Published today [26 September 2024], the new report ‘Ukraine: A wake-up call’ claims the size of the UK Army is “inadequate”.

Intended to gather interim lessons from the now two-and-a-half-year-old war in Ukraine, the inquiry that led to the report was launched in February this year and received 17 written evidence submissions with six oral evidence sessions held with a total of 13 witnesses from academia, think tanks, government and the private sector. 

“Our overarching conclusion is that the war in Ukraine is a wake-up call to the UK’s relative decline as a full-spectrum military power,” the report said.

Among hundreds of recommendations, the 73-page report from the Lords’ International Relations and Defence Committee calls on the new Labour government to strengthen recruitment and retention for all three branches of the UK military. “In particular, the evidence we heard pointed to the size of the Army being inadequate, with a burdensome bureaucracy making recruitment more challenging than it needs to be,” the report says. “Strengthening recruitment and retention for all three services should be a priority for the new government.”

Especially burdensome, it emerged, is the process for screening and assessment of candidates for medical conditions. “The process itself can be complex and time-consuming for candidates,” said a letter submitted by the Army’s outsourced recruitment partner, Capita, as evidence for the inquiry. Series of “voluminous” documents often exceeding 100 pages to be reviewed, a historical requirement from GPs for a ‘wet signature’ before they release candidates’ Primary Healthcare Records (PHCR), gaps in information and processing time along with individual medical pathways that may not have been included add up to delays, as highlighted by Capita.

In addition to such difficulties in recruiting newcomers who choose one of the Army’s regular 73 roles for soldiers, the increasing need for integrated warfare of intelligence information, space and cyber mandates “a pre-condition” of having access to “a pool of people with the right technical skills” across the military. Opinions differed in the testimony given as to whether the UK armed forces currently have the right skills available, the report pointed out. 

“It is people and skills and industry – including the leveraging of commercial partnerships – that will determine the success of such integration,” the report said. 

It went on to urge: “The new government should work together with the private sector to formulate options for attracting high-tech talent to the defence sector and design flexible career paths that build skills and grow defence’s expertise in cyber and electromagnetic warfare.

“This will require training and learning lessons directly from colleagues in the Ukrainian forces and working closely with industry,” the report said. “The government should adopt a more flexible approach to bringing in commercial actors, while acknowledging some of the unique challenges these partnerships can entail around, for example, accountability or reliability.”

Discussions about increasing mass should, therefore, not be limited to size, but also focus on recruiting and developing the right skills, the report emphasised. 

General Sir Nick Carter emphasised the importance of integrating technology into training programmes: “The sorts of technologies that we deduce from what we have seen in Ukraine, such as air defence, drones, electronic warfare and robots more broadly, need to be integrated into the training.”

This could include updating simulators and other training tools to reflect the latest advancements in military technology, the report suggested.

Also, the Lords committee heard that there was “a lack of IT expertise” within the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces. A senior IT professional working for defence, who wished to remain anonymous, warned that although “well-motivated, experienced and trained IT professionals [...] exist [...] they are the exception and not the rule”, the report said. They also noted that “the UK is seriously in danger of being outclassed by the likes of China”.

According to the report, the MoD’s written submission noted that a unified career management has been introduced “to improve the armed forces’ ability to retain and develop personnel in specialist roles”, including cyber. However, the report noted, “it is unclear what impact this has had so far”. Also, the report said the MoD acknowledged a need to set out “a new alliance” with industry and that further investment in cyber and electronic capabilities was required.

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