General Sir Richard Barrons was a former Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff who was one of three co-authors of the UK Strategic Defence Review which was published last summer, the first fresh look at UK defence strategy and policy for more than 20 years.
The review focused on several key areas, including homeland security, support for Ukraine, modernisation of the armed forces, the nuclear deterrent and the UK’s continued leadership of Nato.
Its lead reviewer, Lord Robertson, went on to reference in a press briefing the ‘deadly quartet’ of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea and said that the UK must be prepared to take on all four if necessary, which escalated the previous defence review which had described China as ‘a systemic challenge’ rather than a direct threat.
The UK government has accepted all 62 recommendations of the review, but Sir Richard said that taxpayer funding had not been allocated and was unlikely to be so, calling for increased investment from the private sector to accelerate the UK’s response to the ever-growing threats.
‘It is a cruel and difficult world, but I’m going to describe to you where there is great risk if you make bad choices, and also, as people who do finance, great opportunity if you make good ones,’ he said.
‘We need to have a conversation about the price of deterrence, because we have to avoid falling into war. There are just no winners.’
THE NEW WAR ERA
How wars are fought are changing all the time, but never more so than with the acceleration of technology, where Sir Richard said both risk and opportunity lie.
‘Our predecessors were used to living in a world where they felt at risk of war and in some cases, invasion. And this island has approximate experience of that. But since the Cold War ended in 1989 all of us have enjoyed more than a generation where we didn’t have to worry about existential risk to our security. And that has bred the habits that infuse how you think about the world today.
‘But now we live in a different world, a much more uncertain, demanding, challenging and dangerous, or defined as state confrontation and potential conflict.
‘What’s new in human history is we’ve never had state confrontation which always feels zero-sum in a world beset by this tableau of the combination and uncertainties of population growth, climate change, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and all the transformation that comes with the digital age. This is a bigger problem for humankind to manage than it is ever confronted before, and on my darker days, I don’t think we’ll find a way through it.’
The threat of the United States removing a $400bn a year subsidy to Nato was very real, Sir Richard said.
‘We’re only having discussion about whether this is a cliff edge or a managed exit.
‘So the bar to your security is much higher, the subsidy is going away, and your habits of dealing with this are in the wrong place, and as taxpayers we need to have a conversation about the cost of a deterrent, when we’ve got pot holes to fill.’
MODERN WARFARE
‘War is always a battle of wills,’ said Sir Richard. ‘In the world that we live in, and this includes lovely places like Guernsey, I can break you without putting a single boot on the ground, and I’ll do it in a combination of things that happen below the level of military conflict. So obviously cyber but disruption of your critical national infrastructure, and you’re extraordinarily vulnerable here in Guernsey.
‘If I can get in your phone, I can understand everything about you. Then I can message you, using artificial intelligence. I can tell you the truth, or I can lie to you, but I can really upset you.
‘We live in the missile age and the sorts of drones and missiles that fall on Kyiv nightly, can fall on here, in capability terms, tomorrow. We are talking about a deliberate blend of things that can bring you to your knees if you end up in that kind of situation. This is not like 1940.’
AVOIDING WAR
People say that their country might never again be involved in war. Sir Richard warned to learn the lessons from Ukraine.
‘The point is that war can choose you. It only requires one to decide that the dance has started. In having these conversations in the UK we hear people say “this is terrible, but surely we can just avoid it?”
‘Well no, you can only avoid it if your enemies choose to accept that. If you rely on imports of energy, food goods, information, medical, protection, all of those things, from your neighbours and supply chains to reach around around the world, you’re on the pitch. You may think about how the sea keeps you safe, but I tell you, it is utterly irrelevant and actually a vulnerability.
‘So there isn’t really an outcome here where, even in lovely Guernsey, you could decide simply to pull up the drawbridge and sit it out. If the world wants to think that you’re on the pitch, you’re on the pitch, and then all these vulnerabilities will smack you in the face.’
Sir Richard said that the UK and all European nations can only survive by investing in collective security – ‘not one country is strong enough to defend itself against much greater powers in this world’ – and that would be Nato, which is under stress from the imminent withdrawal of US backing, a loss of some $400bn a year.
‘So not only is the bar to your security much higher, the subsidy is going away, and your habits of dealing with this are in the wrong place anyway,’ he said.
THE COST OF THE DETERRENT
Sir Richard said that taxpayers ‘need a conversation’ about the cost of deterrent. And that is a challenge for politicians and voters when there are pot holes to fill.
‘But the point you absolutely have to acknowledge now is, if deterrence fails, and just look at Ukraine, the cost of going to war is trending 50% of your GDP for as long as it takes, plus all the destruction, plus all the trauma, which generally spans three to four generations. The deterrence premium is the bargain of the century.
