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Category: Defence

  • Liz Truss – 2022 Comments on Sweden and Finland’s Application to Join NATO

    Liz Truss – 2022 Comments on Sweden and Finland’s Application to Join NATO

    The comments made by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on 17 May 2022.

    The UK strongly supports applications for NATO membership from Finland and Sweden. They should be integrated into the Alliance as soon as possible; their accession will strengthen the collective security of Europe.

    We look forward to working with them as new NATO Allies and stand ready to offer them our every assistance during the accession process.

    Our mutual security declarations signed with Sweden and Finland last week by the Prime Minister demonstrate our steadfast and unequivocal commitment to both countries during this process and beyond.

  • Geoffrey Mander – 1932 Speech on the Disarmament Conference

    Geoffrey Mander – 1932 Speech on the Disarmament Conference

    The speech made by Geoffrey Mander, the then Liberal MP for Wolverhampton East, in the House of Commons on 17 February 1932.

    I desire to call attention to a matter of which I have given notice to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, one in which a great amount of interest is taken in this country, and not in this country alone. I raise it in no spirit of hostility, but in order to give the Government an opportunity of making clear to the public exactly what the position is. The question concerns the appointment of Lord Cecil as a member of the British delegation to the Disarmament Conference. It has come as a great surprise and a shock to many people in this country to discover that he has not found it possible to accept the invitation extended to him.

    I venture to say that on this matter Lord Cecil occupies an almost unique position in the country. In very wide circles, in all three parties, Conservative, Liberal and Labour, he is regarded as the leader of the peace and disarmament movement in the country. More than that, for years past he has represented successive Governments on the Preparatory Commission of the Disarmament Conference. He has worked right through the technique and the details for a number of years past, and from that point of view is as well fitted as any living individual to be there to assist, to advise and to conduct negotiations. He knows the whole technique, he knows the personalities of the different individuals with whom one comes into contact there, and he knows exactly how far one could go in this, that, or the other direction. It is difficult enough to hope for the success of a Disarmament Conference when one finds the machinery of the League of Nations functions rather feebly in the case of open aggression, when there may be a tendency arising in the world once more to regard treaties as only scraps of paper. In those circumstances, I am sure it would be the desire of everybody in the House and the country to see the British delegation as strong as it is possible to make it.

    What are the facts so far as they are known to the public? We know that Lord Cecil has been invited to be a member of the Delegation, and that he has not been able to accept, and the reason given by the Lord President of the Council in this House the other day, as I understood it, was that Lord Cecil felt that he would be of more assistance outside the Conference. If a person is not in accord with the policy of a certain group, he naturally would not feel very useful inside that group. It rather makes one wonder and ask questions to get information as to what exactly is going on inside. It is clear from the statements made at the Geneva Disarmament Conference, both by the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary and by Lord Cecil, that there is a certain divergence of view. The statement of the Foreign Secretary, if he will permit me to say so, seemed to me to be in a great many respects a most admirable statement. All I would say about it is that I hope that it does not represent the last word on what the Government might be prepared to do, after negotiation with other Powers. Lord Cecil in his statement did go a good deal further. I do not know that in the long run there would necessarily be any complete divergence of view. I hope not. I hope that in due course it may be possible—and I trust that the Foreign Secretary will be able to make some indication of this kind tonight—that, although Lord Cecil is not able at the moment to join the Delegation, he is not without hope that at some later stage of the proceedings he may be brought in to the great satisfaction of all people in this country who are keen on this movement and on the promotion of the interests of the Conference.

    There is only one other word I would say, that is that if it became known—and there is a chance of this in the minds of people in this country—that Lord Cecil was unable to serve the country in this capacity because he was out of sympathy or in disagreement with the policy of the Government, I feel, in all seriousness, that it would do as much as anything to damage the prestige of this Government as a truly national Government.

  • Leo Docherty – 2022 Statement on UK Military Support for Ukraine

    Leo Docherty – 2022 Statement on UK Military Support for Ukraine

    The statement made by Leo Docherty, the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, in the House of Commons on 10 May 2022.

    The United Kingdom strongly condemns the appalling, unprovoked attack President Putin has launched on the people of Ukraine. We continue to stand with Ukraine and continue to support its right to be a sovereign, independent and democratic nation.

    The United Kingdom and our allies and partners are responding decisively to provide military and humanitarian assistance. This includes weapons that help Ukraine’s heroic efforts to defend itself. We have sent more than 6,900 new anti-tank missiles, known as NLAWs—next-generation light anti-tank weapons—a further consignment of Javelin anti-tank missiles, eight air defence systems, including Starstreak anti-air missiles, 1,360 anti-structure munitions and 4.5 tonnes of plastic explosives.

    As Ukraine steadies itself for the next attack, the UK is stepping up efforts to help its defence. As we announced on 26 April, we will be sending 300 more missiles, anti-tank systems, innovative loitering munitions, armoured fighting vehicles and anti-ship systems to stop shelling from Russian ships.

    The United Kingdom has confirmed £1.3 billion of new funding for military operations and aid to Ukraine. This includes the £300 million the Prime Minister announced on 3 May for electronic warfare equipment, a counter-battery radar system, GPS jamming equipment and thousands of night-vision devices.

    The Ministry of Defence retains the humanitarian assistance taskforce at readiness; its headquarters are at 48-hours readiness, and the remainder of the force can move with five days’ notice, should its assistance be requested. The UK has pledged £220 million of humanitarian aid for Ukraine, which includes granting in kind to the Ukraine armed forces more than 64,000 items of medical equipment from the MOD’s own supplies. We are ensuring that the UK and our security interests are secured and supporting our many allies and partners, especially Ukraine.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at Defence Space 2022

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at Defence Space 2022

    The speech made by Jeremy Quin, the Minister for Defence Procurement, at Defence Space 2022 in London on 10 May 2022.

    As I walked here this morning, I was reflecting that I also delivered a speech not far from here in February. But it already seems like a lifetime ago. A lot has happened.

    In the intervening time scientists have discovered a massive comet with a nucleus 50 times that normal size speeding towards earth at approximately 22,000 miles per hour. And, fortunately, on course to miss us by one billion miles. More space tourists have also followed William Shatner’s lead and gone where few have gone before.

    Within Defence we have had a lot more to contend with – and directly impacting on space. Putin’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine has provided a powerful and salutary reminder of the operational challenges and opportunities that exist within the space domain.

    As in every other domain we have had much to learn.

    In the planning scenarios one might have imagined the lights going out and the communications going down. But that’s not, to date, what we’ve seen. The determination and resilience of the Ukrainian people has been assisted by the resilience and utility of space assets.

    Nine and a half weeks in and 72 per cent of Ukraine’s communications are still online.

    We imagined it would take maybe hours on a good day or more likely days or weeks to attribute intelligence. But that, of course, is not what we’ve seen.

    Instead, open-source imagery is providing us all with intelligence, live.

    The Kremlin’s disinformation narrative, actually let’s not dress it up here – their lies – have been made to appear clunky, out-dated and absurd.

    They said they wouldn’t invade, our ISR said they would. Their claims of what they pretend is the ground truth in Bucha is shown to be a lie when the whole world can see the ground in Bucha. Every individual involved in armed conflict now knows they are being watched and the international community will not forget what they have seen.

    Another example Absent War it could have taken years to form the agreements that could help support and protect a country’s communications in the event of some catastrophic attack.

    Instead responding immediately to this brutal, illegal invasion we’ve witnessed Starlink, courtesy of Elon Musk, gifting equipment as well as humanitarian aid. Even when the jammers started their all-too predictable attacks, Starlink’s experts have managed, to date, to stop them in their tracks.

    In Space as in every domain it is far too early to draw final conclusions.

