Army Restructuring: Future Soldier — House of Commons, 2021-11-25
Topic: Defense
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I have, but of course the Red Book changed in a different year from when our settlement started. The right hon. Gentleman will know that our settlement started a year before everyone else’s because I went in to bat for the Department recognising that a one-year settlement would have been too difficult. Secondly, there is not a £4 billion black hole in our budget; in fact, it is on track. So that was not accurate, either. On whether the BCTs will be both wheeled and tracked, they will mix the two at certain stages. However, it is not just about tracks and wheels; it is also about speed. When I served in an armoured infantry regiment in Germany in 1991, the Warriors completely outraced the 432s, which were 1960s armoured vehicles. Indeed, I am so old that the tanks were Chieftains, and the Warriors had got ahead of the Chieftains. It does happen even in tracked, and the challenge in modern warfare is balance in bringing in the latest in a fashion that keeps pace with the integration required On the range of battalions, I welcome the Opposition’s acceptance that this is a good idea; I thought that they would. It is about being in the business of conflict prevention. One of the problems that we see is failed states and small conflicts being allowed to balloon into large-scale conflicts that displace people around the world. We should be there earlier with conflict prevention and help the resilience of many countries either that neighbour a failing state or where conflict could balloon out of control. Perhaps the best way for all of us to avoid both significant cost and stress and bloodshed is to be there properly and helping alongside aid agencies, the United Nations and others to ensure that conflict does not grow BATUS–the British Army training unit, Suffield—is not closing in its entirety; we will use it for different functions and purposes. It is a huge training area, and one of its challenges has been air, the demands on integration and getting a multi-domain operation running while using forces—a whole armoured battle group in effect—in the middle of Canada, when we could have greater effect by having them closer to home and more ready. Readiness and presence deters our adversaries. Sitting in Tidworth on a month’s notice to deploy does not put off an adversary such as Russia, which constantly exercises and changes the readiness profile of its forces to keep all of us guessing. That is one of our challenges. We are often worried by Russia’s actions and, after the recent Zapad exercise and the build-up of forces on the edge of Ukraine, it is right that NATO countries are deeply concerned by that activity I say to the Opposition that this is an increase in funding, in both capital and RDEL. It is a force designed to ensure that we get the right balance between people and equipment. If we play the numbers of people game, we will see, as we have seen over the decades, that the losers will be in equipment. We then get forces such as those when I served that are hollowed out and not able or ready enough to deliver the wanted effect. We should not forget that when the Iraq war happened in 2003 and a so-called armoured division was deployed, it was in fact one armoured brigade, 3 Commando Brigade and 16 Air Assault Brigade. It was not the armoured division in the field; it was pushed together in a whole group of different forces. That is because we need to be adaptable to the threat and the enemy so that, yes, when a conflict breaks out, we can deliver critical mass, but we also have to be in a position to join together with our allies, as we always have since the war. NATO is an alliance that we must plug in and out of to be part of a greater force to reach critical mass and, indeed, have concentration of forces.