The British Army under strain

A lengthy piece in the current Economist discusses the current state of the British army after lengthy deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan:

[S]ince 2006 Britain has run two protracted and often intensely violent operations. Units routinely breach guidelines designed to give them time to minimise battle stress. The strain on soldiers, says General Sir Richard Dannatt, the army chief, is "unacceptable". Britain has struggled to maintain two long supply routes, dividing scarce helicopters, engineers and medics. Aircraft are wearing out faster than planned. "The British army is like an engine running without oil. It is still going, but it could seize up at any moment," argues Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank.

These troubles are made worse by a chronic shortage of manpower. On October 1st the trained strength of the British armed forces was 173,270. This is 3.2% below the official requirement, but it understates large gaps in some areas — especially infantry units. Most battalions are 10-20% short of their required numbers; if those deemed unfit to deploy (due to, say, battle injuries) are factored out, they are as much as 42% under strength. So when battalions are preparing for war, they often regroup soldiers from their four scrawny companies into three, and then bolt on a fourth from another unit. To support current operations, the army has cut back training and lowered readiness; instead of having roughly a brigade at high readiness to deal with a crisis, sources say, there is "less than a battle-group" (a 1,500-strong formation).

This is disturbing: Canada, with a much smaller base to draw upon, is still able to maintain a battle-group in Afghanistan. Britain's other commitments are clearly overstretching what remains of the army's capabilities. Of course, that's not to say that Canadian troops can be maintained there indefinitely (and the government has been pretty clear that there will be a full withdrawal at the end of the current commitment).

Withdrawing from Iraq will relieve some of the strain. But operations in Afghanistan alone, involving some 8,000 British troops, arguably are already more demanding than the structure permits — and many expect Britain to send another battle-group to support the American reinforcement there. Generals want the army to grow. Yet it struggles to recruit, train and keep enough soldiers to fill its existing quota. An acute problem is the large "wastage" of recruits. Last year 38% of those in training either gave up or were thrown out — a bigger share than in the American army. Britain gets by in part thanks to foreigners: Commonwealth citizens (who made up more than 6% of soldiers in 2007), Irish recruits and Gurkhas. The top brass hopes the recession will encourage more to join and fewer to leave. But more soldiers cost more money, and that will be in even shorter supply in a downturn.

Plainly, Britain's military resources do not match its commitments. Three ex-generals have said that Britain's "unusable" nuclear weapons should be scrapped. But Sir Jock reckons that any money saved would almost certainly go back to the Treasury, not the conventional forces.

That's an even more disturbing thought: the nuclear arsenal is almost the only thing left keeping Britain at "the head table", internationally speaking. To scrap it (whether the savings go to conventional forces or not) really would mark the final decline of Britain from the most powerful nation on the planet 100 years ago to (at best) a middleweight, unable to project power beyond its own coastline.

This, however, is perhaps the worst long-term indicator:

On December 11th the government announced a delay of one or two years in building big new aircraft carriers, and the deferral of a new family of armoured vehicles. Even so, insiders say there is still a £3.7 billion ($5.2 billion) hole in the budget for military equipment over the next four years and procurement costs are still rising. The bill for the 20 biggest weapons projects is now £28 billion, or 12%, over budget.

The carriers are the last gasp of the Royal Navy: without them, there's almost nothing left. The government has already pared back the surface fleet to the point that even calling it a "fleet" is incredibly misleading. The carriers — should they ever be launched — can't operate without sufficient support, and based on current trends, that support will not be available either.

I should run a pool on when the British government announces a further delay, and then when they announce the cancellation altogether. On current trends, it's no longer an "if".