently delivering 130% of its capacity (given its resources).83

Despite these actions, the Minister for the Armed Forces acknowledged that the “complete renewal of the British Army’s fighting echelon is in order to sustain our ability to put a British Division into the NATO fight under a British-led corps” would not be realised until “ the two Armoured Infantry Brigades and the Deep Recce Strike Brigade are fully constituted in the middle of the next decade”.84 77 Q65; 70 78 In comparison the Navy’s grew by 15% and Air’s by 18%. 79 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 80 Q222 81 Q237 82 Q236–7 83 Q223 84 Q 441;443 22 Ready for War? The Royal Navy

We have been told that the Navy is undergoing a “maritime renaissance”85 and that the UK is moving towards a maritime strategy (which prioritises a naval response above land or air capabilities).86 The Chief of the Defence Staff told us that the Royal Navy made up 20–25% of NATO maritime capacity (as compared to the RAF making up 10% of NATO’s air capacity).87 Despite this, there are still capability gaps—Nick Childs pointed to the ability to deploy a carrier strike capability being hindered by “questions over aircraft that you could put there, the airborne early warning capability aboard, the actual weapons capability and integration of stand off weapons that would make a difference in terms of being able to take the fight to the enemy”.88 He also questioned whether the SSN89 force—platforms and personnel—would be able to cope with the demands of deploying simultaneously to the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.90 General Lord Houghton pointed to the shortage of available vessels and further noted that he found the high proportion of naval equipment which was inoperable to be “quite disturbing”.91

Dr Rowan Allport of the Human Security Centre produced a detailed list of what he perceived to be Royal Navy readiness gaps and capability shortfalls which included: • Delays to the Type 26 frigate programme which have resulted in the Type 23 frigate force being run on far past its expected lifespan, meaning sustainment of the platform had become increasingly difficult and expensive. • The reliance on RFA Fort Victoria as the only RFA solid stores ship is compounded by the fact that it is at reduced readiness due to personnel shortages. The replacement Fleet Solid Support Ships are (currently) due to enter service from 2028 onwards—meaning that RFA Fort Victoria will more than likely be required for the Carrier Strike Group deployment when it travels to the Indo- Pacific in 2025. • The availability of SSNs has dropped as a result of delays in the Astute-class attack submarine building programme. Even once all seven Astutes are in service, it is questionable whether the force will be able to sustain their current tasks and the additional deployments to Australia and wider region from 2026 onwards. • Delays to the Power Improvement Project (PIP) upgrade on the Type 45s to replace the two existing diesel generators with three more powerful models have impacted availability of the vessels. • The Littoral Response Group (South), which will operate in the Indo-Pacific, will be led by RFA Argus—the ship “is now 42 years old and will inevitably be increasingly prone to mechanical and other issues as time passes”. 85 Q100 86 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q44 87 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q63 88 Q13 89 SSN (Ship Submersible Nuclear) is the designation for a nuclear-powered attack submarines. 90 Q26 91 Q100 Ready for War? 23 • The Royal Navy’s Merlin HM2 fleet has only 30 aircraft but is over-tasked, responsible for both most Navy airborne anti-submarine warfare missions92 and Airborne Surveillance and Control taskings.93

These gaps are compounded by the efforts which have previously been made to improve the availability of Royal Navy vessels. Nick Childs described these as “in part, robbing Peter to pay Paul within the fleet in terms of stores, key equipment to cannibalise and sometimes personnel. It will be a difficult problem to fix”.99 We raised many of the above issues in our 2021 Report which looked at the role and capabilities of the Royal Navy.100

In response to questions on naval readiness, the Chief of the Defence Staff told us that the Royal Navy was “on the up” with significant transformation between 2020 and 2030 as it “becomes a carrier Navy again, that alongside the Air Force goes from fourth generation jets to fifth generation jets, and that then has, by dint of previous investment, 22 ships and submarines coming through”, citing the Fleet Solid Support Ships, Type 26, and both Astute and Dreadnought-class submarines as examples. He also stressed that all commitments (across defence) are being met.101 The First Sea Lord also pointed to future capabilities as being the key to readiness: We are going through a tremendously exciting transformation at the moment: the Type 26, which is a world-leading ASW frigate; the Type 31s, which are a really innovative way of thinking differently about a general purpose frigate; and the new submarines that we have on order. All these are just about to arrive, in strategic terms. For us, that represents one of the single biggest transformations in the history of the Navy—when we 92 As Wildcat HMA2 helicopters do not possess a dipping sonar. 93 When fitted with the Crowsnest system. 94 With 32 missile launch cells. 95 With 24 missile launch cells 96 The Resolution-class Polaris missile-carrying submarines were known to have had a number of technical problems towards the end of their lives. The longest-serving Resolution-class remained in service for 28 years. The longest-serving British nuclear submarine was operational for 33 years. HMS Vanguard was commissioned 30 years ago and will likely serve into the 2030s. 97 Brigade-scale Royal Marine landings are no longer envisaged. 98 Human Security Centre (AFR0004) 99 Q29 100 Defence Committee Third Report of Session 2021–22, “We’re going to need a bigger Navy” HC (2021–22) 168 101 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q74 24 Ready for War? genuinely move from an analogue Navy to a digital Navy. It is someth

However, both First Sea Lord and the Director Force Generation of the Royal Navy (Rear Admiral Steve Moorhouse) acknowledged that there were further steps to be taken, in terms of maintenance of vessels,103 both increasing lethality and managing stockpiles (including working closely with the supply chain to ensure they “understand the imperatives”)104 and continuing to improve training.105 The First Sea Lord also acknowledged concerns with the pressure put on personnel as a result of the current state of platforms, citing both the submarine service and naval engineers as professions which have had huge demands made of them.106

The difficulty of crewing naval vessels has resulted in consideration being given to removing some ships from the Fleet.107 The Royal Navy currently has two amphibious assault ships (HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion) which cycle in availability with one placed into maintenance and extended readiness whilst the other is held at readiness for operational duties. These ships are used by the Royal Marines and can deliver, sustain and recover troops via helicopter and/or specialist landing craft in potentially hostile environments. In early January, there were reports suggesting that the MOD were considering retiring HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark in advance of their out of service dates in the 2030s. When questioned the Government originally stated that the matter was still under consideration.108 However, on 24 January, the Minister for Development and Africa responded to a question in the House to say that Government was supportive of retaining the vessels rather than seeing them scrapped or mothballed.109 The RAF

Both Generals Lord Houghton and Sir Nick Carter questioned the RAF’s ability to engage in peer-to-peer warfighting. General Lord Houghton suggested that the RAF had “good kit” in relation to its platforms and weapons but not enough of them—and a pilot shortage problem.110 He went to note that the RAF was rarely asked to carry out a short notice operation (other than QRA111) on its own, meaning that whilst it worked well in alliances on standing tasks, it would face difficulties in a warfighting situation because the 102 Q311 103 Q315 104 Q320 105 Q322–3 106 Q325; 336–7 107 Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 451, Q48–50 108 HC Deb, 20 November 2023, col. 3 109 HC Deb, 24 Jan 2024, Col.400; Col. 401 110 Q100; Q143 111 Quick Reaction Alert—the rapid deployment of RAF Typhoons against aircraft threats. Ready for War? 25 RAF “can force packet—that is run from CAOC112—in a way that is impressive, but [is] far more ugly with ground combat”.113 Professor Justin Bronk was in agreement with this assessment, telling us that: The big thing on munitions is also that they are not the right kind of munitions. We have a reasonable number of munitions for permissive or semi-permissive environments—for, essentially, very precisely blowing up technicals, killing snipers on rooftops and things. … [On fighting the Russians] we would have to beat them on the ground, but, ultimately, our armies will never be resourced or the size required to beat them land for land. Our strategy is predicated, as is the entire western military instrument, on air superiority. Put bluntly, we have a Russia problem if we cannot establish air superiority over where we have to fight.114

The Human Security Centre again produced a list of outstanding or near-future capability, resource and readiness shortfalls which the RAF faces: • A shortfall in combat aircraft numbers. The retirement of 30 Tranche 1 Typhoon aircraft in 2025 (with the majority of their airframe lives remaining) will leave only 107 Typhoons in service. 48 F-35B aircraft should be delivered by the end of 2025,115 but these will be jointly operated by the Royal Navy and will have a commitment to carrier operations. • There is also a shortfall in fixed-wing transport aircraft numbers and capabilities caused by the retirement of the C-130J Hercules116 with plans to procure greater numbers of the A400M judged by the National Audit Office to be unaffordable. • Delays in the procurement of 14 new model Chinook helicopters with extended ranges have occurred due to budget shortfalls. The new Chinooks are intended to replace older model Chinooks but the new model’s increased range could help cover some tasks previously assigned to the C-130J fleet and in supporting the Persistent Engagement strategy. • There has been a lack of a dedicated Suppression of Enemy Air Defence/ Destruction of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD/DEAD) capability since the RAF retired the Air-Launched Anti-Radiation Missile (ALARM) in 2013. The planned introduction by the UK of the SPEAR 3 missile with a multi-mode seeker and a range of around 80 miles could—particularly if used in conjunction with the F-35B’s electronic warfare system—provide a new SEAD/DEAD capability. • Failures in the pilot training system have led to shortfalls in pilot numbers. • There are insufficient numbers of Maritime Patrol Aircraft and Wedgetail AEW1 airborne early warning and control aircraft. 112 Combined Air Operations Centres—multinational headquarters responsible for planning, directing, tasking, coordinating, supervising and supporting air operations. 113 Q101 114 Q11 115 Additional orders are planned to bring the F-35B fleet size to 74 and pla