    But the UK, seeing what we are seeing on the ground and in the skies, remains absolutely focused on our ongoing actions to increase capability in this area. Our launch of the Defence Space Strategy in February, coupled with our first integrated National Space Strategy and the establishment of our single joint Space Command paves the way for the UK to become a more resilient, more robust and more significant space player on the global stage.

    I spoke back in February about our investments. £5 billion over 10 years already allocated to our future Skynet Satellite communications. A further £1.5 billion allocated to support defence operations over the next decade. And millions invested already. On next generation constellations of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance satellites in Low Earth Orbit. On optical laser communication technology to deliver the equivalent of high-speed broadband. On other infrastructure that will provide the digital backbone on which our whole space enterprise depends.

    Amongst those investments was a pair of tiny shoebox-sized satellites – forming the Prometheus 2 mission – and destined to have an outsize impact. Built by In-Space Missions in Alton, Hampshire, this will be a test platform for monitoring radio signals including GPS, and conducting sophisticated imaging working with our international partners, with joint mission operations undertaken between In-Space, Dstl and Airbus.

    But there’s much more on board that satellite. For it also carries that sense of adventure. That delight in discovery. This mission is about examination, experimentation, exploration. There is so much we need learn and we know that Prometheus 2 will provide sparks to illuminate our future in space.

    And today I am delighted to update you on Prometheus’ progress. Some forty years ago the first British satellite Ariel 1 was sent into orbit on board a US rocket. Rekindling that arrangement, in partnership with the American National Reconnaissance Office, this year we will send Prometheus 2 into space with Virgin Orbit. Launching from their new spaceport in Cornwall. It will be the first time the U.K. has launched a British satellite into space. It represents another giant step forward in our surge to become a space power.

    These latest launches remind us that space is no longer the monolithic preserve of governments. Today the space enterprise is about collaboration. Bringing together the unique skills and intellectual heft of our supplier – those within the private sector, within academia and within the international community. Those within this room.

    And the purpose of this conference is to harness that collective brain power. To answer some of the key questions that have arisen from the conflict in Ukraine and ultimately apply those lessons to shape our space future.

    To help kick-start the debate I thought it might be helpful to pose a few questions of my own. How can get more out of Science & Technology R&D targeted defence needs? If we agree “buy before build or own only where needed”, how can we access and protect assured space-based capabilities to deliver military support on operations? And how can we accelerate our collaborations so that we not only deal swiftly with dangers in real time but minimise the bureaucracy that all too often bogs down space innovation?

    Perhaps, most critically of all, how can we create and enforce international rules so that space remains safe and secure for all? Thanks to research produced by the European Space Agency we know that humans’ behaviour in space is improving. That we are getting better at spotting and tracking smaller fragments of space debris.

    But we also know that not enough satellites are removed from heavily congested low-earth orbits at the end of their lives. I’m sure you’re all familiar with that artist’s impression of our fragile blue earth surrounded by a halo of space junk.

    Equally, we know our adversaries are far less cautious about operating in space than we are. Only a few weeks ago the International Space Station was having to take evasive action to avoid Russian satellite debris. The US recently took the bold and, I believe correct, decision to ban destructive ASAT testing. But the question for us is how can that be enforced? And how do we respond if those bans are subsequently ignored?

    So, plenty of food for thought today and I am very much looking forward to hearing your deliberations and conclusions over the coming days.

    Ukraine has confirmed a fundamental shift in the dial. Space capabilities are vital for us today but will be even more critical for our tomorrow. To reach the outer limits we must make a space pivot. But we must do so together.

  • Ben Wallace – 2022 Speech at the National Army Museum

    Ben Wallace – 2022 Speech at the National Army Museum

    The speech made by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, at the National Army Museum in London on 9 May 2022.

    Good morning, and can I just thank the Deputy Director General of the National Army Museum Mike O’Connor for hosting us here today in the National Army Museum. I’m sorry the Director General can’t be here for personal reasons, but I know he too had been very supportive of this event so thank you.

    And it is a wonderful museum for anyone who wants to come and visit. I strongly recommend it, although it does make me feel a little old to see some of the exhibits actually above you, that I used to travel in, now sitting in a museum, as indeed the Challenger 1 tank is outside. So if you want to be reminded of your age, it’s a visit to come to.

    It is important to be here in the National Army Museum because I cannot imagine a more appropriate backdrop to what I want to say today.

    For here, amongst the amazing collections, are endless lessons from history. The successes and the failures.

    We all know the adage: “Why do they only write books on lessons learned? Because the book on lessons unlearned would be too big.”

    In this building are great tales of bravery, examples of great leadership and battle-winning technologies. But also in this museum are the stories of British failure on the battlefield.

    And throughout the hundreds of years of history – whether of victory or defeat – there is one constant: the junior soldier. The Private, the Rifleman, the Guardsman or the Trooper.

    Whatever you call them, they are the ones who rarely get to write their own history, or indeed get a say in their future, but it was their ranks that gave the most and bled the most.

    And it’s why good officers revere them, as the Squaddie or the Tommy or the Jock. Often the last to know, but always the first to fight.

    I know from my own time in uniform that to be young and to be in the service of your country is indeed a fine thing. It is even finer when the cause that you are serving is a just one.

    But is it ever easy? Is it comfortable? Is it safe? Emphatically it is not.

    It can be the most exciting thing in the world to be on operations, but luckily few of us know what it is like to be surrounded, outnumbered and attacked every day.

    There are some brave souls left from the Korean War and even fewer from the Second World War who do know.

    It’s why you also find here the permanent exhibition simply called the Soldier. Not just for learning about our past and our past battles but honouring the experiences and sacrifices of the private soldier who fought them.

    Just over an hour ago and 1,500 miles away, the world was implored to listen and watch Red Square. This is the Victory Parade in honour of the 77th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.

    But really what President Putin wants is the Russian people, and the world, to be awed and intimidated by that ongoing memorial to militarism.

    And I believe that his ongoing and unprovoked conflict in Ukraine does nothing but dishonour those same soldiers. Both the ones marching across Red Square as I speak and all the forebearers they supposedly march to commemorate.

    Let me be clear, it is right to honour the sacrifice of those many, many millions who contributed to Europe’s liberation from fascism and the Nazi reign of terror.

    It was a period of immeasurable destruction, atrocities and human suffering, particularly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. There will be no mention in Moscow today, however, that much of the suffering was self-inflicted by Stalin and his Generals.

    While in Moscow in February, I accepted the honour of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, beneath the vast red walls of the Kremlin itself.

    It stands in memory of those Russians who lost their lives fighting the invading Nazis. As the inscription proclaims – their names are unknown, but their deeds are immortal.

    And as I stood in front of the Honour Guard – themselves so young and with such uncertain fates even those few weeks later – my thoughts were for those ordinary Russian soldiers, so many of them conscripts who found themselves in a battle for personal and national survival against the Nazi regime.

    I thought about the scale of their suffering across the Soviet Union, but also how the suffering was used, then as it is now, to cover up the inadequacy of those ruling in safety and comfort from behind the Kremlin walls above and within the General Staff nearby.

    Most Soviet conscripts hadn’t a chance. Their suffering was often needless. In the absence of effective military leadership, many of their best officers were purged by NKVD for “counter-revolutionary crimes”, while “barrier troops” executed swathes of retreating soldiers, deemed “unpatriotic” for failing to press on in the face of unassailable odds.

    Fear and sycophancy dictated behaviours then, and today’s Russian Armed Forces still carry that Soviet imprint – the imprint of amorality and corruption.

    Let us be honest with ourselves and be open to the inevitable charges of hypocrisy.

    All armies risk failures of leadership and sliding into depravity, from the dehumanising of enemies and civilians, to the reckless discharging of that most solemn power, the power to take another human’s life.