‘We need to have this discussion about a harder world that we didn’t ask for and we don’t like and it’s full of risks that we prefer not to have to address. We are approaching it from the comfortable, luxurious place that we enjoyed through that wonderful post-Cold War era.
‘Denial is easier and clearly cheaper, but also, I would say, the path for man is that we have to do better, and so we have to think about war.
‘If deterrence fails, exactly the sort of thing you see happening around the world in places like Ukraine can happen here, in terms of military capability, or London or elsewhere.’
Sir Richard said that the private sector, and specifically investment from the finance industry, had a key role to play in enabling this deterrent.
‘A partnership with industry is profoundly important. The key thing is that today, military force must constantly evolve at the speed of innovation, which comes from the private sector that you invest in.
‘So you are on the pitch as a target, but also on the pitch as a key player in how you provide the capability that sustains deterrence.’
TECHNOLOGY IN BATTLE
The clock for technological change and its benchmarks are owned by China and moderated, somewhat, by the US, Sir Richard said. ‘There is enormous risk if you ignore this.
‘The digital age has changed how you live and work and play, obviously, and it would be mad to think that it’s not going to change how we confront and how we fight.
‘The engineering technologies that you’re investing in will lead to the most extraordinary change in how you do armed forces, how you think about them, build them, operate them, for 150 years – since the Franco Prussian War of 1870.
‘You don’t get to choose what good looks like. You just have to be better than it, or at least, keep up. So this is where harm to you, your enterprises, your communities, your island will come from, if you simply ignore it.
‘As investors, you get behind this massive opportunity because you can apply the innovation that you have funded into the military space, not just for the UK, but looking at a European market and a global market. This actually is one of the core thoughts that underpins the Strategic Defence Review – when we talk about the new industrial partnership, are we attached to the right innovation?’
Sir Richard painted a vision where the ‘digital kill web architecture’ – essentially the military’s version of the Internet of Things – can use the most appropriate weapon, be that a missile, a ship, a tank or a tweet, through artificial intelligence in seconds.
‘By the 2040s the China Kill Web and the US Kill Web will see something anywhere in the world and be able to strike it from anywhere in the world, from home.
‘This means we’re entering the era of lethal autonomous weapon systems. There are massive ethical issues attached to that, but that crude, uncrewed autonomous evolution is definition of risk if it’s coming your way, and opportunity if you’re using it, and it is simply taking the technology that you invest in, AI robotics autonomy, and applying it to the military space.’
WHERE’S THE MONEY?
Sir Richard said that his Strategic Defence Review described the world as outlined above, and mapped out the transformation needed to stay safe in that world. But that needed money too.
The sum that would be needed to be applied to that outcome by the UK at present would deliver the outcome at half the speed at which the risk is going to manifest itself, he said,
‘We delivered an outcome, where we will get to a reasonable place just about in 10 years’ time. But even our allies are saying we need to be ready in three to five years. This is the result of the decisions voters and taxpayers are choosing to make to spend the £1.3tn in the UK public sector in 2026 on other stuff.
‘It’s not a question of affordability, it’s a question of choices, and you are choosing to spend money on the things that you like, housing, welfare, pot holes, whatever it is, and because you are preferring not to adjust that offer to ourselves, the money for defence will proceed currently at half the speed of the risk, until the world changes or we get bitten in the arse.
‘Until and unless, as citizens and taxpayers, we make alternative choices about how we spend our money, we are choosing not to address the risk that your own analysis tells you that you should. This is a societal problem, it’s not just a ministerial problem.
‘There is no solution to this defence dilemma. There isn’t enough public money, so we must find ways of getting private capital into defence now, for innovation, for infrastructure and for equipment. This is a multi-billion proposition, and I would love for you to be part of that. Otherwise we’ll continue to run great jeopardy, risk and opportunity.’
WE NEED TO TALK
‘I need you to accept that the world that you lived in, that you loved, that you prospered mightily by, felt comfortable in, has gone, and we need to have a conversation in our own interest about what this new world means and what we must do to deal with it,’ said Sir Richard.
The Defence Review sought a ‘national conversation’ on defence spending but Sir Richard said that was not happening because politicians lacked the courage to take it to the voters for fear of causing alarm and provoking difficult conversations about hard choices.
‘That isn’t going to work. We have to think about our physical, our digital, our human and cognitive security and resilience. And we have to understand that when we talk about the potential for war in our time, this is about endurance. Look at the war in Ukraine in year four – this is about endurance, not just event management.’