US general warns British Army no longer top-level fighting force, defence sources reveal
A senior US general has privately told Defence Secretary Ben Wallace the British Army is no longer regarded as a top-level fighting force, defence sources have revealed.
They said this decline in war-fighting capability – following decades of cuts to save money – needed to be reversed faster than planned in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Bottom line… it’s an entire service unable to protect the UK and our allies for a decade,” one of the defence sources said.
Ben Wallace was given a frank assessment of the army by a US general, say sources
The sources said Rishi Sunak risked failing in his role as “wartime prime minister” unless he took urgent action given the growing security threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
This should include increasing the defence budget by at least £3bn a year; halting a plan to shrink the size of the army even further; and easing peacetime procurement rules that obstruct the UK’s ability to buy weapons and ammunition at speed.
“We have a wartime prime minister and a wartime chancellor,” one source said.
“History will look back at the choices they make in the coming weeks as fundamental to whether this government genuinely believes that its primary duty is the defence of the realm or whether that is just a slogan to be given lip service.”
Offering a sense of the scale of the challenge faced by the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, it is understood that:
- The armed forces would run out of ammunition “in a few days” if called upon to fight
- The UK lacks the ability to defend its skies against the level of missile and drone strikes that Ukraine is enduring
- It would take five to ten years for the army to be able to field a war-fighting division of some 25,000 to 30,000 troops backed by tanks, artillery and helicopters
- Some 30% of UK forces on high readiness are reservists who are unable to mobilise within NATO timelines – “so we’d turn up under strength”
- The majority of the army’s fleet of armoured vehicles, including tanks, was built between 30 to 60 years ago and full replacements are not due for years
European powers like France and Germany have announced plans to boost defence spending significantly following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
Putin ‘at war with the West’
The European Union has even said President Putin is now at war with the West and NATO.
But the UK’s chancellor-turned-prime minister just wants the problem “to go away”, a second source claimed.
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Mr Sunak has yet to make any meaningful pledge to expand his defence coffers, instead pursuing a “refresh” of a review of defence policy that is due to be published on 7 March ahead of a spring budget that will signal whether there is any new money for the military.
Rishi Sunak has yet to make any meaningful pledge to increase defence cash
While the picture is bleak across the military, the army is in a particularly bad place.
Plans exist to modernise the service with fighting vehicles, missiles and upgraded tanks but they were devised before Russia launched its war and the timeline to deliver the transformation is too slow to meet the heightened risk, according to the defence sources.
Such concerns are not just being expressed by individuals inside UK defence circles, with sources saying a high-ranking US general offered a frank assessment of the British Army to Mr Wallace and some other senior officials last autumn.
The general used a term to rank the strength of a country’s military, with tier one regarded as a top-level power such as the United States, Russia, China and France and a status the UK also seeks to hold.
Tier two would describe a more middling power with less fighting capability such as Germany or Italy.
According to the sources, the general, referring to the army, said: “You haven’t got a tier one. It’s barely tier two.”
One of the sources insisted that the US and the rest of NATO understands the UK is planning to rebuild its force.
“It’s now in a better cycle with a lot of new investment over the next ten years”, the source said.
“As long as they don’t screw up the procurement, they’re on track to be a modern army.”
But other sources were less confident about how the UK was being viewed by its allies.
A degradation in fighting-power has long been a concern
Defence crisis a long time coming
The crisis in defence has been a generation in the making following repeated reductions in the size of the three armed services since the end of the Cold War by successive Conservative, coalition and Labour governments to save money for peacetime priorities.
Compounding the impact of the cuts is a chronic failure by the Ministry of Defence and the army over the past 20 years to procure some of its most needed equipment – such as armoured vehicles and new communication systems – despite spending billions of pounds.
In addition, the need to supply Ukraine with much of the army’s remaining stocks of weapons and ammunition to help the Ukrainian military fight Russia has increased the pressure even further.
The UK is playing a key role in supporting Kyiv, with the prime minister becoming the first leader to promise to send Western tanks – a leadership role he appeared keen to highlight when he took to social media after Germany and the US followed suit.
“Really pleased they’ve joined the UK in sending main battle tanks to Ukraine,” Mr Sunak tweeted last Wednesday.
“We have a window to accelerate efforts to secure a lasting peace for Ukrainians. Let’s keep it up.”
Yet despite this tough talk, Mr Sunak failed to list fixing capability gaps in his own armed forces as being among his top five priorities in his first policy speech as prime minister in early January even as Russia’s war rages on in Europe.