    Because the profession of arms is, at its heart, the use of violent force in the defence of civilisation and its most vulnerable members.

    And that is why, in the British Army, our officers are instructed at Sandhurst under the motto ‘serve to lead’ to know that true leadership is service to their soldiers.

    As Wellington himself put it “I consider nothing in this country so valuable as the life and health of the British soldier”.

    So while there may be incidents of questionable competence, ill-discipline and unacceptable conduct, there is also, in this country, accountability and adaptation.

    Could the same ever be said of Russian Forces, with their quantity supposedly a ‘quality all of its own’? Do their officers serve their soldiers? Do they learn and adapt? Or do they seek only to comply and satisfy their higher commanders?

    Since February we have witnessed a systemic refusal to tell the truth up the chain of command, and it is playing out. Consider the fact alone that mobile crematoria trundle around the battlefields not just to hide Russian war crimes, they are for their own soldiers’ corpses as well.

    Imagine what it must do to the morale of a private soldier to know your commanders have so little faith in their campaign that you are followed around by those horrific contraptions. Or let’s consider the fate of a single unit, such as the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment, allegedly the “best of the best” in the VDV. The so called ‘elite’ Russian Airborne Forces. Supposedly professional soldiers, reportedly well-equipped, well-trained, and well-led.

    At the start of the invasion they were tasked with seizing Hostomel airfield on the outskirts of Kyiv, assessed to be planned as the airhead for reinforcement of subsequent operations to seize the capital.

    A significant proportion of the Ukrainian defenders were reservists, and despite significant Russian advantages their resistance was ferocious and brave, with the airfield changing hands several times within the first 72 hours of the invasion.

    As Russian Forces sought to consolidate the area they advanced into the nearby towns of Hostomel, Irpin and Bucha. Those places sadly, we now know, will forever be associated with the most despicable of war crimes.

    The fighting within them was intense, and open source footage alone shows the dozens of destroyed Russian vehicles and streets littered with dead troops.

    The 331st paid a particularly heavy price for having had to advance in haste, without a coherent operational plan, only light air-mobile armoured vehicles, and insufficient combat needed to sustain such fighting.

    Back in the unit’s hometown of Kostroma, in Western Russia, worried family members began posting online.

    Some confirmed the deaths of their loved ones with loving tributes. The wife of a Warrant Officer wrote “My most reliable, loving and caring husband. Now you are in heaven and you will protect us. You will always live in our hearts.”

    And as news of growing casualties spread, some posted their increasing concern and condemned the Russian military for sending them to their deaths in Ukraine.

    On the memorial wall for Sergeant Sergei Duganov one woman wrote: “nobody knows anything. The 331st Regiment is disappearing”.

    Others wrote that “ordinary boys are dying for no good reason”. The accusations President Putin had decided to “play war” and “sent thousands of guys to die”.

    And what were all those sacrifices allegedly for on that poorly planned and badly executed operation?

    On 29th March, Russian Deputy Minister Alexander Fomin announced the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kyiv area and the evacuation of Hostomel airfield.

    The axis of advance from Belarus to Kyiv had been repelled and was abandoned for those shell-shocked troops to now support a new offensive in the East.

    Ukraine’s moral component had led those brave fighters to defeat the Russian Army, poorly equipped and poorly led, and so it should have been.

    Today in Moscow it should be a day of reflection. It should be a day to commemorate the suffering, all be it at such unnecessary levels, of the ordinary Russians in the Second World war.

    And it should also be about the culpability of Stalin and his Generals whose 1939 non-aggression pact with the Nazi’s allowed both sides to dismember Poland, including the cold-blooded execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Massacre in March 1940.

    In 2020, President Putin mentioned the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in another one of his long essays, this time celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the end of the ‘Great Patriotic War’.

    Even as President Putin’s essays go this was a masterpiece of fiction. He brushes aside the pact, which not only saw Soviet forces train and supply the Nazi troops that they would later fight, but it led to the systematic invasion, occupation, liquidation and transport of the occupants of Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Romania.

    Putin dismisses these all, claiming Molotov’s pact was an “act of personal power that in no way reflected the will of the Soviet people.”

    If that’s the case, then it would be yet another example of Russia’s elites deceiving and exploiting their long-suffering population.

    But the governments did collude, with tragic consequences for their soldiers and all the citizens of the Soviet Union.

    And Putin must not be allowed to erase such uncomfortable facts in an attempt to mythologise the official national history as one of simply ‘smashing’ Nazism.

    Of course, such blatant rewriting of history is not unique to President Putin and the Kremlin propagandists. There’s even the proverb that ‘Russia is a country with a certain future, it is only its past that is unpredictable’.

    But in going to such extremes to justify this current war of choice he and his generals are now ripping up both Russia’s past and its future.

    Through their invasion of Ukraine, Putin, his inner circle and generals are now mirroring the fascism and tyranny of 77 years ago, repeating the errors of last century’s totalitarian regimes.

    They are showing the same disregard for human life, national sovereignty, and the rules-based international system. The very system, not least the United Nations Charter itself, that we conceived together and for which we fought and were victorious together in the hope of saving future generations from the scourge of war.

    Their unprovoked, illegal, senseless, and self-defeating invasion of Ukraine; their attacks against innocent civilians and their homes. Their widespread atrocities, including the deliberate targeting of women and children; they all corrupt the memory of past sacrifices and Russia’s once-proud global reputation.

    The response to this failure by Russian Forces on the ground in Ukraine has itself been a disgraceful display of self-preservation, doubling down on failure, anger, dishonesty and scapegoating.

    The behaviour of the Russian General staff has shown that their own self-preservation comes first. War crimes, targeting civilians, and the casualty rates in their own Battalion Tactical Groups are all secondary concerns.

    The truth is that Russia’s General Staff are failing and they know it.

    While I am angry at the behaviour of their army, I do not in any way remove culpability from the ordinary soldier for what horrors they are inflicting. I am equally angry at the General Staff’s absence of integrity and leadership – which should go up as well as down – and should be expected of all professional military officers.

    All professional soldiers should be appalled at the behaviour of the Russian Army. Not only are they engaged in an illegal invasion and war crimes, but their top brass have failed their own rank and file to the extent they should face court martial.

    I know soldiers in the Russian army will not get a voice and there will be thousands of mothers and wives who do not agree with this illegal war, who will be asking themselves why these things happened.

    They will of course be shamed into silence by the FSB and others. But for them let me read the charge sheet that perhaps should be laid at the feet of the General Staff of the Russian Army:

    Bad battle preparation, poor operational planning, inadequate equipment and support and most importantly corruption and the moral component.

    First, battle preparation. Perhaps most importantly Russian forces were not told what their mission was until they crossed the border into Ukraine, so they weren’t even given the opportunity to prepare.

    There were even reports of Russian troops in Belarus selling the fuel for their vehicles the week before the invasion because they had repeatedly been told it was all just an exercise.

    It was no surprise that their logistics system collapsed after 70km, leaving the Russian army in the world’s longest traffic jam where they were not only vulnerable to attack but quickly ran out of food and fuel. I have no doubt that their resorting to raiding nearby communities led to many of the atrocities.

    No meaningful Russian air support appeared for the first week and, unable to achieve air superiority, they had a limited role in the ground offence, having clearly not done any planning to support the Army or integrated land operations.

    Likewise Russian special forces, who have made and promoted their own macho videos openly mocking western armies for being inclusive of minorities and women, were resoundingly defeated by Ukrainian militia forces, often incorporating minorities and women. The farce of their commanders’ failures has led to certain VDV and Marine units reportedly suffered up to 80% casualties against those non-regular Ukrainian forces.