Professor Justin Bronk also raised the issue of F-35 fleet size, describing the F-35 force as “triple or quadruple-hatted in terms of how many parts of UK defence are counting on it for how many mission outputs in the case of a war [and] … there are not very many of them.”119 Professor Bronk also addressed other issues raised by the Human Security Centre including the pilot shortage—which he attributed to a lack of RAF engineers and supply of spares to sustain the fleet and keep them flying; the lack of SEAD/DEAD capability (which, despite the planned introduction of SPEAR CAP 3 in 2028,120 will be compounded by the small number of F-35s) and the need for the hardening of air bases or the ability to disperse aircraft to a wider range of air bases and airports to avoid their destruction by enemy attack.121 We also examined many of these points in our recent report on aviation procurement.122

The Chief of the Defence Staff told us that whilst there may be a tension between training and operational sorties, by Spring 2023 the RAF had delivered twice as many operational sorties as in the previous 12 months while also managing to deploy to the US Red Flag series of training events. The Red Flag series had seen the RAF being tested “against some of the most difficult air threats in the world, [and the RAF] did incredibly well. Some of our missile systems are far superior to even the Americans’.”123

The Chief of the Air Staff argued that the RAF had benefitted significantly from investment in the past 15 years which had resulted in the bringing into service the F-35 fleet; A400M fleet; the Voyager fleet and the P-8 Maritime Patrol Aircraft fleet. This had made the RAF “more capable” and therefore “better able to meet the threats of the high- end fight”. However, he acknowledged the concerns about dispersal. He told us the current level of “agility and operational flexibility” was hampering the RAF’s warfighting ability leading to a need to increase flexibility in the airfields the RAF utilised. This would require “investment in spares and some further investment in infrastructure and in people”.124 Strategic Command

Strategic Command is a joint force Command, working across defence and with the three Front Line Commands to integrate capabilities across all domains. Commander, Strategic Command told us that he would regard the different parts of his organisations as some of the jewels in the crown of defence’s capability: Permanent Joint Headquarters 117 The new aircraft are compatible with the boom-receptacle in-flight refuelling system used by the US Air Force amongst others. The A400M is also capable of boom-receptacle in-flight refuelling but the use of UK A400Ms for such a purpose has been ruled out by the MOD. 118 Human Security Centre (AFR0004) 119 Q46 120 Letter from the Minister of State for Defence Procurement to the Committee, Ministry of Defence, 10 July 2023 121 Q37; Q42; Q46 122 Defence Committee, Tenth Report of Session 2022–23, Aviation Procurement: Winging it?, HC 178 123 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q93 124 Q241; Q243 Ready for War? 27 (PJHQ) which “effectively co-ordinat[es] defence-wide operations”; Defence Intelligence; Special Forces; the National Cyber Force; Defence Digital (“looking at both defensive cyber operations but also providing the digital capability and digital transformation for all of defence”); Defence Medical Services; the Chief of Defence Logistics and Support; responsibility for the UK’s overseas bases and the Defence Attaché network; defence thinking and education (including the development of concepts and doctrine); and an innovation hub.125

He acknowledged the difficulty of talking about readiness in relation to Strategic Command given that “a lot of my organisation operates at readiness all the time, and readiness does not apply to quite a lot of my organisation”. He cited the nature of “constant engagement” in the work of PJHQ; Defence Intelligence; Special Forces and defensive cyber operators. However, he also acknowledged that there were weaknesses, for example he had “concerns over our ability to provide the scale of medical cover that we are going to need in the context of a war-fighting operation”.126

In July the Chief of the Defence Staff told us that, as well as in medical and health, there were also skills and capability shortages in cyber/digital127 and in addition, the MOD Annual Report and Accounts highlighted intelligence as a “key workforce capability area for priority action”. The shortfall in those professions (alongside engineering) is now being addressed through the development of pan-Defence plans.128

When we asked the Commander Strategic Command how he was working on alleviating shortfalls, he provided the following examples: Health • Increasing the level of medical stocks whilst working with the NHS to ensure rotation the stock from MOD shelves through the NHS in order to avoid wasting product by having it go out of date on the shelves.129 • Considering defence’s ability to deploy civilian medical staff (depending on the environment alongside the nature and level of threat) and working with NATO to understand where other nations might be able to provide capability.130 • Employing locums as surge capacity to resolve current domestic medical and dentistry capacity shortfalls.131 Digital • Exploring the potential for introducing bursaries for 16-year olds to encourage them to come into the service at 18 with an expectation that they will serve a shorter career than traditional. He told us that the “vision is that they will serve for seven years. We will give them an in-service degree. We expect many of them to leave in their mid-20s, hopefully then going out into the UK economy and 125 Q366 126 Q367 127 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 128 Ministry of Defence, Annual Report and Accounts 2022–23, HC 1468, July 2023, p 46 129 Q367 130 Q369 131 Q374 28 Ready for War? helping with the right skills, qualifications and approach to life to make them influential members in the digital and cyber business of the UK. We hope they will come back at lateral entry later in their career, and certainly that they will join the reserves.”132

Both he and the Minister for the Armed Forces highlighted the importance of exploring a range of interventions in order to attract a modern workforce, with the Minister highlighting the Haythornthwaite Report as an ongoing project in this area.133 Commander, Strategic Command also pointed to the Reserve as being a significant source of skill and capability, highlighting the role of Reservists with specialist skills in providing capability in the aforementioned Strategic Command shortfalls: medical, cyber and intelligence.134 We examine the utilisation of the Reserve and the Haythornthwaite Report later in this chapter. What are the cross-Service issues? Stockpiles

When we asked each of the single service heads what shortfalls their Forces were carrying, all mentioned stockpiles as an area of significant (current) concern.135 The high rate of consumption of munitions in the war in Ukraine has exceeded the assumptions (and therefore the quantities held) by most Western forces. Estimates for the use of artillery rounds in Ukraine were 5,000 a day in February 2023 (equivalent to a smaller European country’s annual order in peacetime)136. In June 2021, the rate at which Ukraine was using Javelin missiles would have exhausted the entire US stockpile in 42 days.137 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman told us that “a very high priority is to crank up the industrial base so that we have got the stocks even just to sustain Ukraine in the current war, never mind to fill in the backlog that we have”.138

Although all of the Chiefs had pointed to events in Ukraine as the catalyst for investment in stockpiles, General Lord Houghton and General Sir Nick Carter both told us that stockpiles had been reducing for a number of years before the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.139 We have also heard concerns in previous inquiries from General Ben Hodges (who recounted how the British Army ran out of munitions 8 days into a 10-day US wargaming exercise in 2021) and General Sir Richard Barrons (who told us in April 2022 that he would be surprised if the UK had sufficient munitions to sustain high- intensity conflict for more than a week).140

The Government has previously pointed to its successes in signing contracts—in June 2022 it noted that it had secured “contracts for Next Generation Light AntiTank Weapons, Starstreak High Velocity Missiles, Lightweight Multirole Missiles, Archer 6X6 Artillery 132 Q406 133 Q406–7 134 Q453 135 Q213; 220; 237; 322 136 Ammunition supply chain crisis: Ukraine war tests Europe in race to rearm, Financial Times, 7 February 2023 137 Alex Vershinin, The Return of Industrial Warfare, RUSI Commentary, 17 June 2022 138 Oral evidence taken on 5 September 2023, HC (2022–23) 1804, Q29 139 Q76; 162 140 Oral evidence taken on 6 July 2021, HC (2021–2022) 166, Q282; Oral evidence taken on 19 April 2022, HC (2021– 2022) 608, Q93 Ready for War? 29 Systems and Carl Gustaf recoilless rifles”.141 In addition to the £560 million announced at the Autumn Statement in 2022, the IR23 had announced £1.95 billion to replenish stockpiles in 2023–24 and 2024–25 “and to increase them in line with a reassessment of appropriate levels … and to invest in the resilience of the UK’s munitions infrastructure”142 and DCP23 a further £2.5 billion on “replenishing—and augmenting—” munitions and stockpiles “through the coming decade”143. However, the NAO’s recent report on the Equipment Plan 2023–33 found that the £1.95 billion allocated in the IR23 (and then the Spring Budget 2023) was not ringfenced and so the MOD “is considering using it to help offset its funding shortfall in 2023–24 and 2024–25”.144

Beyond securing investment, there are further difficulties in replenishing stockpiles at pace. We heard from Professor Michael Clarke that the companies responsible for supplying precision weapons to UK Armed Forces have had small production runs for some time which there are challenges in scaling up, partly because of the consolidation of companies in defence industry both at the prime and sub-prime levels.145 Media and think tank reports have also demonstrated that there is insufficient industrial capacity to replace munitions transferred to Ukraine at the speed required, as set out in the box below.146 Box 1: Challenges for industry in increasing production of munitions • The small pool of consumers of military equipment means that a production line will be closed if there are insufficient orders to maintain it. Many components and subcomponents are likely to be provided by a subcontractor—without revenue from that line, these may go out of business or switch focus to providing parts for a different production line making the original line difficult to restart, as happened in relation to NLAW.147 • There are supply chain bottlenecks and a lack of available raw and processed materials. The manufacturing of components and subcomponents—which in many cases stopped or slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic—requires the sourcing of production materials (“chemicals for explosives to metals and plastics for fuses and artillery shell casings”) some of which can take months to arrive. Without an increase in the capacity of the supply chain, there cannot be an increase in the production of the finished product. This is further hampered by other supply chain issues, for example: the difficulty of sourcing castings and forgings (the US Navy is investing in metal additive manufacturing due to the scarcity of producers148); the scarcity of semiconductors (for instance, the British Army has found that the lead time for delivery of semiconductors has increased from one to three wee

In our March 2023 Report ‘Special Relationships? The US, UK and NATO’ we highlighted the issue of industrial capacity in relation to supply chain capacity and a lack of skilled workers.152 We were told by Government that: Further developing strategic alignment with industry will mean that together we can better understand long-term strategic challenges and identify solutions to issues such as the availability of critical skills, resilience within the supply chain, and productivity. We will outline how we are working more closely with industry in the upcoming Defence Command Paper Refresh.153

We address the DCP23’s policy intentions on the MOD’s relationship with industry and the steps it has subsequently taken to improve industrial capacity in the final chapter on strategic readiness. Recruitment and retention