“The PM’s wartime approach is currently to cut the army, hollow it out further by gifting [equipment to Ukraine] and with no plans to replace [the weapons] for five to seven years,” the first defence source said.
In 2020, Boris Johnson, as prime minister, increased defence spending by £16 billion – the biggest uplift since the Cold War, but not enough to plug the gaps.
Since then, rising inflation, foreign exchange rates and the need to accelerate modernisation plans in the wake of Ukraine will mean more cuts without new cash, the sources said.
‘Hollow force’
The chronic erosion has created what defence sources describe as a “hollow force”, with insufficient personnel, not enough money to train and arm those still on the books, out-dated weapons and depleted stockpiles of ammunition and spare parts.
It has long been a concern, but Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has created an added sense of urgency – though seemingly not yet inside Number 10, according to General Sir Richard Barrons, a former senior commander.
“The money needed to fix defence is small when compared to other areas of spending like health, welfare and debt interest. So this is a matter of government choices, not affordability,” he told Sky News.
“Defence can no longer be left at the bottom of the list… Why is this lost on Downing Street and the Treasury, but not in Paris or Berlin?”
Mr Sunak has so far resisted calls to follow his predecessor, Liz Truss, to lift defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 up from just over 2% at present.
The army is less than half the size it was back in 1990
NATO requires all allies to spend at least 2% of national income on defence – a minimum baseline that France and Germany have previously failed to meet but have pledged to achieve.
Army smallest since Napoleonic times
At just 76,000 strong, the British army is less than half the size it was back in 1990 and the smallest it has been since Napoleonic times.
The force is due to shrink even further to 73,000 under current plans that will be implemented unless new money is found.
Retired generals, admirals and air chief marshals have been sounding the alarm for years, finding their voices typically after choosing to stay quiet while in uniform.
Even serving officials have started to speak more bluntly about depleted capabilities
But unusually, even serving officials have started to speak more bluntly in public about their depleted capabilities – a clear signal of serious concern within the Ministry of Defence’s main building and at the headquarters of the three services as well as strategic command.
‘Known capability risks’
Appearing before a committee of MPs earlier this month, Lieutenant General Sharon Nesmith, deputy chief of the general staff, spoke about the army’s plans to modernise, which were set out in 2021 as part of a body of work that was done in line with the government’s integrated review.
It envisaged delivering a war-fighting division, supported by new armoured vehicles and long-range missiles to be created by 2030 – leaving an interim gap.
“There were known capability risks,” Lt Gen Nesmith said in her evidence to MPs on the defence select committee.
“I think that, through today’s lens of war in Ukraine, on land, some of those decisions feel very uncomfortable.”
A government spokesperson said: “The prime minister is clear that we have to do everything necessary to protect our people, which is why the UK has the largest defence budget in Europe and we made the biggest investment in the UK defence industry since the Cold War in 2020.
“We are ensuring our armed forces have the equipment and capability they need to meet the threats of tomorrow, including through a fully-funded £242bn 10-year equipment plan.”
Regrowing military capability – something most European nations are also having to do – is difficult, particularly because of the need to balance support to the UK’s own defence industry and jobs against securing bulk purchases at a competitive price.
A separate defence source said: “The defence secretary has made clear for years now, about the need to modernise our army to ensure it keeps pace with our allies.
“That’s why at the spending review in 2020 he achieved an extra £16bn… Reinvesting, learning lessons from Ukraine and growing industrial skills takes time.
“We are on track to start to see new tanks, personnel carriers and air defence systems by the year after next. Over the next few years, Britain will rightly regain its place as one of the leading land forces in Europe.”
UK
The latest migration stats are going in the wrong direction – and the argument might get more vicious
The UK government won’t find much in the latest dump of migration data to back up its claim that it is restoring order to a broken asylum system.
In a competitive field, perhaps the most damaging stat is the rising number of small boat crossings – up 38% on 12 months previously and close to the peaks of 2023.
That has helped push up asylum applications to record levels, which in turn has led to a rise in the use of hotel accommodation.
The latest figures are a setback for Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Pic: PA
Politics live: Read about the latest migration stats
Deportations are up, but more than half of the total figure is foreign national offenders rather than failed asylum seekers.
The backlog for initial decisions is coming down.
But the approval rate for those applying for asylum after arriving on a small boat is still hovering around the 65% mark.