    And it’s all because in a military profession they failed to conduct adequate battle preparation. Why else were there such large numbers of first echelon supply trucks full of riot gear?

    Poor operational planning is the second charge. The Russian’s original ‘thunder run’ plan was based on that nationalist imperialist view that Ukrainians aren’t a real culture with the determination to resist and it led to those countless videos of ambushed columns of vehicles being burnt out.

    And despite that, the Russian generals’ refusal to report ground truth for fear of their own positions within the military has meant that ever more forces were pushed into the traffic jam of that Kyiv convoy, even days after it was clear that the strategy had failed.

    The subsequent siege and bombardment strategy failed, after it became clear the levels of resistance meant that at least a third of the force was required to take a single city. As the brave defenders of Mariupol are demonstrating even now, modern weapons and the moral force of a people determined to be free, to ensure their state, to ensure defensive dominance is also possible through that moral component. And that is why the Russian forces are failing.

    Throughout the Russian Forces’ operation and across all domains their commanders’ failures to conduct appropriate operational planning has been nothing but a betrayal of their soldiers and airmen who have paid the price with their lives.

    Thirdly, inadequate equipment and support. Russian vehicles had not been maintained properly and immobilised many logistics vehicles, leading to cheap tyres being blown out and truck axle hub failures, all due to poor maintenance or the money for that maintenance being taken elsewhere.

    As an aside, the sheer amount of footage from Ukrainian drones suggests to me that they also lack wider air defence and counter-UAV system.

    Almost none of their vehicles contain situational awareness and digital battle management. Vehicles are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them.

    But it’s not just ground forces. ‘GPS’ receivers have been found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian SU-34s so the pilots knew where they were, due to the poor quality of their own systems.

    The result is that whilst Russia have large amounts of artillery and armour that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms manoeuvre and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages.

    Their limited stockpiles of air-delivered precision weapons, demonstrated by a steep drop off in use after the second week, has meant that the Air Force has also fallen back on dropping imprecise dumb munitions on urban areas.

    On the ground, and despite knowing they were going to face Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, and all the lessons of the recent Karabakh conflict, the Russians didn’t invest in effective systems to protect even their most advanced tanks.

    Remember the T-14? Presumably still just for victory parades.

    Russian soldiers’ futile use of pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks and attaching overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks, it’s nothing short of tragic. But their commanders’ failures to adapt before entering them into such a conflict is criminal.

    And there is a complete shortage of all medical services, with overflowing civilian hospitals in Belarus and Ukrainian civilian surgeries being forced to provide medical aid to the same desperate Russian forces who invaded their homes.

    And there’s the difference. Report after report I see of Ukrainian soldiers helping injured and wounded Russian forces. The noblest of all on the battlefield, to look after your enemy as sometimes they are your own. That leads me to the fourth and most serious charge that should be laid at the generals – of corruption and the failure of the moral component.

    Caring for your own wounded – ‘never leaving a man behind’ – is one of the sacred tenets of all martial cultures, but apparently not the Russian Forces.

    How could these Generals commit their own troops knowing they were without the necessary medical support to care for them when injured in the pursuit of the orders they themselves issued?

    It is just another example of the moral decay in the Russian Forces. Rotten downwards, from the Chief of the General Staff down, where ultimately the blame must lie.

    Conscripts taken into a conflict zone unknowingly and illegally against Russian law, despite recent government claims to their families that no such thing would be done.

    Even when Ukrainian citizens have tried to indicate that buildings are sheltering civilians with signs marked out with ‘medical’ or ‘children’ the Russians have largely ignored them and then created false stories to try and cover the bombing.

    Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians forcibly relocated Eastwards. A quarter of the population refugees, over two thirds of children.

    Women and children raped and then murdered. A “terrifying echo of the Red Army’s mass rapes committed in 1945” according to historian Sir Antony Beevor.

    Ukrainian mayors abducted and tortured for their non-violent resistance. Abandoned Russian vehicles found full of looted white goods. Russian soldiers filmed in post offices mailing home endless boxes of stolen goods.

    But such open and shameless corruption does mean a complete record of who those soldiers are. We know who they are, where they have been and what crimes they have committed. It’s being created and filed and can be used to bring them and their commanders to justice as well.

    Because the Generals’ ‘butcher’s bill’ is also being paid by the many thousands of innocent Ukrainian victims of this conflict.

    Which, I just want to say, that the international community will hold to account all those responsible for these atrocities that the world is witnessing Russian Forces commit in Ukraine.

    We are watching and, as I have said, we are recording.

    Because we must protect civilians and their human rights, no matter their nationality, the cause of the conflict, or the perpetrator of their crime.

    So, all those responsible, from Commander-in-Chief to deployed tactical commander, should know that their actions are not without consequence and that ‘to know is to be responsible’.

    It is also important to recognise the countless thousands of young Russian men leaving their own mothers without sons, wives widowed, and children fatherless. Nothing more than a failure of leadership and a betrayal of command.

    To characterise such a situation as anything other than a human tragedy for both sides denies the reality.

    And to conflate it with the sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War disgraces the memories of the Immortal Regiment, each and every one of those family portraits held aloft in the parades held across Russia today should realise.

    We all wish this senseless war did not need to be fought but – like the vast majority of the world – we cannot stand by without giving Ukrainians the means to defend themselves.

    That is why the British Government – the whole United Kingdom – stands in solidarity with Ukraine, supporting their courageous defence of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the simple right to a peaceful and prosperous future, just as we did for the Soviet Union all those years ago.

    Their sacrifices in the past to defeat fascism should not be forgotten, but nor must the lessons about what lies in store for the perpetrators of such unprovoked brutality.

    Shame on those who seek to use the suffering of ordinary Russians as a launchpad for their own imperial ambitions. They are the ones who truly insult the memory of the Immortal Regiment.

    So let’s call out the absurdity of Russian generals – resplendent in their manicured parade uniforms, weighed down by their gold braid and glistening medals.

    They are utterly complicit in Putin’s hijacking of their forebears’ proud history; of defending against a ruthless invasion; of repelling fascism; of sacrificing themselves for a higher purpose.

    And now, they are the ones inflicting needless suffering in the service of lowly gangsterism.

    And for them and for Putin there can be no ‘Victory Day’, only dishonour and surely defeat in Ukraine.

    They might seek to control Russians’ futures through their past but in the end the past catches up with you.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Comments on UK Submarine Programme

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Comments on UK Submarine Programme

    The comments made by Jeremy Quin, the Defence Procurement Minister, on 9 May 2022.

    The Dreadnought Class will be crucial to maintaining and safeguarding our national security, with the nuclear deterrent protecting every UK citizen from the most extreme threats, every minute of every day.

    Designed in the UK, built in the UK and supporting tens of thousands of jobs in the UK, the Dreadnought programme is a leading example of our commitment to defence manufacturing and will continue to boost British industry for decades to come.

  • James Heappey – 2022 Speech at the Sir Henry Leach Memorial Lecture

    James Heappey – 2022 Speech at the Sir Henry Leach Memorial Lecture

    The speech made by James Heappey, the Minister for the Armed Forces, in London on 5 May 2022.

    Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for inviting me to come and speak today. I know that there was at least one other who would have been invited in front of me and he sends his apologies, but that is the role of the deputy and I am grateful for the opportunity nonetheless, to come and enthuse about all that a retired soldier has learned about the importance of maritime power projection in my time as the Minister for the Armed Forces. And to be invited to do so as the Sir Henry Leach lecture is a real honour and particularly to have Sir Henry’s daughter and family in the room.