The Haythornthwaite Review (examined in the section below) found that in 2022 there was a net outflow (the difference between the number of people leaving and those joining) of 4,660 from the UK Armed Forces with the “overall voluntary outflow rate increasing to 6.0%, up 1.7% from the previous year”. In the past decade the forces’ proportion of untrained personnel has “significantly increased”, which means that the “rising demand for skills is already not being met in some key areas, including cyber, engineering, nuclear, digital, logistics, aviation and medical” and that there are now “significant risks to overall capability arising from skills shortages in cyber and digital, intelligence, engineering 150 Foreign Affairs Committee, First Report of Session 2023–24, A rock and a hard place: building critical mineral resilience, HC 371, paras 5; 9 151 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q77 152 Defence Committee, Sixth Report of Session 2022–23, Special Relationships? US, UK and NATO, HC 184, Paras 86–95 153 Defence Committee, Sixth Special Report of Session 2022–23, Special Relationships? US, UK and NATO: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixth Report, HC 1533, Para 16 Ready for War? 31 (including nuclear), logistics and health/medical professions”.154 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman underlined that without sufficient numbers of trained personnel, the Services simply would not be able to operate the equipment that was available to them.155

In January 2024, we took evidence on Army recruitment from Capita with which the Army has a contract to administer recruitment services.156 We heard that in 2022– 23, Capita recruited 68% of the target number of people that the Army said it required to maintain the workforce. In 2023–24, it expects to recruit 70% of the target number (although three quarters of the way through the recruitment year it had successfully recruited barely half).157 In relation to the ‘pinch point’ professions, the Army had given Capita 73 specific professions where recruitment was necessary—in two of them (HR and Communications Specialists) current recruitment was only one in five (22%) of the target number but against others (“Paras, combat med techs, vehicle mechanics, dog handlers and police”) we were told that recruitment was within 10% of the target. We have requested a full list of the requirements and Capita’s performance against those targets.158

The MOD publicly concedes that for every eight service personnel who leaves, it currently recruits five people, although we understand the situation may have deteriorated further.159

The Chief of the Air Force highlighted the difficulty in recruitment presented by the UK labour market which had 1.3 million vacancies at the start of 2023.160 The First Sea Lord described the Armed Forces as being “in a battle for national talent” which required the Armed Forces to be “as attractive a place as it possibly can be for young people to come to and commit to.”161 The most recent figures (from October 2023) show the current state of the UK Armed Forces: 154 Ministry of Defence, Agency and Agility: Incentivising people in a new era, A review of UK Armed Forces incentivisation by Rick Haythornthwaite, June 2023, p 2; 15 155 Oral evidence taken on 5 September 2023, HC (2022–23) 1804, Q16 156 This means that Capita is responsible for attracting candidates and the application process until the recruits arrive in basic training. 157 Oral evidence taken on 16 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 480, Q13; 17 158 Q39–42 159 Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 451, Q7; Q11 160 Q220 161 Q344 32 Ready for War? (cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:11)(cid:9)(cid:12)(cid:14) (cid:15)M(cid:6)(cid:2)B(cid:16)M(cid:17)X,(cid:18)X(cid:19)(cid:1)X(cid:20),(cid:6)(cid:21)(cid:2)WX(cid:15)(cid:2)(cid:6)(cid:22)7(cid:21)(cid:2)X!(cid:2)(cid:6)W,BB(cid:2)(cid:23) (cid:24)(cid:25)X(cid:26)X(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:25)(cid:29)(cid:30)(cid:31) X"#"$ %X&(cid:31)(cid:28) (cid:31)(cid:24)’(cid:31)X(cid:29)(X)*++#X-$./X0(cid:31) X(cid:28)(cid:31)1(cid:25)2X’31(cid:28)(cid:31)X(cid:26)X(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:25)(cid:29)(cid:30)(cid:31) X"#"" (cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:13)X!,7BMWX(cid:3)B(cid:4)X(cid:5)(cid:6)(cid:2)B(cid:4)W (cid:7)(cid:8)4(cid:8)(cid:11)4(cid:8)(cid:14) (cid:20)5(cid:23)(cid:23)6(cid:5)78(cid:2)X(cid:5)(cid:6)(cid:3)7B(cid:2)(cid:4)X(cid:15)M(cid:6)(cid:2)B(cid:16)M(cid:17)X9:;<:=X>X:?(cid:20)@X(cid:3)B(cid:4)X(cid:20)5(cid:23)(cid:23)6(cid:5)78(cid:2)X(cid:5)(cid:6)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:2) (cid:5)(cid:6)(cid:3)7B(cid:2)(cid:4)X(cid:15)M(cid:

We understand from witnesses including the Minister for the Armed Forces and 0(cid:31) 3(cid:29)& Capita that this labour market challenge is not just an issue in the UK, and that partner m(cid:7)iUl(cid:11)iUta(cid:9)r(cid:14)ies in! (cid:2)N,DA(cid:23)T(cid:2)XO(cid:23)(cid:2)(cid:18), MAXM(cid:17)u(cid:2)sXt(cid:20)r5aMl5i(cid:6)a(cid:2), X:N(cid:2)eWw(cid:2)(cid:6) (cid:22)Z(cid:2)eWaXPla(cid:14)nPd(cid:14) and Japan are also struggling to recruit.162 31X(cid:25)F(cid:31)X0(cid:24)’(cid:25)X(cid:26)"XG(cid:29)1(cid:25)F’X-(cid:26)X(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:25)(cid:29)(cid:30)(cid:31) X"#""XHX$#XI(cid:31)0(cid:25)(cid:31)G(cid:30)(cid:31) X"#"$2 Indeed, when we visited the US in March 2023 we heard of difficulties that the US Services %X&(cid:31)(cid:28) (cid:31)(cid:24)’(cid:31)X(cid:29)(X+(cid:26)#X-A.VX0(cid:31) X(cid:28)(cid:31)1(cid:25)2X(cid:28)(cid:29)G0(cid:24) (cid:31)&XK3(cid:25)FX(cid:25)F(cid:31)X0 (cid:31)L3(cid:29)N’X(cid:26)"XG(cid:29)1(cid:25)F were encountering in recruiting and retaining personnel. 0(cid:31) 3(cid:29)&

In November, the Secretary of State told us that recruitment and retention was an area of concern for him given that in September 2023 there had been “183 pinch points, of which 61 were assessed as having a significant or acute impact”.163 The Minister for the Armed Forces echoed this: The existence of these pinch-point trades where we have shortages is a real concern. You are absolutely right to speculate that they are mostly the trades that are very technical and, frankly, make the force work. … We have to do some pretty urgent work to fill some of those pinch points because they are limiting what we can do with the force for as long as we are carrying the gaps that we have.164 162 Q402; Oral evidence taken on 16 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 480, Q90; 96 163 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q46–7 164 Q402 Ready for War? 33 Utilisation of the Reserve

A number of our witnesses were concerned with how the UK Armed Forces utilised their reserve forces. Professor Justin Bronk suggested that neither the Army nor the Air Force had “really figured out how to use the reserves sustainably” and Lord Houghton told us that that the UK did “not have a properly functioning Reserve” which he described as a “national embarrassment”.165 Professor Vince Connolly told us that part of the issue for the Army Reserve was that it was expected to provide both “individual backfill and some measure of collective capability” but that its size and its training (focused on “a wide set of missions and tasks”) hindered its ability to provide sustainability in an enduring high intensity large scale conflict.166 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman thought that the Reserve ought to become a “pretty high priority” and that work ought to be carried out by the Services on how best to use reservists as well as integrating the Reserve with the Regular Force. He suggested that “there is an awful lot you could do with the reserves at a time when you are finding it difficult to recruit the regulars. It is a cultural thing as much as anything else”.167 Box 2: The Reserve Forces The reserve forces are made up of the following components: • The volunteer reserve forces (also referred to as the Active Reserve) are the Army Reserve, the Maritime Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. These are volunteers who commit to train for a certain number of days each year. Both civilians and ex-regular service personnel can join. • The ex-regular reserve force (also referred to as the Strategic Reserve) are those personnel who have left the Armed Forces but are subject to call-out (able to be mobilised for the period specified in their original commitment to serve) or recall (able to be mobilised in a national emergency despite having completed their residual commitment). • The Sponsored Reserve are reservists who are employed during a third-party contract to fulfil a

As with the regular Forces, the Reserve Forces also saw a higher outflow than intake in the year up to October 2023.168 The External Scrutiny Team (mandated to report on the ‘state of the volunteer reserve forces’) found in their 2023 annual report that “the state, 165 Q47; Q108 166 Professor Vince Connolly (AFR0006) 167 Oral evidence taken on 5 September 2023, HC (2022–23) 1804, Q18–20 168 Ministry of Defence, Quarterly service personnel statistics 1 October 2023, 14 December 2023 34 Ready for War? or health, of the Reserve is poor and declining”.169 Despite this, they welcomed what they saw as a “strong narrative emerging which recognises the purpose of the Reserve” and a desire amongst the senior leadership of the Single Services and Strategic Command to make better use of the Reserve. In particular, they welcomed decisions by the newly established Army Reserve Executive Committee.170

Both the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff told us that they were trying to grow their reserve forces but were concerned by their ability to recruit.171 Conversely First Sea Lord felt that “recruiting reserves is in some areas proving easier” than recruiting regulars.172 Despite this, the Maritime Reserve still saw a reduction in strength of 7% in the year to October 2023.173 There was a general recognition of the importance of the “niche skills” that the Reserve currently brings but the Chief of the General Staff, the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Minister for the Armed Forces all acknowledged that the Reserve did not provide the mass which would be required in a time of war (a “second echelon force”).174 Overtasking

