Shrinking army threatens UK’s NATO affect, commander warns
Britain’s shrinking armed forces are weakening its affect on Nato, the deputy chief of the alliance’s army arm has reportedly warned.
Gen Sir Tim Radford, Nato’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, is reported to have stated that Britain is “just holding on” to its standing as one of many organisation’s main nations following years of cuts to its defence finances. The British Army is scheduled to be decreased to 73,000 serving troops from its present 76,000, which is considerably down from the 97,000 in its ranks a mere decade in the past. The most up-to-date spherical of cuts had been introduced within the final defence command paper, revealed in 2021.
While Gen Sir Tim has refused to be drawn on a particular optimum variety of service personnel, he believes the Army is “too small” at its present measurement and must broaden if Britain needs to stay one in every of Nato’s main nations. The Afghanistan veteran warns that the nation’s “hard fought” place of affect secured by Secnd World War commander Gen Bernard “Monty” Montgomery dangers being misplaced if it would not reverse its current downward pattern.
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Speaking from Nato’s army headquarters in Mons, Belgium, he informed The Telegraph: “We’re in danger of not holding on. It would be wrong to say [we’re] living off the past, but we’ve got to be really careful that we don’t slip too low.
“We’re in a fortunate position here. We’ve got a position of influence right across Nato. I worry that if we don’t invest and we don’t build up our industrial base and we don’t lead as we should, we might lose that position.”
Gen Sir Tim factors to the conflict in Ukraine as proof that technological development can’t come on the expense of personnel.
“Equipment is only as good as the people that are managing and operating it. We have lost the numbers that we should have,” he stated.
“I think we’ve had a slight awakening after Ukraine, but we need to do a twin-track approach. We need to stay at the leading edge of innovation and technology and lead on that as much as we can.
“But at the same time it needs to be underpinned with hard fighting power. If someone comes toward you with a tank, you can’t cyber it away. You can’t cross a bridge with cyber. It needs to be balanced.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson stated: “The UK is a major leader across Nato, contributing to every Nato mission and underpinned by the largest defence budget in Europe.”