    It would be remiss I think, not to reflect on the fact that this is the 40th anniversary of the Falklands conflict. Sir Henry made his name both as a maritime commander during the Cold War, but also in the advice that he gave around to the use of maritime power in the Falklands. This is a good moment I think to reflect to the Falklands generation of veterans, that, although the news agenda is elsewhere, right now and I think we would probably have all thought when we were looking at the news grids back in and sort of October, November last year that the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Falklands would be very high profile and it’s not. And I don’t want anybody in the wider Royal Navy community to think that that is because our thoughts are not with those who, those eighty-five Royal Navy personnel, twenty-six Royal Marines and eighty Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel who gave their lives in that conflict. It is an act of great sacrifice. And I think that where there is the parallel is that 40 years ago, the British public knew that the right thing to do was to sail an awfully long way to stand up for the rights and the freedom of Falkland Islanders, and to accept all of the risks that that brought with it. And what we’ve seen over the last three months is the British public are every bit as resolved to do the right thing, no matter what the risks may be to the United Kingdom. And so whilst the conversation is dominated by Ukraine, I just wanted to open this lecture by making sure that everybody in the Royal Navy community, in the Royal Marines community, knows that absolutely nobody in Her Majesty’s Government has forgotten that this is a very important anniversary and that our thoughts and admiration are with all who fought so valiantly on the sea and from the sea, in that conflict.

    Now, the other thing that I think Sir Henry would appreciate about the world in which we live today is that we have returned to a period of systemic competition. Now the IR foresaw that and the IR started to re-gear the British Armed Forces to be a set of armed forces that could persistently be present in parts of the world where we are challenged and to compete, but when it was in the IR, it was just words, it was just policy. What’s happened over the last year and particularly in the last three months, has brought that into very sharp focus. But I think what’s interesting is when you stop and think about it, in the maritime domain, everything has changed but yet nothing has changed. The UK’s geography hasn’t changed. We still sit, from the Russian perspective, at the left hand gate post of their routes into the North Atlantic. The Greenland, Iceland, UK gap hasn’t changed in its strategic importance. It is still hugely important that you have the ability to protect your fisheries and your oil and gas assets at sea, both in home waters and in the waters of overseas territories, in the waters of allies and partners. And of course, it’s hugely important that you can protect to defend your trade routes. Although a big difference since the end of the Cold War, is that the offshoring of manufacturing and the globalisation of supply chains has meant that those sea lines of communication are now even more important to Western economies than they were 30 or 40 years or so ago. So no change in that sense. Geography hasn’t changed, the resources of the ocean and of our seas and our requirements protect them hasn’t changed, and sea lines of communication for the purposes of trade, no change. But what has changed is the existence of undersea infrastructure and the threat that can be posed against that, that is material to our national security and the existence of our liberalised global economy. 97 per cent and rising of global data travels and cables under the seas and trade worth $10 trillion per day.

    So too, is there a renewed challenge to the rules based international system and with that, the governance and protection of rights on the global commons. And that is not just about how we do our business on the high seas but so too, and this was put into a very sharp focus when I was in the office of Commander of the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, where he was showing me the three pinch points in his patch – the Suez, the Bab-el-Mandeb and the Straits of Hormuz. And you realise that it doesn’t take much in the way of maritime power or even indeed in the Navy, missile power, in order to hold at risk and entire global order at certain points of geography around the world.

    The other thing that has really changed is the geopolitics of some of the key seas in our near abroad. During the Cold War, the Black Sea had just Turkey as a NATO member, and then Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, as part of the Warsaw Pact, or the Soviet Union. Now it’s the complete inverse. Romania, Bulgaria have joined Turkey. Georgia is a NATO aspirant, Ukraine remains we think a NATO aspirant, we’ll see how that shifts. Also, Russia stands alone in the Black Sea, where previously it was the opposite way around for NATO. Exactly the same, I think that the geopolitics of the Baltic. In the Cold War, the Baltic was West Germany, Denmark and Norway, in NATO. Sweden and Finland, non-ally, but then the Soviet Union in St. Petersburg, and in Kaliningrad, and then Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and East Germany, around the rest of the coast. Completely inverted if, as looks likely, Finland and Sweden decide to make a bid to join NATO. All of a sudden in the Baltic, St Petersburg’s and Kaliningrad stand alone around a coastline that would otherwise be NATO. That’s a massive geopolitical shift in two really important European seas. Then there is the change of climate and with that the opening up of a sea route in the high north, and how we will stand up for a rules based international system and freedom of navigation rights, between east and west, across Russia’s northern coast. So our interest in the maritime remains enormous, self-evidently so and as an island nation with global ambition, how could it be anything but. But our competition in our near abroad through NATO, in reacting to changing geopolitics and changing security situation in the Euro-Atlantic is a great challenge for the Navy, for the Fleet Commander and Charlie Stickland, Chief of Joint Operations, is here as well. How does NATO reassure its allies in seas that are now predominantly NATO coastlines, but where a belligerent Russia will seek to challenge. That requires naval resource, that requires a presence. That’s a resource and a presence that can be internationalised, but it requires a clear commitment from us to be there, and to stand up for the rights of our NATO partners in those seas.

    So too, however, must we not be fixed, I liken it to watching my son play under-tens football, where the style is very much to chase the ball. All 20 players on the pitch are within about 10 yards ball at any one time. And there’s a danger that just as last year, on the eve of HMS Queen Elizabeth and her Strike Group sailing, all of the conversation was about the Indo Pacific tilt and the opportunities there, there’s a danger that this year, we focus exclusively on sub hunting in the North Atlantic, standing up for our neighbour, for our allies and partners in the Baltic and the Black Sea, competing in the Mediterranean and then everything reverts to being about the Euro-Atlantic. But that would be a massive mistake because we have an obligation as a global trading nation and just because of the nature of modern competition between states, to also compete for influence, prosperity and to protect our friendships in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, South- East Asia, South Pacific and the Caribbean.

    And it was fortuitous that she was in the right place at the right time but in the South Pacific, take that as an example, about as far away from the UK as you could get but where the UK through the Commonwealth has partnerships and friendships that have lasted decades, but that we have been failing to meaningfully service for decades as well. In fact, we’ve be relying, I would argue, entirely on the Australians and New Zealanders to carry on flying the flag for the Commonwealth with countries in the South Pacific. Well, how fantastic that literally months after the offshore patrol vessels arrive in the Indo Pacific we have exactly the sorts of moments where the danger was that China would be the first to arrive in Tonga with aid and China becomes the person who helped Tonga in their hour of need. But instead, a Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel was two days sail away because she was forward present, ready to react whatever the situation was. And she was there alongside the Australians and New Zealanders reacting to that moment. I thought that was the most brilliant vindication of why we do forward presence, why we need to operate, why we need to be constantly recognising that we are in a competition, and that point of competition changes all the time from the humanitarian, to the opportunity to develop capability together and to share aligned inventories and ways of operating all the way through to the more hard edged competition that is the business of naval power.

