The UK government’s Defence Command Paper Refresh (DCP23), published on 18 July 2023, “takes learnings from the war in Ukraine – and wider threats to our security – and sets out a plan to deliver a credible warfighting force that will keep us on track to act as a global heavyweight both now and in the future”, according to the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) press release that preceded it.
Most obviously, as a direct lesson learned from the Ukraine conflict, the DCP23 states that the UK will invest an additional GBP 2.5 M (EUR 2.91 M) into the UK armed forces’ munitions stockpiles through the coming decade, “on top of the increased investments committed at the Autumn Statement and Spring Budget”.
The Paper also states that the UK government will increase its investment in the resilience and readiness of the UK’s munitions infrastructure [and] will work with industry to make supply chains more resilient and reliable, providing Defence with an assured means of replenishing quickly when needed, keeping pace with our adversaries, and surging to meet operational demand.”
The DCP23 follows the March refresh of the 2021 Integrated Review, which identified Russia as the most acute threat to UK security, recognised China as a long-term systemic challenge, and predicted a more adversarial international system.
The war in Ukraine has certainly emphasised that the incremental slog to regain territory invaded by Russia requires a significant amount of well-supplied artillery assets in combination with strong, mobile and determined land forces – a model of warfare depressingly similar to that waged in the First World War.
The DCP23, however, clearly envisages a much more ‘21st Century’ approach. It asserts that the UK defence establishment will become “a science and technology superpower, enhancing our capabilities in fields such as robotics, human augmentation, directed-energy weapons and advanced materials, to gain the edge on the battlefield”.
Budget realities
UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who is standing down from his post after the next election, has already conceded that the British Army can only be adequately resourced if it is smaller. In the foreword to the DCP23 he and Armed Forces Minister James Heappey admit that maximising the UK armed forces’ “growing but ultimately finite resources … necessitates ruthless prioritisation and improved productivity”. Wallace and Heappey further state, “Our mission is clear: to protect the nation and help it prosper. That does not just mean more ships, tanks and jets – indeed in this document there are deliberately no new commitments on platforms at all – because on that we stand by what we published in 2021. Instead, we focus on how to drive the lessons of Ukraine into our core business and to recover the warfighting resilience needed to generate credible conventional deterrence.”
It is therefore most likely that the MoD will proceed with plans announced in 2021 to reduce the army’s manpower strength from 82,000 to 73,000 by 2025, which observers have pointed out puts it at its lowest strength since the Napoleonic period. Further to this, the army’s current holding of 227 Challenger 2 main battle tanks (MBTs) is scheduled to be reduced to just 148 modernised Challenger 3 MBTs: a cut of more than a third to the army’s most potent armoured platform. Although Wallace announced in January 2023 that he would review this plan in light of the Ukraine conflict, 14 Challenger 2s have already been donated to Ukraine.
Regarding the UK defence budget, although UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak committed in March to a GBP 5 Bn boost in defence spending over the following two years, UK inflation was running at more than 10% at that point and was still at 8.7% in May, blunting the effect of this spending boost. Wallace, moreover, had argued for and failed to secure a spending boost of GBP 10 Bn. At the time of the March announcement, as Sunak prepared to meet US President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in San Diego to discuss the next stage of the countries’ 2021 AUKUS pact, the UK prime minister set out an ambition to increase UK defence spending from 2.0% to 2.5% of GDP over the longer term, yet he has committed to this goal only “as the fiscal and economic circumstances allow”.
Retained ambitions
Despite this question mark over future funding levels, the DCP23 retains the UK government’s dogged ambition to remain a vital player on the global stage, in line with the AUKUS trilateral security pact it announced with Australia and the United States in September 2021. Most notably, the Paper states that a ‘Global Response Force’ (GRF) will be created that enables the UK to ‘get there first’, “bringing together our deployed and high-readiness forces, and drawing on capabilities from all domains”.
The GRF “will be optimised for rapid, global effect to respond to crisis, project force and campaign constantly” the paper states, adding that “As an all-domain task force, it will deliver flexible responses and strategic choice to deal with challenges that emerge, anywhere in the world.”
“We need to be able to compete, challenge and contest threats globally,” the Paper states. “We need also to be ready to seize opportunities; this requires persistent forward presence not only in Europe but across the globe.”
Allies and partners
On Ukraine specifically, the DCP23 states, “Our national security is intrinsically linked to the outcome of the war in Ukraine. Although we must be careful not to rush to definitive lessons from Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine … we must seize the opportunity to gain insights and adapt now. Some of these insights will be strategic, for example relating to the art of deterrence, strategic stability, the role of economic measures within a conflict, and escalation management. Some of them will be tactical, relating to a battlefield that – with trench warfare – has disturbing echoes of the early twentieth century, overlaid by twenty-first century capabilities”.
The Paper goes on to stress the essential role of alliances and partnerships – and the centrality of NATO in particular. “The Royal Navy will continue to provide the most comprehensive maritime contribution to NATO warfighting capability of any European navy,” it states, adding, “UK capital ships will continue to operate as NATO flagships and we will be highly visible in NATO maritime activity in the High North, Baltic and Mediterranean Seas and the Atlantic Ocean.”