Another bottleneck is also forming as more people appeal their initial rejections – and require accommodation while they wait for an outcome.
This all helps explain why people are still taking the risk of crossing the channel in the first place.
It’s still highly likely that if you get to the UK, you’ll be able to stay.
The row over the use of hotels is a product of this underlying problem.
And if you thought that argument was vicious, just wait for the one that could follow if asylum seekers start to be moved out of hotels and into houses and flats in areas that already have a shortage of homes.
It’s why the only real endgame for the government is to find a way to stop people coming in the first place.
Increased numbers of returns, including through the UK-France deal, could provide some deterrent.
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Beefed-up action to dismantle smuggling gangs and reforms to the time it takes for appeals to be heard will help too.
So far though, all the figures that count are going in the wrong direction.
What’s more, there’s some evidence that the data is looking particularly painful for Labour in some of its most vulnerable areas.
A look down the list of councils with relatively high numbers of asylum seekers reveals several key election battlegrounds in the Midlands and North.
These are regions where Reform is already campaigning hard.
The stakes are high, and as it stands the government is being found wanting.
As over one million students receive their GCSE results, Sky News has found gender and factors linked to deprivation remain troubling predictors of students’ performance.
Overall GCSE grades are relatively consistent with last year’s results, indicating stability has returned following the end of pandemic grading.
The compulsory courses, Level 2 English and Mathematics, continue to be a hurdle for many GCSE students – with Thursday’s results showing the highest failure rates for the two subjects in a decade.
Yet, while overall grades are stable, so too are key attainment gaps that experts say point to deprivation.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson denounced attainment gaps for white working-class children in an article for The Telegraph.
“It’s appalling, and I won’t stand by and watch those numbers continue to grow,” Ms Phillipson wrote. “It’s not just the life chances of those children that are being damaged – it’s also the health of our society as a whole.”
While the data does not share deprivation status or ethnicity of students, other strongly correlated factors such as English region and school type show stark inequalities.
Some 48.1% of GCSE exams sat at fee-paying schools in England received grades of 7 or above, compared with 18.2% at non-selective state schools.
Fiona Spellman, CEO of education charity SHINE, said, “The primary difference that drives the attainment gap between those who attend independent schools and those who don’t really comes from the circumstances in those children’s lives.”
Regional inequalities across England also remain significant. In London, 28.4% of GCSE exams were awarded a grade 7 or higher compared with just 17.8% of exams in the North East of England.
But even students in London were outperformed by Northern Ireland, where 31.6% of GCSE students received a 7 or above.
“Deprivation is a major driver of the gap we see between the different regions and in terms of the attainment children achieve in all phases of education,” said Ms Spellman.
This year’s cohort had both a disrupted primary and secondary school experience due to the pandemic – a factor that may be influencing some of these inequality gaps.
“We know that the pandemic affected all children, but we know that it didn’t affect all children equally,” added Ms Spellman. “The legacy of COVID is still very much still alive today and how that had a disproportionate effect on the children who most need support is still working its way through.”
Gender gap stubbornly persistent
One of the clearest divides in the results – and not mentioned by the education secretary – is gaps based on gender.
Girls continue to receive a greater proportion of the top grades compared with boys. Among students receiving a 7/A or above, 55.8% were girls while 44.2% were boys.
In England, the gap is wider when looking just at 16-year-old students taking 7 or more GCSEs. 60.7% of those in this cohort receiving top grades were girls while 39.3% were boys.
But, Jill Duffy, the chair of one of the main qualifications body, the OCR, pointed out the overall gender gap this year is the narrowest since 2000.
However, Claire Thomson and Cath Jadhav, both board members of the Joint Council for Qualifications alongside Ms Duffy, cautioned that the decrease in the gender gap was too small to confirm any concrete trend.
“The change is relatively small, at fractions of percentage points, so there will be lots of individual factors which affect that,” said Ms Jadhav.
Certain subjects showed large gender imbalances between boys and girls.
Girls were the most overrepresented in home economics, followed by performing/expressive arts, health & social care, hospitality, and social science subjects.
In contrast, boys were disproportionately more likely to take other technology, construction, engineering, computing, and economics.
Working-class boys facing hurdles
So, is Ms Phillipson right to highlight white working-class children as falling behind? And should we be more concerned about white working-class boys in particular?
While the data does not include sufficient detail on how these inequalities stack on each other, data published by the Department for Education (DfE) based on last year’s results suggest white working-class boys are among the most disadvantaged in education.