Professor Justin Bronk told us that the IR23 and DCP23 had demonstrated “the broad challenges and ambitions that the UK is faced with” but had given no indication of priority.175 We made the same criticism (which the Government rejected) of the 2021 strategies.176 This lack of prioritisation has resulted in leaders of the UK Armed Forces feeling the need to show the Services “doing things all over the place all the time”, otherwise “not only will they not get additional investment to plug gaps or increase capability, but they will risk being cut”.177 Professor Malcolm Chalmers told us that a number “of the issues around personnel in relation to the Army are about the breadth of their commitments”.178 General Lord Houghton agreed, telling us that “the Armed Forces are consistently on some form of operation. Not a lot of them are left at home, in the locker”.179

The Chief of the General staff told us that the Army is currently delivering 130% of its capacity.180 The First Sea Lord admitted that there are always more tasks for a Navy than there are ships.181 We heard that by Spring 2023 the RAF had delivered twice as many operational sorties as in the previous 12 months.182 The Minister for the Armed Forces acknowledged the pressure that the Forces were under: 169 Council of Reserves Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations, The United Kingdom Reserve Forces External Scrutiny Team Annual Statutory Report 2023, December 2023, Para 9 170 Council of Reserves Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations, The United Kingdom Reserve Forces External Scrutiny Team Annual Statutory Report 2023, December 2023, Para 10 171 Q244; 272 172 Q346 173 Ministry of Defence, Quarterly service personnel statistics 1 October 2023, 14 December 2023 174 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689 Q45; Q272; Q446; Q453 175 Q17 176 Defence Committee, Third Special Report of Session 2022–23, The Integrated Review, Defence in a Competitive Age and the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report, HC 865, p 6 177 Q17 178 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q37 179 Q74; 76 180 Q223 181 Q287 182 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q93 Ready for War? 35 The reality is that politicians ask chiefs to go well beyond what they are asked to provide for. … We are just going to have to accept that we will be running the force very hot indeed, and well beyond any reasonable planning assumptions. … we are asking more of the force right now than it is designed to deliver.183

In December 2023, we were told that budgetary constraints meant that training had been cut in 2023 (and had the potential of being cut similarly in 2024) in order to manage the pressures on the defence budget.184 As the Chief of the General Staff noted, training is a vital part of maintaining an agile force which can undertake “everything from peacekeeping operations right the way up to warfighting operations”.185 We heard that as well as impacting on warfighting readiness, the tempo of activity was also negatively impacting retention186 and the planned maintenance of platforms.187

Military Aid to Civil Authorities (MACA) requests are an additional operational pressure on the armed forces, but we are unable to quantify this without information on the impact of MACA on the readiness of the Armed Forces, requested from the Government in November 2023, but not received at the time of writing. We have concerns that other Departments have become over-reliant on calling for assistance from the military rather than building civilian capacity. Can readiness be improved through policy changes?

Readiness is determined by the number of trained personnel and viable equipment the Armed Forces have available to deploy and sustain on operations determined by ministerial priorities. However, whilst the size of the Forces and the equipment available to them is primarily controlled through budget allocations, policy changes can also have an impact.188 The Haythornthwaite Review of Armed Forces Incentivisation

The Haythornthwaite Review ‘Agency and agility: Incentivising people in a new era’, was an independent study commissioned by the MOD and published in June 2023. The Review looked at a number of areas where recruitment and retention could possibly be improved within the UK Armed Forces. 183 Q349; 427 184 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q40–2 185 Q212 186 Q23; 37; 67 187 Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 451, Q114 188 Policy changes relating to the MOD’s engagement with industry are covered in the final chapter on strategic readiness. 36 Ready for War? Box 3: Agency and agility: Incentivising people in a new era The Review considered the offer to personnel in relation to: their accommodation and food; their family life; their career structure; working conditions and renumeration; the training available to those in service; and a reduction in bureaucracy.189 The most far-reaching recommendations related to career structure, working conditions and renumeration: the ‘spectrum of service approach’ and the ‘total reward approach’. The spectrum of service approach (often referred to as the ‘zig zag career’) is a recommendation to replace the current blanket terms of service with individualised ones. This would allow an individual to determine their engagement type, engagement length, compulsion, mobility and military training factors, making their service much more flexible. The Review describes this as allowing the differing expectations placed on those serving to range “from those giving 24/7 whatever their Service asks of them, to increasing levels of control over working patterns or geographical stability, through to occasional weekends or short-term projects”. It would also allow personnel to leave and re-join the service after working in a different profession (such as in government or industry). The total reward approach, a complementary recommendation, would allow personnel to determin

Defence Command Paper Refresh (DCP23) identified the areas of the Haythornthwaite Review that Defence would take forward as a priority: • greater career flexibility through a Spectrum of Service, which will enable Defence to be better at retaining and surging talent across the whole force. This will include increasing fluidity between the military, the Civil Service and industry. Defence will promote ‘zig-zag’ or ‘portfolio’ careers for all of those who want them; • enhanced effectiveness of Defence’s offer by adopting a Total Reward Approach, to offer a more compelling and competitive incentivisation package; and • the digitalisation and simplification of Defence’s people management system, to remove the barriers that prevent flexibility and workforce agility and restrict access to talent.192

Service accommodation is also part of the package of incentives available to the Armed Forces and their families. We expect to report separately on this later in 2024.193

When we took evidence from Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, he welcomed the proposals in DCP23 but told us that he would have liked to have seen actual targets and descriptions of how the MOD was planning to achieve them: 189 Ministry of Defence, Agency and Agility: Incentivising people in a new era, A review of UK Armed Forces incentivisation by Rick Haythornthwaite, June 2023 190 In relation not just to take home pay but also pension contribution. 191 Non-financial rewards might include: gaining qualifications; annual leave entitlement; flexible working; mobility; and deployment opportunities and/or requirements. 192 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 193 Service Accommodation - Committees - UK Parliament Ready for War? 37 you have to look at implementation. In terms of all the things they say they are going to do in opening up, how well are they being enacted? What sort of response do they get? What adjustments will be made?194

In Autumn 2023 the Chief of the Defence Staff told us that the Secretary of State “will continue to study the Review’s 67 complex, interconnected recommendations and make a more detailed formal response later in the year”.195 At the time of writing, this has yet to happen.

In December 2023, the MOD Permanent Secretary acknowledged that “inflow [into the UK Armed Forces] is not at the level we need, and outflow is too high” and (alongside the recommendations produced by the Haythornthwaite Review on zig-zag careers and total reward) pointed both to work being carried out on new routes in, including allowing lateral entry into the Armed Forces, and on bringing people who had previously served back into the Armed Forces. He told us that pilot studies were being carried out and that he hoped to have a detailed implementation plan before Ministers before the end of 2023. He acknowledged that the Department had to “get after it at pace”.196

The Minister for the Armed Forces welcomed the work ongoing in relation to the Haythornthwaite recommendations but when asked whether that work could be speeded up, told us that whilst the MOD’s inclination was to implement as many of the recommendations as possible, that work was not cost-neutral and the Department was facing some “pretty severe pressures” on its budget.197 Reserve Forces Review 2030

The original Defence Command Paper (DCP21) had committed to reserve forces being “given new, more clearly defined roles” including providing “capacity, alongside their regular and civilian colleagues, and an alternative source of diverse talent to conduct operations at home and abroad”. The MOD would “create an efficient and fluid spectrum of military service, providing our people with a range of commitment options at different stages of their lives” and improving “the way we recruit and employ reserves, enabling us to bring expertise from across society, government, industry and academia to bear on some of the greatest challenges we face”. In addition, DCP21 committed the MOD to considering the recommendations from the Lord Lancaster-led Reserves Forces Review 2030 (RF30) “in due course”.198 That Review was published in May 2021 and the Government has yet to respond to its 18 recommendations (despite our recommendation in July 2022 that it ought to prioritise the work).199 194 Oral evidence taken on 5 September 2023, HC (2022–23) 1804, Q13; 15 195 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 196 Q46 197 Q407 198 Ministry of Defence, Defence in a Competitive Age, Cm 411, March 2021, p 35 199 Defence Committee Second Report of Session 2022–23, The Integrated Review: Defence in a Competitive Age and the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy, HC 180, Para 56 38 Ready for War? Box 4: The Reserve Forces Review 2030 The Reserve Forces Review 2030 was commissioned by the then-Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, and conducted by a small team led by a senior serving reservist and former Minister of Armed Forces, Brigadier The Rt Hon the Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton TD PC. The Report offered 18 recommendations for consideration, in four key areas: • Re-defining the Reserves’ relationship with society, recognising the need to cooperate and share expertise with, for instance, industry and academia. • Expanding the role of the Reserves as part of an integrated joint force, h

Both the Chief of the Defence Staff and the MOD Permanent Secretary pointed out that much of the work relating to the Haythornthwaite Review would impact on thinking about the Reserves.200 In July 2023 the Chief of the Defence Staff told us that the MOD intended to respond to Lord Lancaster’s 2021 report on the Reserve Forces Review 2030 (RF30) in April 2024201 and in October, the Minister for Defence People and Veterans announced the creation of a Reserves Roadmap which would look at synergising the recommendations of both the RF30 Report and the Haythornthwaite Review in order to align and implement them. The Minister told the House that the intention was: To enhance the way reserves are utilised and supported, Defence will take a more strategic, top-down approach, to address policy and process frustrations, and tackle the cultural and resource issues Reservists face. This will also improve the structures and mobilisation processes needed to generate second- and third-echelon forces to reinforce and sustain warfighting capabilities, protect the Homeland, and strengthen national resilience.202 Prioritisation and specialisation

