{"id":291836,"date":"2024-07-25T07:30:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T07:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=291836"},"modified":"2024-07-27T05:44:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-27T05:44:42","slug":"army-chief-says-uk-must-double-its-lethality-or-be-prepared-for-war-in-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=291836","title":{"rendered":"Army chief says UK must double its lethality or be prepared for war in 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Sabbagh \u2013 The Guardian April 23, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

General Walker says the British army needs \u2018to double our fighting power in three years and triple by the end of the decade\u2019.<\/p><\/div>\n

Britain must be prepared to fight a war in three years\u2019 time and double the lethality of its army as the separate threats of Russia<\/a>, China, Iran and North Korea come to a head, the new chief of the army has warned.<\/p>\n

Gen Sir Roly Walker, the chief of the general staff, told reporters that the west faced \u201can axis of upheaval\u201d with increasing military ambition and that a conflict involving one of the countries could lead to \u201ca significant detonation\u201d in another theatre.<\/p>\n

The UK and its allies had to be ready \u201cto deter or fight a war in three years\u201d, he argued \u2013 a deliberately stark judgment based on China\u2019s hostility towards Taiwan, Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions and Russia\u2019s militarisation as demonstrated by its invasion of Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Walker cited US assessments that China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, had asked for the country\u2019s military to be ready to invade Taiwan in 2027 \u2013 as well as concerns that Iran could seek to break the nuclear deal that is intended to prevent it developing an atomic weapon, while the war in Ukraine is continuing.<\/p>\n

In a subsequent speech, Walker said he had \u201ca bold ambition\u201d for the army \u201cto double our fighting power in three years and triple by the end of the decade\u201d, not with extra resources but by using technology and techniques developed on the battlefields of Ukraine, such as drones and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Walker did not set out the nature of the global threats in the main body of his address, but in a briefing to reporters he argued that the interdependence between Russia, China, Iran<\/a> and North Korea was growing, as seen in Ukraine, where Iran and North Korea have supplied weapons and China components to aid Moscow\u2019s military effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is, the ability to manage any one crisis that involves any of those actors becomes much, much harder,\u201d because they are increasingly supporting each other with weapons, components and intelligence, the general said.<\/p>\n

Although Russia was embroiled in the war in Ukraine, and on current trends its forces would, Walker said, take \u201cfive years to grind their way through\u201d to capturing the eastern Donbas, at a cost of 1.5 million casualties, the country\u2019s history had shown it could bounce back.<\/p>\n

In his earlier remarks to reporters, the army chief argued Russia could emerge from its current war with \u201ca sense of wanting retribution for the support that was given to Ukraine\u201d \u2013 and could pose a greater medium-term threat than anticipated.<\/p>\n

Walker argued that \u201cwe are not on an inexorable path to war\u201d but added that \u201cwhat we do have is an absolute urgency to restore credible hard power in order to underwrite deterrence\u201d, at a time when the Labour government has just begun a strategic defence review after the election.<\/p>\n

A week ago, the man leading the review, the former Nato secretary general George Robertson, warned that Britain and its allies were facing a \u201cdeadly quartet\u201d<\/a> of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, suggesting the idea that the four countries were increasingly collaborating was widely shared in security circles.<\/p>\n

The new army chief\u2019s comments come at a time when the size of the British army<\/a> is at its smallest for 300 years, having donated tanks, missiles, artillery and large amounts of ammunition to Ukraine \u2013 and will be interpreted by some as a plea for future investment in a service considered in need of modernisation.<\/p>\n

While the Labour government has agreed to lift defence spending from the current level of 2.32% of GDP \u2013 \u00a364.6bn \u2013 to 2.5%, it has not yet committed to a firm timetable. Ministers want to look at the country\u2019s books before deciding what is possible, while the Conservatives previously committed to doing so by 2030.<\/p>\n

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

British Army commander warns that Britain needs to double its fighting power in the next three years in order to face the growing threat from an \u201caxis of upheaval\u201d \u2013 Russia, China and Iran <\/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":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291836","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=291836"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291840,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291836\/revisions\/291840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}