{"id":284005,"date":"2024-03-21T08:20:54","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T08:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=284005"},"modified":"2024-03-23T06:59:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-23T06:59:00","slug":"army-must-prepare-genuinely-for-war-ex-defence-and-security-chiefs-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=284005","title":{"rendered":"Army must ‘prepare genuinely for war’, ex-defence and security chiefs warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sky News \u2013 March 20, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The army must “prepare genuinely for war” to credibly deter threats, a group of former defence and security chiefs have signalled.<\/p>\n

Offering advice to whoever is prime minister and defence secretary after the election, a report by the New Bletchley Network – which drew on ideas from a discussion between a panel of experts – said a “hollowing out” of the regular army and reserves over the years must be reversed, warning the size of the force may already be beneath “national critical mass”.<\/p>\n

Among those who contributed to the discussion were Lord Mark Sedwill, a former cabinet secretary and national security adviser, Lord George Robertson, a former head of NATO and Labour defence secretary, and General Lord David Richards, a former head of the armed forces.<\/p>\n

The intervention comes amid growing concern about a failure by Rishi Sunak’s government to increase defence spending in the Spring Budget, despite Defence Secretary Grant Shapps warning the UK was in a “pre-war world”<\/strong><\/a> and Russia still waging a full-scale war in Ukraine<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Focusing on the UK army, the report, published on Wednesday, warned “deterrence is based on credibility”.<\/p>\n

“British Army credibility has been weakened by 20 plus years of hollowing out and diminished fighting power. Army morale is fragile,” it added.<\/p>\n

The brief paper highlighted a “serious wake-up signal” from a senior figure in NATO who warned the British Army is no longer a top-level, or “Tier 1”, fighting force.<\/p>\n

These comments, by a senior US general, were first revealed by Sky News<\/strong><\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

The report said: “To be credible in deterrence terms we need to prepare genuinely for war and communicate this to potential foes, NATO and allies, and particularly to the British public.”<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now the UK defence establishment are making ominous warnings that could foreshadow a wider military clash with Russia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284005"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284051,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284005\/revisions\/284051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}