Defence chief: UK armed forces have good equipment but not enough people
General Sir Nick Houghton warns about further cuts to personnel and operations, saying Britain risks having ‘hollow force’
Britain’s armed forces have been provided with “exquisite equipment” but do not have enough people to use it, the country’s most senior military officer has warned.
General Sir Nick Houghton, chief of the defence staff, said the structure of the army, navy and air force risked becoming incoherent, they were “critically deficient” in crucial areas, and there was a “creeping aversion to risk” when it came to deploying British troops.
Houghton, who took over the top military post from General Sir David Richards this summer, was speaking about the state of the armed forces in his first annual defence chief’s lecture at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in central London.
Referring to the hugely controversial and difficult military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he noted that while Britain’s armed forces had never been held in such popular high regard, “the purposes to which they have most recently been put have seldom been more deeply questioned”.
In a hard-hitting speech, Houghton warned about the prospect of further cuts in personnel and military operations. “Unattended, our current course leads to a strategically incoherent force structure: exquisite equipment, but insufficient resources to man that equipment or train on it.”
That, he added was what the Americans called the “spectre of the hollow force”.
Houghton continued: “We are not there yet, but across defence I would identify the Royal Navy as being perilously close to its critical mass in manpower terms.” Though he did not explicitly refer to them, the navy is benefiting from the building of two large aircraft carriers – the biggest ships it has ever had – a fleet of destroyers, and, under present plans, new fleets of Trident nuclear missile submarines and nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines.
Houghton said the country’s armed forces were “too platform-focused” and did not have sufficient numbers of skilled personnel.
“We are critically deficient in the capabilities which enable the joint force. Such things as intelligence, surveillance, compatible communications, joint logistics and tactical transport,” Houghton warned.
He also appeared to support what many senior military officers, notably in the army, are saying – that is, some weapons systems are bought simply as job creation programmes, to save British jobs.
“The defence budget does not exist primarily to subsidise the defence industry or promote defence exports. It exists to maximise defence capability,” Houghton said. The Europeans must do more to share their military capabilities – co-operating more effectively rather than cutting across the board or, as he put it, indulging “in some reductionist alchemy which leaves everyone doing less of the same”.