    I think the case for naval power is clear, obviously, I’ve eulogised already about the threats from the sea and our opportunities around the world. But the challenge is what sort and how much of it. Now I was warned passionately, strongly, by every sailor I’ve spoken to – do not read anything into the Moskva because they will start telling you about the position that the radars were in at the time that it was hit and that therefore, crew error, so I won’t. I also phoned up Ben yesterday morning and alongside that warning, I said yeah, but why is everything constantly bigger? Why is a destroyer now the size of a cruiser and why is a frigate now the size a of destroyer? Why is the answer to everything in the naval world, what you need minister is bigger and more expensive. There followed naval architecture 101 around height of mast, beam and therefore length and tonnage. So I sort of get that these things are more complicated than a simple former soldier might have initially thought. But I do think there are some realities that we would be failing ourselves if we weren’t to challenge ourselves over. Missile technology, on land and at sea, appears to be a ascendant. Industrial base, particularly in the UK, but actually you could argue across the West compared to China, particularly, our industrial base is limited. And supply chains are increasingly challenging and raw materials increasingly expensive. So in those circumstances, surely there is a conversation to be had about a more disruptive approach to maritime power projection. Is the answer really ever bigger ships, ever bigger submarines? Now for what it’s worth, this isn’t me saying that we’ve made mistakes or the things we’re buying are not right. I think the UK’s current fleet and our planned acquisitions over the next decade or two are right. I think that the Carrier Strike Group deployment was a huge success and proof that projection of air power from the maritime remains a hugely persuasive hard tool power that can be projected anywhere in the world. And when you get to that amazing elysian field of interoperability with your key allies as we proved in the Mediterranean and in the Philippine Sea, then it can be a really, really persuasive reminder of those who seek to challenge the rules based international system, just how much power can be brought quickly to bear against them on a sovereign piece of territory that can self-propel anywhere in the world.

    But I’m interested in how we put alongside that Carrier Strike Group vision, and these amazing destroyers and frigates that we will buy over the next decades, a dispensable, dispersible, autonomous capability that makes the challenge for our adversaries was even harder, that poses them with real dilemmas. I also want to see the Royal Navy lead the way in lethality. I thought that Andrew’s predecessor Jerry Kyd, in his haul-down letter, wrote some really persuasive things about the importance of the lethality. And I think it is quite interesting when the US and the UK send ships into the Barents Sea it is the American DDGs that attract attention because of their lethality and their ability to project power from the maritime to the land domain. Our frigates clearly have an important role in protecting those destroyers so our presence was very necessary. But prickly, more lethal naval platforms that pose adversaries challenge at sea and from the sea to land, I think are conversations that we need be having ourselves and challenging ourselves to get right. I also think that we need to rediscover and all these people with beards who spend their life beneath the ocean or deep in bunkers at Northwood are effusive about this, but we’ve got to listen to them, that the submarine domain is less well understood than space. And we have to invest in the advantage that you can find beneath the oceans because I continue to believe that it is a place from which you can do all manner of stuff in a way that your adversaries don’t get a say in what so ever.

    But it’s how we operate too. And I think that our competition for relationships, for inventory with partners around the Gulf of Guinea, along the East African coast in the Caribbean, in the Arabian Gulf and in the South Pacific are opportunities to compete to maintain the UK sphere of influence and to push back against the growing Chinese influence, particularly in many parts of the world, but actually Russia is active in many parts of the world too with similar ambitions. And that doesn’t mean that we are there as a guarantor of their security. It is that we engage them as partners, as equals without creating debt dependency, without demanding basing rights in return. The deal that we do is that we have a set of values that we espouse, and we have a willingness to have a relationship as equals, that in my experience, when I have seen Royal Navy training teams around the world doing this with our partners in the Commonwealth and beyond, our people just instinctively get it and when they do, it is brilliant. It is powerful. It is wonderful. And it stands in stark contrast to the way that the Chinese do their business with chequebook and stick.

    And we mustn’t be dismissive. There’s a tendency because we did the Carrier Strike Group and it went so well with the Charles de Gaulle and with the Reagan to say that’s how we operate, a carrier Navy and that’s what matters. Of course we are. But there are a network of patrol boat navies with security challenges in the maritime domain of their own in seas around the world where the white ensign has a place and where British naval expertise is a currency that is hugely admired and where there’s an appetite to partner. So I’m every bit as excited about HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales as I am HMS Spey, Tamar, Medway, Forth and Trent. And there will be a moment where those switch to be the Type 31s, but I hope that they don’t switch completely because in some parts of the world Type 31 is too big. It’s over roaring. When you turn up, you’re not being a partner, you’re being the boss. And so I hope that the Navy strikes a balance between putting Type 31 out in replacement to the batch two OPVs but also in addition to the batch two OPV. So the right platform with the right profile is in the right place, flying the flag for the UK. And for what it’s worth since the Secretary of State wasn’t available and the speech is mine, the thing that I really interested in is for those patrol boat navies, given the role that we have that is non-discretionary in home waters, how do we, the Royal Navy here in the UK, use a set of smaller simply maintained, highly exportable patrol vessels in our home waters that then have the RN seal of approval for which the export market – and the Secretary of State for International Trade nods enthusiastically – there are dozens of navies in the market to buy that sort of platform. And it would be great if we could operate it in home waters too. As the First Sea Lord said yesterday, all great minister, but it’s going to cost you but it’s a conversation to have.

    Ladies and gentlemen, over the last 18 months or so I had the huge pleasure of seeing the Royal Navy deployed on its Littoral Response Group experimentation deployment into the Mediterranean. I have had the pleasure of sitting in the ops room of a Type 45 destroyer where they have shown me the air picture that they saw as they sailed across the bottom of Crimea. I have stood on offshore patrol vessels in Curaçao, Cartagena and Dhaka. I have stood on minesweepers in Bahrain, I have been on a submarine on the first day of fresh air after its deployment with our continuous at sea deterrent. I’ve been in bunkers being briefed on the incredible spooky stuff that our SSNs is do day in day out. I have been briefed by frigate and destroyer crews that have been in the high north, the Black Sea, the Baltic and the North Atlantic. The Royal Navy is operating the world over with huge success. It is magnificent, it is ready to fight. The maritime contribution to our national security right now is inescapably important and I am so proud of the work that our men and women who wear dark blue at work are doing. I want them to be busier yet. I want them to continue to be Europe’s foremost Navy with a war-fighting capability that makes our adversaries take note. But so too, do I want to see the white ensign flying in all corners of the world as partners to nations big and small, reminding them that in the UK they have a real friend and from the sea we do things best, thank you.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at the Defence Procurement, Research, Technology & Exportability (DPRTE) Conference

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at the Defence Procurement, Research, Technology & Exportability (DPRTE) Conference

    The speech made by Jeremy Quin, the Minister for Defence Procurement, on 5 May 2022.

    It’s a pleasure to be here in Farnborough this morning and I want to start by thanking all of you for everything you do for our forces.

    In my view the Defence sector is the jewel in the crown of our country’s economy – maintaining hundreds of thousands of jobs, developing rich skills bases and boosting our global influence.

    And while your immense contribution often goes unsung, the world has been reminded of that value in recent months as a result of Putin’s illegal and unprovoked war.

    The UK, as you all know, has been at the forefront of efforts to support Ukraine and, as the Prime Minister announced to the Ukrainian parliament on Monday, we will be delivering £300m more in military aid in the coming days, making us the biggest supplier in Europe.

    But delivering and maintaining this equipment has been a huge logistical feat and it wouldn’t be possible without an agile and resilient supply chain.

    Which is where all of you come in.

    Firms like yours have helped build, maintain and transport the thousands of anti-tank and anti-air missiles which have helped protect Ukrainian towns and cities.

    Of course, this is just one of a number of recent supply chain successes.

    You came to the fore during Op PITTING, providing the logistical backbone and equipment for the largest ever peacetime airlift.

    And you showed your mettle throughout the pandemic, from manufacturing ventilators to helping establish Nightingale hospitals.

    But you will be aware that the challenges we face in Defence procurement are growing quickly in this new era of constant competition and rapid technological advancement.

    The current cost of living crisis has placed the emphasis on value for money for the taxpayer as never before.

    And those reminders of the failures of Russian kit – tanks stuck in the mud for days, soldiers’ cheap handheld radios discarded – have underlined the need for resilience.

    That doesn’t just mean building equipment to last but ensuring we have access to the specialist parts required to maintain and repair those platforms at all times.

    More than anything though, we need to make the whole acquisition process simpler and quicker, so that we can spend less time hacking our way through red tape and more time delivering on what counts.