Of the British Army the Paper states that it “will continue to lead the multinational Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup in Estonia and will provide the land component of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force in 2023 and, in 2024, the land component of the inaugural Allied Reaction Force. Whilst maintaining our warfighting division, the army will also offer to strengthen, with allies, the UK-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps as a strategic reserve for NATO’s land forces.”
The Royal Air Force, meanwhile, “continues to conduct NATO air patrols over Poland, Romania and Estonia. It will also provide to NATO its significant intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, air-to-air refuelling and modern strategic transport fleets, as well as its highly capable fourth- and fifth-generation combat aircraft.”
Beyond NATO, the DCP23 notes that “the most urgent priority in the Euro-Atlantic is to support Ukraine to reassert its sovereignty and deny Russia any strategic benefit from its invasion”. It also stresses the importance of the UK’s leading role in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), which also comprises Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway, and the Northern Group, which additionally includes Germany and Poland.
“The JEF has proved to be an effective tool for enhancing the security of the North Atlantic, High North and Baltic Sea region, and for providing support to participant nations as we have done during Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession process. The JEF will continue to work in full complementarity with NATO to provide an additional tier of defence, security and stability,” the Paper states. “The Northern Group is another valuable forum in which its members – committed to maintaining security and stability in the Northern European region and the wider continent, as well as strengthening transatlantic bonds – come together for discussions on defence and security matters. We will continue to prioritise our leadership of both the JEF and the Northern Group, promoting ongoing close cooperation and interoperability.”
Meanwhile, the DCP23 identified France as “the UK’s closest European ally”, noting that the Lancaster House Agreement of 2010 “established an enduring foundation for our co-operation, exemplified through the creation of the UK-France Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF). We will work closely in promoting international security and tackling shared challenges, including by harnessing the full potential to deliver effects through the CJEF.
“At the March 2023 UK/France Summit we committed to further enhancing our existing bilateral and multilateral military integration, particularly through our joint land exercises through NATO,” the Paper stated. “Building on our collaboration in the Euro-Atlantic, we will explore opportunities for France and the United Kingdom to demonstrate for the first time the sequencing of more persistent European Carrier Strike Group presence in the Indo-Pacific.”
Procurement at pace
Regarding procurement, the DCP23 stresses the value of “adaptability at pace” and the need for “a more agile acquisition process and an even stronger partnership between government and industry”, vowing to “engage much earlier in strategic conversations with industry” and developing a collaborative approach with industry that “will transparently share risk, with a clear focus on strategic outcomes”.
With the UK government having already procured a fleet of F-35 fifth-generation fighters and two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers over the last several years, as well as having committed to replacing the Royal Navy’s four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and more recently leading the sixth-generation Global Combat Air Programme, the DCP23 appears to spurn the notion of committing to yet more expensive programmes. Instead, the Paper optimistically states, “Battle-winning advantage [is] not just achieved by expensive and exquisite capabilities. It can also be delivered by judiciously combining the truly high-tech with the low cost, the off-the-shelf, the inventive, and the cheap – where these can be deployed rapidly to solve an operational challenge: the £100 solution defeating the £100 million threat.”
Playing down the dwindling number of UK platforms in a number of areas, the Paper asserts, “Our mass comes not just from the ships, tanks and planes in our inventory but from the innovative systems we wrap around them and the cunning of those that operate them.”
The overall push of the Paper is thus a move from a platform-centric to a technology-centric approach, with a particular emphasis on exploiting the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as laid out in the June 2022 Defence AI Strategy.
One positive lesson learned from responding to the Ukraine war, the DCP23 states, is that “We have demonstrated through our support to Ukraine that we can acquire and deliver capabilities at incredible speed when funding and risk appetite are aligned with the objectives of senior defence, industry and political leadership”.
Delivering defence acquisitions at pace – already a central pillar of the UK-led GCAP/Tempest sixth-generation fighter programme – will thus be increasingly emphasised. “Whilst our acquisition system must enable consistent delivery of capability to agreed parameters – of time, cost and performance – we will put growing value on time,” the Paper states. “Driving pace is critical – even if it forces us to increase our risk tolerance elsewhere. Our ambition is to reduce radically the average time from the identification of a military need to contract placement, and from contract placement to delivery to the front line.”
The DCP23 also announced “an improved surge capacity through our Strategic Reserve, built around the ex-regular reserve forces to add further depth and expertise in time of crisis”. There may be issues with following through on this, however, as the most recent figures show UK reserve forces becoming increasingly depleted. The overall strength of the UK Volunteer Reserves for 2023 stands at 34,280, which is a 6.2% drop since 2022.
Further initiatives included in the DCP23 were a new employment model and skills framework, designed to increase fluidity between the military, the Civil Service and industry while offering a more compelling and competitive incentivisation package, and a further GBP 400 M investment to modernise armed forces accommodation.
Peter Felstead