General Lord Houghton told us that the UK Armed Forces have maintained high levels of readiness for standing commitments (to domestic security and overseas non- discretionary tasks) and contingent commitments (commitments to allies and alliances such as the commitment to deploy forces to NATO at varying levels of readiness). Therefore readiness for these tasks (as opposed to warfighting readiness) was unlikely to be an issue because the Armed Forces had long been subject to demands to engage in significant 200 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q44; Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q95 201 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q43 202 HC Deb, 26 October 2023, HCWS1097 [Commons Written Ministerial Statement] Ready for War? 39 operational activity, geographically widely dispersed and across a range of tasks.203 The First Sea Lord also acknowledged this, and when questioned about the range of tasks carried out by the Royal Navy noted that: You will always have more tasks for a Navy than there are ships, by dint of the fact that we are a maritime nation. … I don’t own the task allocation; I am merely forced to generate forces against that. The range of tasks would be a question for Ministers. As for whether I have sufficient forces to meet the full range of tasks all the time in the way they would wish, as I said at the beginning, there is always a desire to do more than the fleet is actually capable of doing. What we pride ourselves on is the degree of agility that will allow us to rebalance against what the ministerial priorities are at the time.204

Professor Michael Clarke told us that both Integrated Review documents (the original and the refresh) had demonstrated that ministerial priorities were that “Britain should have a series of multiple roles that it can perform in the world and that it has high aspirations to a significant place in world politics, at a time of darkening international relations”.205 Professor Malcolm Chalmers agreed, describing the strategic narrative in both documents as “very geographically and thematically ambitious and not having a very strong sense of prioritisation”.206 Both suggested that the documents had the potential to enable the Prime Minister to make demands of government departments which they were not necessarily being equipped to fulfil.207 Professor Clarke told us: all three branches of the services, in their own separate ways, are inadequate to the tasks that the refresh suggests they will undertake.208

General Lord Houghton was clear that the only way to reduce risk to readiness was to increase funding, while noting that this was a political choice, not a military one. The readiness assessments carried out by the MOD were shared with the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the NSC for discussion. As the decision whether to increase resources to reduce the risk to defence and security was discussed in those forums, they are effectively the ultimate owners of that risk.209

One option that was suggested was that the UK Armed Forces could specialise in certain roles, relying on Allies to fill gaps in capability. Professor Bronk used the example of the Typhoon force which he described as covering “far too many mission sets” following its adoption of the roles previously covered by Tornado. The range of activities which the Typhoon force trains for and carries out means that “they cannot possibly be good at everything” and instead are “not particularly excellent at any mission”. He contrasted this to the situation in the early part of the 2010s, when “Typhoon was somewhat mature but was only doing air superiority, where that fleet was specifically and very highly valued by the Americans, because it was superb at air superiority”. He warned that: 203 Q74; 76 204 Q289; 309 205 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q1 206 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q1 207 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q2 208 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q5 209 Q73 40 Ready for War? The biggest issue with high-intensity warfare now is that it is so lethal and so demanding that the generic force of gifted amateurs that can try and span everything, which is essentially what Britain has always tried to be very good at and in the past has been excellent at, does not really work any more. You need to be very good at one or two things.210 However, General Sir Nick Carter warned that specialisation “is obviously a risk, but … these things are about trade-offs. You may need to invest in that because you fear that others might not mitigate it for you.”211

When we raised the prospect of specialisation with the Minister for the Armed Forces, he suggested that the greatest challenge would be coming to a consensus on what the UK might specialise in.212 He acknowledged that due to the current period of “great geopolitical uncertainty and instability” the UK Armed Forces were being asked to do more than they were designed for, but maintained that it was important for Britain to have a tier-one Army, Navy, Air Force and cyber force which could fulfil a range of tasks. He gave an example of a task which was not warfighting but was still considered “non- discretionary”: Dauntless … was rushed out of refit successfully to go and furnish a non-discretionary task to be available to the Overseas Territories during hurricane season. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office rightly pushed us on that. Dauntless successfully met the requirement. While she has been there she has been able to do all sorts of great stuff, working with partners in the region doing counter-narcotics and, more widely, flying the flag for freedom, all very valuable. She will come back, refurbish and will be ready again for operations. The tempo at which she has been doing all of that you won’t find in any handbook, and the First Sea Lord would rightly say to you that some risk comes with that.213

A further example was presented at our sessions with the Secretary of State and senior MOD officials, when we questioned the utility of a contract to procure the Chinook CH-47. The project had already been delayed and (as a result of that delay and inflationary pressures) had increased in cost.214 However, we also heard that 14 of the 51 Chinooks would be the Extended Range variant and the military advice was that without them, Special Forces would be “unable to prosecute the targets we need to against the adversarial threat. If we wish to prosecute the targets against Government policy today, … operational judgment is that you need that capability.”215 The Permanent Secretary explained that: There was concern in the summer about cost growth in the programme, and how that could be afforded and what the impact would be on other related capabilities, including, conceivably, other helicopter projects. That has a question around whether this is the best deal that we can get, and if it is the best deal that we can get, do we want to carry on with it? As the 210 Q37 211 Q148 212 Q433 213 Q435 214 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q75 215 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q21 Ready for War? 41 General said, if we do not carry on with it in the way that we are currently planning, there will be an impact on the range of operations that our armed forces are able to prosecute.216

Professor Bronk told us the choice was stark: either sufficiently resource the UK Armed Forces to allow them to have “full spectrum forces that can concurrently provide a reference force as a backbone of European NATO, while also doing expeditionary things for signalling, diplomacy and all sorts around the world” or to ruthlessly prioritise: If you specifically tasked the MoD and said, “Your primary role now is to provide a backbone of European deterrence against Russia, with credible warfighting capabilities in Europe in the next three to five years”, you would see an enormous change in the way that it plans its force structure and its planning, but you would also find a lot of objections from people … If you want to keep doing what we are currently doing and get ready for warfighting in three to five years’ time, it is probably [needs to be] closer to 3% of GDP as a ballpark figure. If you were to say, “This is now all hands on deck. We need to get the force we currently have as ready as we can, but we are prepared to pull the plug on all sorts of things and go right down to just getting ready for the big fight, as it were, and buying weapons stocks,” you could probably do it with a relatively modest uplift, but you would have to cut so much in terms of what people are used to seeing as the standard pattern of activity to do it.217

Professor Chalmers thought it unlikely there would be an increase in defence spending anytime soon given the UK’s poor economic performance, as any increase would have to come either from cuts in other government spending or an increase of taxation.218 The Minister for the Armed Forces recognised that the funding was not available for an increase in the size of the Armed Forces so it could continue to manage both its operational and warfighting readiness: “We are just going to have to accept that we will be running the force very hot indeed, and well beyond any reasonable planning assumptions.”219 Mothballing

Successive Defence Committees have looked at the possibility of mothballing equipment due to be retired220 to create a strategic reserve of equipment which could be utilised in the event of high intensity warfare. In 2018, the Government told our predecessor Committee that: When equipment is approaching retirement, Defence always has the option to retain it in reserve if it might be needed rapidly to provide additional capacity in the event of a major crisis. This will require the consideration of a number of factors, including the availability of suitable storage facilities, the cost of maintaining the equipment and the human resource to support 216 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q74 217 Q23; 67 218 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q20 219 Q349 220 Defence Committee, Tenth Report of Session 2022–23, Aviation Procurement: Winging it?, HC 178, Para 37–38; Defence Committee, Eighth Report of Session 2017–19, Indispensable allies: US, NATO and UK Defence relations, HC 387, Para 41; 44 42 Ready for War? its effective re-mobilisation. Ultimately, deciding to take this option for equipment depends on whether retaining the equipment is considered the most cost-effective decision when all relevant factors are taken into account.221

In response to our recommendation last year that the Government mothball the 30 Tranche 1 Typhoons it is proposing to retire in 2025 (with 60% of their airframe fatigue lives remaining), we were told that whilst it would be feasible to retain the aircraft in storage, the investment required to maintain them and then “address significant capability, obsolescence and regulatory needs” upon regeneration would be at least £300 million. We were also told that that it would preclude the RAF from cannibalising the airframes for components which could be used for tranche 2 & 3 Typhoons.222 We note that some of these issues are more easily solvable than others—for instance, the US military stores their retired aircraft in deserts in order to reduce the cost of maintenance as the arid air prevents significant degradation and rust.223

The Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Financial and Military Capability) told us that there was no point in holding on to capabilities which would become extinct, a point supported by the Secretary of State. However, he also acknowledged that mass would still be a requirement in future conflicts.224 The Minister for the Armed Forces emphasised that it was “inescapably the case that no one platform can be in two places at one time”225—leaving little room for attrition of capabilities. We have seen that Russia, having lost significant numbers of more modern main battle tanks (MBT) in Ukraine, has deployed T-62 MBTs which are 60 years old. Whilst the capabilities are inferior to more modern alternatives, the T-62s were upgraded and deployed less than a year after being removed from storage.226 Conclusions and recommendations

The commitments made to replenish and increase stockpiles made since the 2022 Autumn Budget have all been welcome. The question remains whether this is anywhere near enough to meet the potential threats we face. It is therefore disturbing to hear that the £1.95 billion awarded as part of the Spring 2023 Budget may instead be used to meet budget shortfalls. We recommend that the MOD reconsider further delaying its ability to regenerate warfighting resilience in this manner. We further recommend that the MOD produce a breakdown of the allocation of the awards from the Autumn 2022 and Spring 2023 Budgets to provide clarity as to how much is allocated in practice in support of replenishing and increasing stockpiles.

There are multiple capability shortfalls within the UK Armed Forces. For that reason, we welcome the decision to maintain the Albion-class vessels in operational service until their out of service dates in the 2030s. However, we are also increasingly concerned about the ability of the Armed Forces to attract and retain personnel. Whilst 221 Defence Committee, Ninth Special Report of Session 2017–19, Indispensable allies: US, NATO and UK Defence relations: Government Response to the Committee’s Eighth Report, HC 1569, Para 11 222 Defence Committee Second Special Report of Session 2023–24, Aviation Procurement: Winging It? Government response to the Committee’s Tenth report of Session 2022–23, HC 187, p 3–4 223 The World’s Biggest ‘Graveyard’ Houses Almost 4,000 Aircraft, Interesting Engineering, 16 August 2021 224 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q3–4 225 Q435 226 X (formerly known as Twitter) post by the Ministry of Defence, 6 March 2023 [Accessed 26 January 2024] Ready for War? 43 we welcome the Government’s recognition that these issues require fresh solutions and look forward to reviewing plans based on recommendations from the Reserve Forces 2030 Review and the Haythornthwaite Review to alleviate the crisis in the recruitment and retention of both Regulars and Reserves, we do not believe it is being carried out at the required pace. We heard no evidence that gives us confidence that the recruitment crisis will be resolved anytime soon.

