General Sir Richard Barrons, who was director of operations for the UK armed forces, said ‘the risk to the homeland is on the pitch again’
The UK is facing a potentially “existential risk” to its homeland for the first time in decades, but is years away from being ready, a former senior commander has warned.
General Sir Richard Barrons – who was the director of operations for UK armed forces and co-wrote this year’s Strategic Defence Review – said that “the risk to the homeland is on the pitch again” as a result of Russian aggression, unlike previous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But he warned that the UK is falling behind its allies in moving to a war footing, with serious weaknesses across stockpiles, personnel and national resilience.
“We’re not talking about managing marginal risk, such as terrorism … We are talking about the potential for existential risk to our security, our prosperity, our values. It’s a wholly different challenge.
“Of course, we’re not ready for a long war, because we didn’t need to be,” he said. “Now, we need to be.”
“Until we fix it, we run the risk that our allies won’t bail us out, and our enemies will stop leaving us alone. That’s not a great strategy.”
He warned that the UK was moving at “half the speed of the risk” as a result of choices made by politicians, saying: “We’re going to take twice as long to get to where we need to be, because we have elected not to afford to go faster.”
UK seven years late in war preparations
Barrons said that at “best effort”, the UK could be “quite ready” for war in ten years, but that allies demand we must be prepared in three to five years.
He described a “disconnect” between “where we need to be and our ability to resource it over time”.
The head of the British Army has said that the UK must be ready to fight or deter a war by 2027, as threats converge from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
In a scathing assessment of the state of British preparedness, Barrons estimated that the UK was just a quarter of the way through its preparations for a protracted conflict, rating it just 2/10 for infrastructure resilience and equipment and 1/10 for air and missile defence.
Earlier this year, another top commander revealed that the military had carried out a simulation replicating attacks on Ukraine on the UK and found that Russian missiles would have breached British air defences.
Barrons also said that the UK’s reserve forces had been “trashed” over the last 30 years, and that key command and control centres were vulnerable to aerial attacks because they were located in office blocks, rather than secure locations.
The former military top brass said that the UK’s biggest weakness was its medical support based on planning for 600 casualties per day, saying that there was no integration between field hospitals and the NHS or allied healthcare systems.
Barron blamed the slow pace of military preparedness on a lack of political will and interest from voters, saying that the priority was to spend money elsewhere.
He described defence spending as “on its knees”, saying it was not an “insurmountable” problem but one that would require “different choices” within government and frank conversations with the public – and that he was not optimistic that today’s budget would solve the problem.
The warning came amid rising Russian aggression towards the UK and its allies.
Nato jets were scrambled on Tuesday to track two Russian drones that crossed into Romania, the deepest and first daytime incursion into the country’s airspace since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed this week that the Royal Navy have intercepted a Russian warship and tanker in the Dover Strait and English Channel.
Defence Secretary John Healey also announced that the Russian spy ship, the Yantar, had directed lasers at RAF pilots tracking it when it lingered in British waters.
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An MoD spokesperson said the Government was delivering on the Strategic Defence Review – a blueprint co-developed by Barrons to bolster preparedness – as a “deliverable and affordable plan for Defence to meet the challenges, threats and opportunities of the twenty-first century.”
It is backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War, hitting 2.6 per cent of GDP by 2027, the MOD said.
“Choices taken by the Chancellor at the upcoming Budget will ensure no return to the hollowed out and underfunded Armed Forces of the past, allowing us to invest in the modern capabilities to keep the country safe,” they added.
