In a major Report, the Defence Committee today welcomes the
decision of the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR)
to establish a warfighting division of 40,000 troops and
associated support which will be able to deploy at speed.
However, this ambition will not become a reality, unless the next
Government and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) provide the funding,
manpower, training and equipment required.
The achievement of the new formation is based upon a standing
army of 82,000 Regulars. Even though this is an historically low
target, the MoD has yet to recruit these numbers. There are also
serious doubts about its ability to provide the envisaged 30,000
trained reservists by 2019.
Appropriate training for the new division is vital for it to be
able to counter the threat of a peer adversary. Therefore, the
MoD must protect, and probably increase, the Army’s training
budget.
The division will also require an extensive range of new
equipment and vehicles. The MoD has announced an impressive
equipment programme to address this need, but it is not clear
whether the funding to pay for it is in place. While welcoming
the commitment to the new AJAX vehicles, the Report highlights
the decline in the numbers of Challenger 2 main battle tanks and
Warrior vehicles available to the Army. Any further
reductions—either due to budgetary pressures or programme
delays—would be fraught with risk.
Chairman of the Defence Committee, MP, says:
“The creation of a warfighting division is designed to counter
the increasing threat of state-on-state conflict identified in
the 2015 SDSR. No longer are counter-insurgency campaigns top of
our agenda. To be a credible force, the division must be fully
manned and fully equipped. The MoD’s future equipment plans are
heavily dependent on identifying and achieving billions of pounds
in so-called ‘efficiency savings’ over the decade ahead. So,
while the Army’s ambition is laudable, the MoD and the next
Government must make it a reality.
“As in many other areas of Defence, the work of the Army is
constrained by the fact that Defence expenditure has fallen to an
unacceptable level in GDP percentage terms: until the mid-1990s,
the UK never spent less than 3 per cent of GDP on Defence. Until
we accept the need to spend more than the 2 per cent NATO
minimum, the timely establishment of the warfighting division,
and the attainment of our manpower and equipment goals, cannot be
taken for granted.”