Efforts to improve the recruitment and retention of both Regulars and Reserves are currently being considered by the MOD. We therefore recommend that once decisions have been made to adopt these recommendations, an implementation timetable with measurable deliverables is produced and shared with us so that we can scrutinise the progress made by the Department.

The UK Armed Forces have sufficient Readiness for operations—they can carry out standing operations and contingent commitments. However, the breadth of their commitments is having an inevitable impact, in terms of budget requirements, subsequent constraints on training and the retention of personnel. It also appears to be delaying the development of warfighting readiness.

Despite the Secretary of State’s insistence that the UK Armed Forces still have sufficient capacity to deploy in response to world events, we remain to be convinced. We are concerned that the breadth of ministerial requirements is in danger of pushing the Armed Forces far beyond what is sustainable. We recommend that either a budget uplift or a (strictly adhered to) prioritisation ranking is introduced. Any prioritisation ranking adopted needs to be drawn up within the National Security Council to ensure agreement amongst the Prime Minister, Treasury and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, given that all of those Departments play a role in determining and enabling the deployment of UK Armed Forces.

We understand the financial implications of retaining capabilities after they have been retired but we question whether the MOD have considered all the options. We accept that maintaining equipment comes at significant cost but argue that such platforms do not need to be fully maintained—in a war of existence, a platform which is even halfway viable for regeneration is better than none at all. Given the long lead times to build complex platforms (such as warships, tanks or combat aircraft) combined with the importance of mass and resilience on the battlefield (as demonstrated on both sides of the war in Ukraine), we question whether less expensive alternative storage solutions could be sought, for example through access to US desert facilities. In this context it is worth noting that the United States, China and Russia have for many decades had a policy for mothballing warfighting equipment, whereas the UK policy has been to dispose of it—often at a fraction of its original acquisition cost. Russia has been able to draw on these reserves to add to its capacity to fight in Ukraine. 44 Ready for War? 4 Strategic Readiness

Strategic readiness is described by the Minister for the Armed Forces as “the readiness of the nation to bring to bear all the nation’s strength to compete with an adversary”.227

Describing the key components of strategic readiness, the Minister for the Armed Forces highlighted the importance of the industrial base and its ability to increase its capacity; enablers which project and sustain the force (not just in terms of equipment and warfighters but also medical services, signallers, logisticians and engineers as well as Reserves who can form part of the second echelon force); and resilient (and therefore dispersed) warehousing and stores.228 He acknowledged that the Government needed to consider all of this as part of its future thinking: The MOD generates a first echelon force to get us into the fight. A war of national endeavour requires a whole of government, whole of industry and whole of society mobilisation to sustain us in the fight thereafter. No private business has a peacetime contractual obligation. So, thinking through how we mobilise the UK industrial base to sustain us is a really important piece of work. … We just simply have not had to think about this for a really long time. What is the skills base? What is the capacity to generate a second echelon force? How do you mobilise industry? How do you assure your supply chains? What are your access to the critical minerals, the semiconductors, and all the other things that are needed? The consideration of our national resilience and our ability to war fight will require us to consider what we need to be sovereign and then to start making policy to do so.229

It therefore goes wider than the remit of the Ministry of Defence—for example, having appropriate infrastructure and sufficient skilled and experienced workers are areas which are vital but are responsibilities of other government departments.230 A current example of this is that the national skills shortage is the main cause of the issues in at least two thirds of the programmes rated ‘red’ in the Defence Major Projects Portfolio (DMPP).231

As well as addressing its own resilience and readiness issues, the MOD is involved in drawing up the national defence plan which will address the wider issues in strategic resilience and readiness. Initial work was carried out for the Defence Command Paper Refresh (DCP23) and the intention is for this to become a central part of the next integrated review.232 Commitments in the Defence Command Paper 2023

The Defence Command Paper Refresh (DCP23) looked at the requirements for strategic resilience in its final chapter. In relation to the defence of the homeland, the MOD highlighted areas where Defence plays a critical role, including the policing of national airspace (through the constant provision of Quick Reaction Alert aircraft) and UK waters (monitored by maritime patrol aircraft, surveillance software, coastal radar, 227 Q350 228 Q351; 361; 374; 402; 446; 453 229 Q472–3 230 Q473; Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q56 231 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q118 232 Q383 Ready for War? 45 aviation operations, space-based reconnaissance, and government vessels)233 The DCP23 committed the MOD to increasing efforts to deliver integrated air and missile defence with the RAF promoting the use of “advanced ground-based, airborne, at sea and space-based sensors, and an extensive range of air and missile capabilities, including counter-UAS, to detect, protect and defend the UK”.234 The MOD also announced it would examine the missile “detection and interception technologies of the future”.235 In November 2023, we heard that proposals to strengthen “medium-range air defence system and improving its command-and-control capability, to go beyond what we currently have in the Falklands and to develop a contingent capability” were shortly to go before the investment approvals committee in the MOD.236

The DCPR23 committed the MOD to working with partners across Government to plan and test how vulnerabilities could be identified and to work together to exercise the systems required in a time of war. It states that Defence will “support a wider Governmental effort to better anticipate, assess, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from risks” as well as working with other Government Departments to implement the 2022 Resilience Framework.237

Finally, the DCP23 highlights the work carried out by Defence to “identify and mitigate a range of economic security risks” including the screening of investment in defence- relevant sectors of the UK economy. Work is ongoing to establish how Defence can stop adversaries from gaining specialist defence knowledge through research collaboration, the employment of UK defence and technical experts and business partnerships or technical support contracts. Further work focuses on supporting the UK’s contribution to international efforts to access critical minerals and secure the defence supply chain.238

External to the DCP23 process, the MOD has also been engaged in Exercise AGILE STANCE which is a five-year programme originally set up by General Sir Nick Carter to “up [the UK Armed Forces’] game in terms of what our readiness looked like and be realistic about it” by exercising the Services’ ability to disperse from their bases in order to maintain survivability in the event of an attack. He explained that it was based on a Cold War concept exercise called Active Edge: If you were based on the inner German border, you were at four hours’ notice to move. An exercise called Active Edge tested your ability to leave your barracks, get into a forest and hide yourself. It exercised the ability of RAF squadrons to leave their bases in Germany and go and park themselves on the autobahn, in cover. I wanted to return to a system where we exercised that regularly. For example, Brize Norton, where every single logistic Air Force egg is in the same basket, had to disperse to—I do not know—an airport in Leeds or wherever it might be. Coningsby should be able to empty itself and send the F-35s on to the M1, whatever it may be. It is the same with the Navy getting out of the three big ports we have.239 233 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 88–9 234 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 90 235 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 91 236 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q10 237 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 87;91 238 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 92 239 Q124 46 Ready for War?

The Chief of the Defence Staff told us that the Reserve was also being mobilised under Exercise Agile Stance with a series of mobilisation exercises of Active Reserve elements taking place across each of the single Services, between January and March 2024 and in September 2024 which will “inform and develop the UK’s ability to mobilise Reserve Forces at pace and scale”. This will be followed by a strategy and concurrently an updated Agile Stance directive “to develop the capability and capacity to mobilise the Strategic Reserves at scale”—something which has not been done since 1991.240 In December 2023, the Permanent Secretary told us that the “the use and availability of, and ability to call out, a strategic reserve” had been a neglected area of MOD thinking in recent years.241 The role of the defence industry in the UK readiness

Defence industry plays an integral role in Armed Forces readiness. The First Sea Lord explained that the UK Armed Forces rely heavily on the defence industry to deliver “world-leading capability to deal with those who may wish us harm”.242 Nick Childs and Professor Justin Bronk both highlighted that contracts with defence companies are vital to ensuring UK Armed Forces readiness in relation to maintenance and sustainment of equipment.243 Beyond equipment, the British Army currently relies on a private company (Capita) to manage its recruitment of personnel, a model which looks to be extended to all the Front Line Commands under the proposed Tri-Service Recruitment contract.244

Despite the acknowledged reliance on industry, both General Lord Houghton and General Sir Nick Carter questioned whether the relationship between the MOD and industry was effective in supporting strategic readiness. General Lord Houghton told us that despite numerous reviews on defence procurement, the relationship between Defence and the defence industry “is still not anywhere close to where it needs to be”.245 General Sir Nick Carter pointed out that defence industry reports to its shareholders rather than Government and so if the Government required resilience from industry then it would need to incentivise that rather than focusing on efficiency and value for money.246 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman described the lack of thinking about industrial capacity as a strategic failure.247

In 2023, we examined the organisation responsible for the majority of MOD procurement (Defence Equipment & Support).248 Pointing to the conclusion by the Public Accounts Committee that defence equipment “arrives into service many years late and significantly over-budget, with depressing regularity”, something which means that “neither taxpayers nor our Armed Forces are being served well”,249 we welcomed the acknowledgement by the CEO of Defence Equipment & Support that “we have some really horrible, broken programmes that aren’t good enough”.250 240 Oral evidence taken on 4 July 2023, HC (2022–23) 1689, Q46; Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 241 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q97 242 Q318 243 Q34–5; 48–9 244 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 245 Q99 246 Q115 247 Oral evidence taken on 5 September 2023, HC (2022–23) 1804, Q37–8 248 Defence Committee, Ninth Report of Session 2022–23, It is broke — and it’s time to fix it The UK’s defence procurement system, HC 1099 249 Public Accounts Committee, Forty-Eighth Report of Session 2022–23, MoD Equipment Plan 2022–2023, HC 731 250 Oral evidence taken on 21 February 2023, HC 1119, Q110 Ready for War? 47

