British Army would be destroyed in six months if it had to fight Russia, says veterans minister

The Telegraph: The British Army would be destroyed in “six months to a year” if it had to fight Russia, the veterans minister has warned.

Colonel Alistair Carns, a former marine and current reservist, said it would not be possible for the UK to sustain losses like those suffered by the Kremlin’s forces – estimated at 1,500 troops per day in Ukraine – in the event of a war.

Speaking at a conference on reserves, he said: “In a war of scale, not a limited intervention but one similar to Ukraine, our Army, for example on the current casualty rates, would be expended, as part of a broader multi-national coalition, in six months to a year.”

The British Army currently has 72,510 full-time troops – its smallest size since the Napoleonic era.

However, Col Carns said: “That doesn’t mean we need a bigger army, but it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis.

“The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process. Without them, we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks.”

The minister’s comments will be seen by many as concerning after General Sir Roland Walker, Chief of the General Staff, warned in the summer that Britain needed to be ready to fight a major war in three years.

He said the Army needed to rapidly modernise to double its fighting power by 2027 and triple it by the end of the decade.

Gen Sir Roland also cautioned that, by the second half of this decade, Russia, China and Iran could unite to put the West under pressure and achieve their individual goals.

It comes after General Sir Patrick Sanders, the former Army head, warned that the UK could not fight a full-scale war today.

Gen Sir Patrick said: “Could you scramble together the two brigades that took the Falklands? Yes, of course we could.

“But could we get them there? Could we have the task force that made it possible and sustain it? No.”

In January, he also warned that the British public faced conscription if the UK went to war because the military was too small.

General Sir Jim Hockenhull, Commander UK Strategic Command, also told the conference that the Army’s reserves, which are 25,814 strong, were “critical” for the military.

He also urged the Army to reconsider its retirement age, so as not to lose good personnel unnecessarily.