Recommendation 49

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