Among all children eligible for free school meals, White British boys were much less likely to receive a grade of 4 – a pass – or above on their GCSEs.
Black Caribbean and mixed white/black Caribbean boys on free school meals had similarly poor pass rates.
“It’s not all boys. And it’s not all white working-class boys,” said David Spendlove, professor at the University of Manchester’s Institute for Education. But, “boys top all of those key indicators: likely to be diagnosed with special needs, likely to be excluded from school.”
“The system is stacked against them and at every single hurdle they are going to face challenges which mount increasingly over time,” said Prof Spendlove.
Beyond A-levels
What’s next for students receiving results on Thursday?
According to DfE’s 2024 numbers, just over 40% of 16-year-olds started an A-level course the following year.
More than 20% started other Level 3 qualifications, such as T-levels or BTECs. Around 3.5% started apprenticeships.
However, 6.2% were classified as not in education, employment, or training (“NEET”).
Simon Ashworth, deputy CEO and head of policy for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said, “The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has got worse, not better.”
“We’re nearly to a million young people who are NEET,” he said. “That is a worry.”
Boys between the ages of 16 and 18 are more likely than their female counterparts to have NEET status, DfE data reveals.
Furthermore, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds “tend to be the young people who will be closest to the job market or the risk of becoming NEET once they leave education,” shared Mr Ashworth.
Mr Ashworth also added that some young people who pursue apprenticeships fail to complete them because they struggle to pass mandatory Level 2 Mathematics.
Students who receive lower-than-desired results on Thursday, however, should stay optimistic that many doors remain open to them.
This year saw a 12.1% rise in students 17 or older resitting exams this year.
SHINE’s Dr Helen Rafferty said that the resit rate is likely due to the pandemic as “many students have come to the end of their secondary school journey having had the most chaotic and disrupted educational journey that you can imagine.”
Nonetheless, Ms Rafferty said, “I do think it’s encouraging that so many students are choosing to move on to an educational pathway which still provides them with that opportunity to get their English and maths results.”
UK
Lucy Connolly: Councillor’s wife jailed for inciting racial hatred on X after Southport murders released
A Northampton childminder who was jailed for inciting racial hatred after the Southport murders has been released from prison.
Lucy Connolly, the wife of Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, was handed a 31-month sentence in October last year after she admitted publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on the X social media site.
In an apparent reference to asylum seekers staying in UK hotels, Connolly posted on the day of the murder of three girls in Southport on 29 July last year: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
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Riots a year on: ‘It looked like a modern-day lynching’
The mother-of-three, who was working as a childminder at the time, had shared the post after false rumours circulated online that the Southport murderer was an asylum seeker. He was later named as UK-born teenager Axel Rudakubana.
Connolly’s post was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.
Her release means she has served nine months of a 31-month sentence.
Her sentence which was handed down at Birmingham Crown Court has been criticised as being too harsh and some argued she should not have been jailed as she was exercising freedom of speech.
Lucy Connolly. Pic: Facebook
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch challenged Lucy Connolly’s charges, saying that “protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety”.
“If the law does this, then the law itself is broken – and it’s time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act,” she said in a post on X on Thursday.
The Tory leader said: “Lucy Connolly finally returns home to her family today. At last.
“Her punishment was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting.
“At that time, after Southport, Keir Starmer branded all protesters ‘far-right’ and called for ‘fast-track prosecutions’.
“Days later, Lucy was charged with stirring up racial hatred – an offence that doesn’t even require intent to incite violence. Why exactly did the Attorney General think that was in the public interest?”
Rupert Lowe, who was an MP for Reform at the time, described her as a “political prisoner” in a Facebook post and said “jailing a young mother over a social media post is not fair play”.
Conservative West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly. Pic: PA
However, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended the sentencing earlier this year, addressing Connolly’s case in May after her Court of Appeal application against her jail term was dismissed.
Asked during Prime Minister’s Questions whether her imprisonment was an “efficient or fair use” of prison, Sir Keir said: “Sentencing is a matter for our courts, and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country.
“I am strongly in favour of free speech, we’ve had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely.
“But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.”
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Lord Young of Acton, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “The fact that Lucy Connolly has spent more than a year in prison for a single tweet that she quickly deleted and apologised for is a national scandal, particularly when Labour MPs, councillors and anti-racism campaigners who’ve said and done much worse have avoided jail.
“The same latitude they enjoyed should have been granted to Lucy.”
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