    So how can we respond to these multiple challenges?

    Well, a year ago we published DSIS, the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy, which set out to transform the way we do business while also attracting the best suppliers into our supply chains, including non-traditional and smaller firms.

    Today I want to take the opportunity to remind you of those key pillars of DSIS that we believe will help transform procurement.

    First, in this age of rapid technological advance, we are injecting pace and clarity into our processes so we can deliver capability at the speed of relevance.

    We are reforming the Single Source Contracts Regulations and the Defence and Security procurement rules – making them more flexible and more agile for buying the right capability.

    And we are giving industry more notice about the kit we’re going to need, so you have the time to upskill and invest in the right areas.

    Shipbuilding is a case in point – we’ve just announced a new strategy which will create jobs and boost skills with a 30-year pipeline of 150 government vessel procurements, backed by £1.7 billion a year specifically for Royal Navy shipbuilding.

    Meanwhile, we are rolling out a Category Management system which will take a pan-Defence approach to buying goods and services instead of MOD organisations operating on an individual level – cutting costs and delivery times.

    But we recognise the best way to improve procurement is by improving our relationships with those with whom we do business.

    That’s why we have also strengthened the Defence Suppliers Forum by broadening and deepening the industry membership.

    That’s why we are using our National Security Technology and Innovation Exchange to give industry and academia the world-class facilities they need to succeed.

    And that’s why we are making it easier for you to export, developing our government-to-government frameworks to better support Defence exports while unplugging bottlenecks in our own system.

    The second pillar of DSIS, a critical pillar, is innovation.

    This government is determined to reverse the long-term decline in R&D in this country.

    So we’re ring-fencing £6.6bn for Defence R&D to produce game-changing capabilities that help the UK become a global science superpower. We’re already seeing successes across every domain and in all corners of the UK.

    The Army BattleLab in Dorset is enabling Defence personnel to work with academic institutions and private sector companies to trial cutting-edge tech.

    The new AI centre in Newcastle – which I had the pleasure of opening a couple of months ago – has a team of scientists exploiting the latest developments in the use of Defence AI.

    While the National Cyber Force in Lancashire will strengthen our already significant capability in the digital domain.

    But to really succeed, we need to be tapping into the talents of our SMEs – the backbone of our economy. Last month’s inaugural report from the Joint Economic Data Hub showed that more than a fifth of Defence procurement spending is with SMEs.

    We believe we must up that contribution further if they are to help spearhead our innovation revolution.

    That’s why in January we published the SME Action Plan, which sets out plans to improve engagement with SMEs in the defence supply chain by speeding up technology pull-through and providing focused investment to support innovation.

    We’ve also created a specific SME working group within the Defence Suppliers Forum, which is increasing access to opportunities and improving how we measure and report SME engagement.

    And our Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) is helping turn private sector innovation into military capability, with Defence Innovation Loans to SMEs to help commercialise their products.

    These relationships are being further strengthened at a local level through our new network of Regional Defence and Security Clusters which allow industry and government to share ideas and work together, thus promoting collaboration and commercialisation into the supply chain.

    And the pilot cluster in the Southwest is already proving a hit, with 140 organisations signed up, including 90 SMEs, 45 of which have never previously worked with Defence.

    Critically, getting innovation right will also help strengthen great British companies in the export markets, where the clamour for Defence services in an ever more competitive world is growing louder.

    The third pillar for DSIS that is critical to our procurement approach is social value.

    At the start of this speech, I mentioned the enormous benefits Defence brings to every part of the country.

    We need to ensure that with every Defence procurement we are asking the wider strategic question of what else we can gain as a country alongside excellent kit.

    We recognise that our onshore Defence industry has a strategic value in its own right.

    To ensure we get the most from our new model we have established a Social Value Centre of Expertise, which will drive added value for Defence and the wider economy by embedding social value in acquisition.

    So those are three DSIS pillars that are designed to make our procurement and supply chains faster, more innovative and more socially valuable. But given that today’s theme is about building back better together, let me finish by turning the tables on you.

    After all, I’m sure many of you in the room have enterprising and innovative solutions to some of the challenges I set out. And perhaps even more answers to those I have not.

    So, as you go off and make the most of today’s conference, please do consider how you would get more out of your partnership with government.

    What more can you do to collaborate on research and development with us?

    How can we encourage companies with niche skills who might not be part of the existing Defence supply chain to come on board?

    How could you contribute to a Defence and Security Cluster in your area?

    What more support would you like to see from government on exports?

    How do we keep manufacturing lines open through the lifespan of a platform so we can ramp up production when called upon?

    Those are just a few questions that we’re going to be grappling with in the coming years and I’d love to hear from you your answers.

    If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that success from battlefield to boardroom rests on us working together.

    So thank you for coming and listening today and I look forward to working together with you and to continue to keep together our country safe and secure.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at SupportNET 22

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at SupportNET 22

    The speech made by Jeremy Quin, the Minister for Defence Procurement, on 28 April 2022.

    Two years ago I was relatively new in post and I regret I wasn’t able to join you on that occasion but now I know it was referred to as a Support Net superspreader event and therefore perhaps I regret it a little less.

    It is great, in happier circumstances, for us all to be together in the same room.

    Last year I joined you virtually and I recall quoting then from the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, who you will all be familiar, who said the line between success and failure is of course logistics.

    This year, I don’t feel I need to delve 2,000 years into Chinese literature to make the same point. We’ve been seeing it daily on our television screens.

    Those pictures of the 40-mile Russian convoy sat stuck on the road to Kyiv have become some of the defining images of Putin’s war.

    Indeed, Russia’s failure in almost all of its initial objectives may be found to be deeply rooted in the logistics and supply mistakes, amongst others, that they have been making.

    Expensive equipment is getting literally bogged down because it relied, in part, on failing old tyres which have been unmonitored.

    Russian soldiers have been relying on cheap handheld radios because theirs don’t work.

    And, if reports are to be believed, they’ve even resorted to scavenging and looting because their rations are not just weeks or months but years out of date.

    Napoleon, who learned a few things about logistics of the cold climate as you’ll recall, famously talked about an army marching on its stomach.

    And it’s fair to say that the UK has a good track record when it comes to Defence logistics and support networks.

    And we’ll be reminded in this, the 40th anniversary year of the Falklands War, that we succeeded in maintaining an 8000-mile-long supply chain that ultimately led us to victory.

    And just last year, we utilised every asset of Defence to carry out the biggest peacetime airlift in history from Kabul.

    But in this new era of rising threats – where war in Europe is no longer a distant memory but a stark reality – we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball.

    Last year, I spoke about the publication of our Integrated Review and the Defence Command Paper, which constituted the biggest review of our Defence since the end of the Cold War.

    Those two documents recognised the importance of getting logistics right.

    Not simply by reorganising the Army into more self-sufficient Brigade Combat Teams able to meet demand by drawing on their own dedicated logistics and combat support units.

    But by investing in modernising and transforming engineering and logistical support systems to improve the availability and sustainment of our capabilities, our equipment and our people across all the domains.

    Indeed, the Defence Support organisation was created to pursue these common goals.

    They are making sure that no British serviceperson suffers that Russian ration fiasco.

    In fact, today I can reveal that we have been trialling new, nutritionally balanced ration packs, which show a 23% increase in performance for Commando Forces – despite being smaller and lighter to carry. Napoleon no doubt would have approved.

    But this is only a small element in the start of the transformation in logistics that we’re looking for. From my perspective, I want to see and succeed in meeting four key objectives.

    First, we must strengthen our strategic base.

    In other words, the infrastructure and systems upon which we depend to store our stock and to process complex transactions that supply materiel to the front line.

