Select committee: Defence Committee
Conclusion 99
First Report - Ready for War?
Published 4 Feb 2024
Addressed to Ministry of Defence
Defence Committee Armed Forces Readiness All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
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
From: Defence Committee, First Report - Ready for War? (HC 26), 4 February 2024
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 25 April 2024 (deadline 4 April 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees there is no regular mechanism to scrutinise readiness and offers an annual open session, releases some Defence Planning Assumptions headlines, and sets out its position on stockpiles, recruitment and procurement.
- On transparency, the government "recognises that the Committee should have public access to more information on planning assumptions and readiness" and releases headlines from the 2023 assumptions, committing to release "as much as possible" of the next iteration "when national and NATO planning processes have matured".
- It agrees the response time for the inquiry was slow and "will make every effort to ensure this is not repeated".
- On the £1.95bn from the Spring Budget 2023, it states the money "will be spent in full on measures to address gaps in our capabilities". It says exact stockpile holdings are "not releasable on the grounds of national security".
- On recruitment and retention, it says a formal response to each Haythornthwaite Review recommendation "will be published during 2024", with next steps for delivery and implementation for each.