Professor Clarke warned us in April 2023 that the implications of the Ukraine war were “taking time to filter through to Governments.”251 One of the most obvious examples of this is the length of time it took to conclude a contract for an increase in production of 155 mm artillery shells.252 This is despite regular pleas from Ukraine for these shells in the Spring of 2023.253 It was first reported that the Government had issued a letter of intent (telling industry that it intended to purchase more artillery shells) in November 2022254 but it took 9 months of negotiation before a contract was finally signed in July 2023.255 When we raised this with the Minister for the Armed Forces, he told us that the delay had been caused by the lack of a “going-concern production line and there was some debate about how the manufacturing capacity was going to be funded”. The contract, when agreed, was a multi-year contract which specified a number of shells to be delivered each year ensuring the long-term viability of the production line, but the Minister acknowledged that it had demonstrated a need to change the way in which the MOD approaches procurement.256 There are possible lessons to be learned from the pace at which our US allies have increased capacity and production. Box 5: Timelines of contracting for NLAWs and 155 shells NLAW • Letter of intent presented to Saab as Authorisation to Proceed: September 2022 • Contract to Saab: 7 December 2022 • Delivery from July 2023 155 Shells • Letter of intent presented to BAE as Authorisation to Proceed: November 2022 • Contract to BAE: 11 July 2023 • Delivery: Q1 2025 Source: Compiled by Defence Committee staff

When we took evidence on DE&S, we heard from industry that it wanted: long- term consistency on required capabilities; earlier engagement in the requirement setting process, multi-year budgets; an improved (and consistent) social value framework; and decisions made with reference made to imperatives other than lowest up-front cost (such as end-user needs, through-life cost, or industrial resilience).257 There was a recognition among witnesses that improvements were taking place but a warning that much of the required change would need to be cultural (as opposed to process-based).258 ADS also 251 Oral evidence taken on 18 April 2023, HC (2022–23) 1246, Q17 252 Q271; Defence Committee, Sixth Special Report of Session 2022–23, Special Relationships? US, UK and NATO: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixth Report, HC 1533, Para 16 253 Ukraine asks EU for 250,000 artillery shells a month, Financial Times, 3 March 2023; Why the 155 mm round is so critical to the war in Ukraine, Associated Press News, 23 April 2023 254 UK Asks BAE to Ramp Up Artillery Shell Production Amid Ukraine Drawdown, The Defense Post, 17 November 2022 255 DE&S places new order with BAE Systems to increase 155mm shells stockpile for British Army, DE&S press release, 11 July 2023 256 Q378; 381 257 BAE Systems plc (DES0035); ADS (DES0021); Lockheed Martin UK (DES0022) 258 Oral evidence taken on 17 May 2023 HC (2022–23) 1099, Q25 [Lucia Retter] 48 Ready for War? highlighted that many of these issues had a different impact on SMEs meaning that when changes were introduced, their impact needed to be considered not just in relation to defence primes, but in relation to the whole of the supply chain.259

In our Report on DE&S we recommended that: • The MOD should engage with industry at an earlier stage, particularly on future requirements and their feasibility; • The MOD should consider the implications of the shortage of skilled and experienced workers and draw up a plan to help develop and foster the defence workforce over the next 10 years; • The MOD and the Treasury should provide a clearer definition of social value in defence contracting, specifying how the criteria will be applied in procurement competitions; • The Front Line Commands and DE&S should aim for a ‘spiral development’ model as default rather than over-specifying requirements; • The procurement system should place more emphasis on the value of time in relation to the delivery of capabilities; • The MOD should explore with HM Treasury whether there could be greater flexibility around budgetary cycles, moving from fixed one-year funding to multi-year funding of procurement programmes.260

Our Report did not cover issues with the outsourcing of Army recruitment as that is (currently) a contract managed by the Army rather than DE&S. However, we raised it and the proposed future tri-service recruitment contract with the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Armed Forces. The Secretary of State assured us that he was “looking at it carefully”261 and the Minister told us that he was in no doubt that the future tri-service recruitment contract needed to work better than the current model. For him, this included ensuring that society’s connection with the military was maintained—a difficulty when its personnel were consistently deployed away from the communities from which it needed to recruit.262

Shortly after our Report was published, the DCP23 was produced by the Government. It announced that key lessons from Ukraine had resulted in the following conclusions: • The pace of battlefield innovation means that decades-long acquisition programmes and upgrades are no longer suitable—instead simpler platforms which can be upgraded at speed (and by a range of companies, rather than just the original prime contractor) are required; • Defence must partner with industry, sharing both advances in technology and the risk in exploiting them in recognition of the key role which the industrial base plays in UK national security; 259 ADS (DES0021) 260 Defence Committee, Ninth Report of Session 2022–23, It is broke — and it’s time to fix it The UK’s defence procurement system, HC 1099 261 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q51 262 Q463–6 Ready for War? 49 • Time is key—platforms must be accepted at ‘good enough’ so that they can be deployed at pace. The MOD therefore committed to forging a new alliance with industry to create an environment that “generates a shared sense of national endeavour”.263

Many of our recommendations were adopted within the DCP23. That document commits Defence to engaging at an earlier stage in strategic conversations with industry about requirements and developing relationships with key Defence Executives. This should allow Defence and industry to work together to address issues such as “availability of critical skills, diversification and resilience within the supply chain and productivity”. In addition, industry are being involved earlier in the military capability development processes and have greater visibility of Defence’s long-term plan.264

In December 2023, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Financial and Military Capability) told us that there had been recognition of the importance of trying “to make sure that our pipeline of munitions is always on, rather than boom and bust” and that the MOD were now working with industry to secure long-term contracts. He explained that the UK Armed Forces have “shifted from what we would say in the military as ‘operating’ in various parts of the world to now ‘deterring’, but being prepared to war-fight if necessary [which] means long-term commitment to industry”.265 The Director General Strategic Enablers and Deputy CEO at Defence Equipment & Support explained that those long term commitments allowed industry to invest in skills generation: There is scaling of things in the munitions complex, where we need to build long-term pipelines. The surety of contract you talked about allows [industry] to build the skills pipelines and training academies that need to be there.266 There is a broader economic argument for investing in the skills being taught through apprenticeships and training in defence industry and the Armed Forces as they are also required in other sectors of the economy that the UK is seeking to grow. For instance, skills required in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise are also needed in the civil nuclear workforce.267 Similarly, digital skills required for defence are also of benefit to the wider UK economy.268

As well as earlier engagement on requirements, the acquisition process is moving from one focused on specifying exact requirements to one which focuses on the ‘spiral development’ of capabilities—this will allow for the iterative development of capabilities to keep pace with innovation on the battlefield whilst also ensuring that these are not closed systems which can only be developed by the original vendor (“vendor lock-in”).269

In order to ensure that Defence can replenish and increase stockpiles of munitions, spares and operational supplies, the DCP23 recognises that industry needs to have robust and resilient supply chains which have assured access to “key materials, components and 263 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 37–8 264 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 39 265 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q60–2 266 Oral evidence taken on 12 December 2023, HC (2023–24) 54, Q115 267 Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 451, Q83 268 Q406 269 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 40 50 Ready for War? critical technologies”. A joint assessment of industrial capability, capacity, and sustainment will be undertaken along with communications on sovereign requirements (including what needs to be ‘onshore’ and what can be ‘friendshored’) and engagement on how to incentivise industry to prioritise national security needs over commercial ones.270 In November 2023, we were told that the MOD was launching a supply chain strategy which would identify (as part of the increasing defence outputs programme) where those supply chain pinch points are and ensure that the Department is “being proactive around them”.271

The DCP23 commits Defence to prioritising time within its acquisition system (within the parameters of time, cost and performance) as: driving pace is critical–even if it forces us to increase our risk tolerance elsewhere. Our ambition is to reduce radically the average time from the identification of a military need to contract placement, and from contract placement to delivery to the front-line.272

It also states that Defence intends to set “a maximum five-year commitment for acquisition programmes, with a maximum three-year commitment for digital programmes” although it acknowledges that the MOD procures a wide range of equipment, goods and services and so will need to “tailor our approach to reflect the risk and complexity of each programme, ensuring that we are proportionate in the approach we take. For example, we recognise that some of our more exceptional programmes–those on the Government Major Projects Portfolio–will out of necessity take longer.”273

Both Commander, Strategic Command and the Minister for the Armed Forces were at pains to emphasise that this was a real change in approach. Commander, Strategic Command told us that Defence needed to look at long-term pipelines to supply the munitions and stockpile capabilities which meant moving away from a “just-enough, just- in-time approach [which] has put us in a place that limits our capability, our decision space and our options … We may well need enduring and surge support to be able to execute against particular contingencies”.274 He noted that industry had welcomed the concept of a partnership which spreads risk and provides long-term resilience but that Defence required the “freedoms and ability to enter into those sorts of agreements and structures”.275 The Minister for the Armed Forces acknowledged that the new approach would require “all sides of the equation—the MOD, Government and the Treasury—… to be willing to change policy on how we procure, how we work with industry and how we run competitions” as well as industry changing its approach to the process.276

The Minister was clear that current procurement processes were no longer viable as a result of the pace of innovation.277 He acknowledged that this was a complete paradigm shift and a “frankly nascent part of policy making”.278 He warned that no private business has a peacetime obligation to maintain unused production capacity without a contract 270 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 40–41 271 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q78 272 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 42 273 Ministry of Defence, Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, Cm 901, July 2023, p 43 274 Q372 275 Q373 276 Q377 277 Q377; 381 278 Q389–391; 472 Ready for War? 51 and so having the resilience in the industrial base to scale is a live issue which neither the MOD nor the Department for Business and Trade (responsible for the mobilisation of the industrial base) have considered for at least a generation. He told us that: Whoever is in my office, the Secretary of State’s office and MinDP’s office for the next integrated review will have to have this stuff in mind, because we have not had to think about it since the ’80s.279 On 22 January 2024, the Permanent Secretary told our sister Committee, the Public Accounts Committee, that the MOD was hoping to make the announcement of the changes to procurement policy before the House rose for the Easter recess.280 Conclusions and recommendations

We welcome the Government’s decision to assess what the country would need to do to maintain a warfighting effort. However, it is worrying that this work had not already been undertaken. The national defence plan is still a work in progress but we intend to maintain ongoing scrutiny of the Government’s developing plans to ensure warfighting and strategic readiness.