    Over the past year, our Agile Stance Campaign Plan has been probing the fragilities in our supply lines and fixing them.

    I’m glad to say we’re now seeing accelerated investment in sites like Longtown on the Scottish borders, the development of a Supply Chain Strategy that will enable improved agility and resilience, and an enhanced focus on Supply Chain Resilience.

    But I know the people here in this room are likely to have plenty more enterprising and innovative solutions to some of the challenges we face. And I’m very keen to hear from you.

    How do we increase scalability and production through the lifetime of a platform?

    To what extent can we be standardising parts across Defence so that they will always be available, rather than buying our whole stock of wheelnuts for tanks up front and then storing them somewhere indefinitely?

    Can we change commercial agreements so that industry holds the financial liabilities for maintaining stock levels? Would that incentivise industry to design around off-the-shelf solutions more readily?

    My second objective touches directly on the theme of today’s conference – improving the readiness and availability of our equipment.

    Whether that’s through more resilient designs for future platforms, or better through-life management. Here too there are critical questions to consider around contracting for availability.

    For example, should we have contracts which ensure kit is ready for a set number of days in a year?

    How do we best work together to ensure that our bottom-line availability requirements are always met?

    Involving industry contractually in the numbers and maintenance required from the outset for our equipment.

    The Army and Navy are already starting to integrate these ideas. The former’s Land Integrated Operating Service specifically addresses support contracts and seeks better equipment availability and through-life management.

    While the Naval Enterprise Support Strategy is about reducing the amount of time vessels spend in maintenance by working with an agile, global supply chain and support network.

    My third aim is about rapidity in the digital world. Our Command Paper tasks us with creating a digital spine that underpins everything else in our transformed Defence network.

    But that spine needs to be able to exploit data through a common digital architecture, spanning factory to foxhole, to ensure agile, flexible support that is suited to the demands.

    And it needs to ensure the interoperability of every platform we use throughout our organisation, and those of our allies too.

    It might sound simple, but the magnitude of the task is simply daunting when you consider the number of organisations tied into this common digital framework and the security implications of that.

    It is another area where we are looking to draw on your expertise.

    What is the best way to ensure every new platform we invest in can be plugged into the same digital spine for decades to come?

    How can we exploit the Business Modernisation for Support programme to fundamentally revolutionise our processes, enabling those in support to generate your own part of the digital spine?

    My fourth and, you’ll be pleased to hear, my final point is about sustainability and resilience.

    The imperative for energy security has been underlined in recent weeks as nations scramble to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas.

    This is not just a major concern for the cost of living in our country; it also has a direct effect on Defence procurement.

    The platforms we procure today will likely be around in 20 years’ time, by which time our current reliance on hydrocarbons will have been reduced in favour of electric, hydrogen and other energy solutions.

    But we must be ready for this change while recognising there are real operational benefits to becoming more sustainable that go well beyond earning plaudits for being socially responsible.

    Consider that an armoured vehicle which can run silently and recharge itself from the sun – what an enticing prospect for Defence.

    If we don’t have a long logistical tail, we will be far less vulnerable to future threats.

    We are already seeing successes with the launch of our Prometheus programme of solar farms on Army land, as well as the development of the world’s first biofuel for fighter jets.

    The massive price hikes we’ve seen for hydrocarbons show the enhanced resilience on which we can benefit in this renewable space.

    As I’ve already intimidated, we can’t achieve these four Rs – real estate, readiness, rapidity and resilience without working together.

    We need partners who are ready to work with us on defining new patterns that achieve our joint objectives. Partners committed to skills development and innovation.

    Partners who will help us identify problems and join forces in finding solutions.

    I am determined to get this partnership with all of you in this room right.

    Last year I spoke about how we are using the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy to reform relationships with the sector.

    Since then, we have made progress, by strengthening our Defence Suppliers Forum and setting up new working groups for SMEs.

    By using our National Security Technology and Innovation Exchange to give industry and academia the world-class facilities they need to succeed.

    And by establishing Regional Defence and Security Clusters to promote skills sharing and foster collaborations between higher tier Defence suppliers and SMEs across the country.

    But I do want you to tell me what more we can do.

    So the ball is being thrown back into your court.

    I’ve spoken about our aims, our ideas and some of the frictions involved. But I want your take on how we take this symbiotic relationship between Government and industry to the next level.

    Be in no doubt, in this more dangerous age, we are only too aware of your value, and we’re determined to have your back because we know that when the chips are down, you will have ours.

  • John Healey – 2022 Speech on the Situation in Ukraine

    John Healey – 2022 Speech on the Situation in Ukraine

    The speech made by John Healey, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, in the House of Commons on 25 April 2022.

    I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. His presence is welcomed this afternoon by the whole House. We know that it is not entirely his fault, but it is nearly seven weeks since he was last able to give us a statement on the situation in Ukraine. That was the day after President Zelensky addressed this House. The Secretary of State said then, as he did this afternoon, that he would keep the House up to date. May I say, on behalf of the public, that we would welcome more regular statements as the Russian war on Ukraine continues?

    Like the Secretary of State, we salute the bravery of the Ukrainian people, military and civilians alike. That bravery is led by President Zelensky personally, but it is typified by the military last stand of the troops at the Azovstal steel plant and by the people’s resistance in Russian-occupied Kherson. We also renew our total condemnation of this brutal Russian invasion of a sovereign country and our determination to see that all those responsible for the mass graves in Mariupol, for the crimes, rapes and assassinations in Bucha and for the civilian bombings in almost every town and city across Ukraine are pursued to the end for their war crimes.

    We welcome the role that the UK is playing and the further UK military assistance to Ukraine that the Secretary of State has outlined today, which has Labour’s full support. He says the UK has provided 5,000 anti-tank missiles and 100 anti-air missiles, but these direct donations are a fraction of the total. Can he tell us the total of such weapons provided so far by western allies? Has the MOD yet signed contracts and started production of replacement next-generation light anti-tank weapons and Starstreak missiles?

    This is the first day of the third month of Putin’s invasion, and it is a new phase, as the Defence Secretary said. What is needed now is no longer old, spare weapons from the Soviet era but the new NATO weapons that Ukraine will need for Putin’s next offensive against Odessa or Kyiv. We need to shift from crisis management in response to the current conflict to delivering the medium-term military support that Ukraine will need. What is he doing to ensure this step change in support?

    Given that 5 million refugees have now left Ukraine, what is the Secretary of State doing to offer the 700 personnel still held at high readiness in the UK for humanitarian help? Is it still the case that the MOD has offered only 140 armed forces personnel to help sort out the shameful shambles of the Home Office’s visa and refugee systems?

    I just got off the tube after visiting NATO’s Allied Maritime Command in Northwood. They took my phone off me, so I did not realise we were having this statement, which is why I am using handwritten notes this afternoon. This is a proud, professional, British-led multinational command, and I pay tribute to it for the work it is doing, day in and day out, to keep us all safe.

    NATO has proved to be such a powerful security alliance because it pools multinational military capacity, capability and cash, with an annual budget of more than $1 trillion, to protect 1 billion people, but Ukraine reminds us that the greatest threat to UK security lies in Europe, the north Atlantic and the Arctic, not in the Indo-Pacific. This reinforces NATO as the UK’s primary security obligation, but the Secretary of State gave us only a paragraph on NATO.

    Our leadership in NATO could be at risk as Britain falls behind our allies in responding to this invasion of Ukraine. More than a dozen European countries are now rebooting security plans and defence spending, but the UK has not yet done either. I therefore urge the Secretary of State to revisit the integrated review, to review defence spending, to reform military procurement and to rethink his Army cuts. We will be dealing with the consequences of Putin’s war for many years to come, and now is the time for longer-term thinking about how the strategy for European security must change.