The Government’s approach to procurement reform is not yet finalised and we have heard many promises of change before. The MOD has shown willing to engage with us as it finalises this approach. We welcome this engagement, but are not yet in a position to reach a view on the appropriateness or effectiveness of the likely policy changes—which we very much hope will be announced to the House prior to the Easter recess, in late March 2024.

Under a national defence plan, each relevant Government Department would have its own responsibilities. We recommend that these responsibilities are published as far as possible, and—if any responsibilities cannot be published for national security reasons—these should be provided in confidence to the relevant select committee. We also recommend that, for each Department, its role in the national defence plan should be added to the list of responsibilities of a named Minister. 279 Q472 280 Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 January 2024, HC (2023–24) 451, Q33–34 52 Ready for War? 5

Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally changed the threat— demonstrating that Russia has both the capability and intent to prosecute a war in Europe. This requires a wholesale shift in approach towards warfighting resilience both in the UK and Allies.

It is a matter of national pride that whenever the Armed Forces are asked to carry out a task, they will find a way. It is to the credit of the Armed Forces that they have sustained this effort for so long. But overtasking has both a personal cost for service personnel and an opportunity cost for the UK. The increase in global instability has coincided with a period of decreasing recruitment and reduced industrial capacity, which requires sustained, long-term investment. The Government risks being unable to build true warfighting and strategic readiness because of the sheer pace of operations, which could threaten the security of the UK.

Personnel need time to recover from operations, and time to train and develop new skills. But the demand of operations makes that harder to achieve. It is unsurprising that more people are leaving the Forces than joining them. All three services have growing capability shortfalls—these have been a feature of our inquiries over the course of this Parliament. As these shortfalls increase, this places greater pressure on those who remain, leading to a vicious cycle.

The Government must act to break this cycle, and do so swiftly, to ensure that the UK is ready not only to face the challenges of today, but also to face the storm clouds on the horizon. Ready for War? 53 Conclusions and recommendations What is Readiness?

The protection of sensitive information plays a vital role in the security of this country. However, the Ministry of Defence has become demonstrably less transparent over the past decade. The fact that the Minister and senior military personnel did not realise that information which is now classified was once widely available suggests that this trend towards greater secrecy has been either clandestine or unconscious. Other nations, facing very similar threats, provide significantly more information about readiness than the UK, both to the public and to relevant parliamentary committees.

Readiness is about acceptable risk. The decisions on what risks to take are ultimately political (based partly on military advice) rather than solely military or parliamentary decisions. Ministers will also inevitably need to reach judgments about the availability of information regarding threats and the UK’s readiness to respond to those threats, and these judgments may change as the threat landscape changes. However, Parliament’s role and our role in particular is to hold Ministers to account for their actions. We cannot fulfil this role without adequate information, along the lines that was available to our predecessors. At present there is no regular mechanism which allows us to scrutinise ministerial decisions on readiness and their impact on risk.

The Government’s reaction to this specific inquiry has also been unacceptably slow and has impeded our work. Responses to our requests for written evidence have arrived many months late and contained very little useful information. We took up the Government’s offer of a meeting in private to review classified information. This was both constructive and informative, but it took place 10 months after our initial request for this data, and there is no guarantee that it will be repeated in the future, which raises the concern about whether there is sufficient ministerial grip on readiness.

In the absence of adequate official information, public and parliamentary scrutiny of and debate about UK armed forces readiness currently relies on media reporting and corridor conversations, leading to suspicion that the forces are less ready than in fact they are. It does not need to be like this. The information flow in many of our NATO allies is far franker. Our request is not for very detailed, very highly classified information, but for information that only the most naïve would think was not already in the hands of the UK’s potential adversaries and their intelligence apparatus.

In a functioning democracy, the House of Commons Defence Committee needs to be routinely informed about the planning assumptions and readiness of the nation’s armed forces. We therefore recommend that—following the Minister’s welcome commitment to work with us—the Government propose how we and our successors can receive at least annually a meaningfully detailed update on the readiness of the UK Armed Forces, taking account of our conclusions above. (Paragraph 35) 54 Ready for War?

We also recommend that the Government explain why previously unclassified information about readiness is no longer published, recognise the reduction in public and parliamentary accountability that this has brought about, and seek to rectify the situation. In future, when a decision is being considered to classify previously available information, we recommend that the Government should consult the relevant House of Commons Select Committee before that decision is made. (Paragraph 36) Readiness of the UK Armed Forces

The commitments made to replenish and increase stockpiles made since the 2022 Autumn Budget have all been welcome. The question remains whether this is anywhere near enough to meet the potential threats we face. It is therefore disturbing to hear that the £1.95 billion awarded as part of the Spring 2023 Budget may instead be used to meet budget shortfalls. We recommend that the MOD reconsider further delaying its ability to regenerate warfighting resilience in this manner. We further recommend that the MOD produce a breakdown of the allocation of the awards from the Autumn 2022 and Spring 2023 Budgets to provide clarity as to how much is allocated in practice in support of replenishing and increasing stockpiles.

There are multiple capability shortfalls within the UK Armed Forces. For that reason, we welcome the decision to maintain the Albion-class vessels in operational service until their out of service dates in the 2030s. However, we are also increasingly concerned about the ability of the Armed Forces to attract and retain personnel. Whilst we welcome the Government’s recognition that these issues require fresh solutions and look forward to reviewing plans based on recommendations from the Reserve Forces 2030 Review and the Haythornthwaite Review to alleviate the crisis in the recruitment and retention of both Regulars and Reserves, we do not believe it is being carried out at the required pace. We heard no evidence that gives us confidence that the recruitment crisis will be resolved anytime soon.

Efforts to improve the recruitment and retention of both Regulars and Reserves are currently being considered by the MOD. We therefore recommend that once decisions have been made to adopt these recommendations, an implementation timetable with measurable deliverables is produced and shared with us so that we can scrutinise the progress made by the Department.

The UK Armed Forces have sufficient Readiness for operations—they can carry out standing operations and contingent commitments. However, the breadth of their commitments is having an inevitable impact, in terms of budget requirements, subsequent constraints on training and the retention of personnel. It also appears to be delaying the development of warfighting readiness.

Despite the Secretary of State’s insistence that the UK Armed Forces still have sufficient capacity to deploy in response to world events, we remain to be convinced. We are concerned that the breadth of ministerial requirements is in danger of pushing the Armed Forces far beyond what is sustainable. We recommend that either a budget uplift or a (strictly adhered to) prioritisation ranking is introduced. Any prioritisation ranking adopted needs to be drawn up within the National Security Council to ensure Ready for War? 55 agreement amongst the Prime Minister, Treasury and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, given that all of those Departments play a role in determining and enabling the deployment of UK Armed Forces.

We understand the financial implications of retaining capabilities after they have been retired but we question whether the MOD have considered all the options. We accept that maintaining equipment comes at significant cost but argue that such platforms do not need to be fully maintained—in a war of existence, a platform which is even halfway viable for regeneration is better than none at all. Given the long lead times to build complex platforms (such as warships, tanks or combat aircraft) combined with the importance of mass and resilience on the battlefield (as demonstrated on both sides of the war in Ukraine), we question whether less expensive alternative storage solutions could be sought, for example through access to US desert facilities. In this context it is worth noting that the United States, China and Russia have for many decades had a policy for mothballing warfighting equipment, whereas the UK policy has been to dispose of it—often at a fraction of its original acquisition cost. Russia has been able to draw on these reserves to add to its capacity to fight in Ukraine. (Paragraph 112) Strategic Readiness

We welcome the Government’s decision to assess what the country would need to do to maintain a warfighting effort. However, it is worrying that this work had not already been undertaken. The national defence plan is still a work in progress but we intend to maintain ongoing scrutiny of the Government’s developing plans to ensure warfighting and strategic readiness.

The Government’s approach to procurement reform is not yet finalised and we have heard many promises of change before. The MOD has shown willing to engage with us as it finalises this approach. We welcome this engagement, but are not yet in a position to reach a view on the appropriateness or effectiveness of the likely policy changes—which we very much hope will be announced to the House prior to the Easter recess, in late March 2024.

Under a national defence plan, each relevant Government Department would have its own responsibilities. We recommend that these responsibilities are published as far as possible, and—if any responsibilities cannot be published for national security reasons—these should be provided in confidence to the relevant select committee. We also recommend that, for each Department, its role in the national defence plan should be added to the list of responsibilities of a named Minister. (Paragraph 140)

Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally changed the threat— demonstrating that Russia has both the capability and intent to prosecute a war in Europe. This requires a wholesale shift in approach towards warfighting resilience both in the UK and Allies.

It is a matter of national pride that whenever the Armed Forces are asked to carry out a task, they will find a way. It is to the credit of the Armed Forces that they have 56 Ready for War? sustained this effort for so long. But overtasking has both a personal cost for service personnel and an opportunity cost for the UK. The increase in global instability has coincided with a period of decreasing recruitment and reduced industrial capacity, which requires sustained, long-term investment. The Government risks being unable to build true warfighting and strategic readiness because of the sheer pace of operations, which could threaten the security of the UK.

Personnel need time to recover from operations, and time to train and develop new skills. But the demand of operations makes that harder to achieve. It is unsurprising that more people are leaving the Forces than joining them. All three services have growing capability shortfalls—these have been a feature of our inquiries over the course of this Parliament. As these shortfalls increase, this places greater pressure on those who remain, leading to a vicious cycle.

The Government must act to break this cycle, and do so swiftly, to ensure that the UK is ready not only to face the challenges of today, but also to face the storm clouds on the horizon. (Paragraph 144) Ready for War? 57