Building a defence industry for sustained conflict.

How should the UK prepare for sustained conflict? 

It was always assumed that near peer war would go nuclear in about 3 weeks - so the UK and other NATO powers only stocked ammunition for 3 weeks. This provided a useful strategic signal as well, "genuinely, we are preparing to fight for 3 weeks and after that we will flip the switch and go crazy, so don't expect anything else". 

The Ukraine war and the change in strategic position in both the USA and Russia has changed this calculation. The USA is fundamentally more interested in Asia than Europe, and Russia has a genuine strategic need to seize territory and population. The UK has a vital national interest in stopping Russia because the UK's economy depends on a rules based global trading system. The UK and France cannot afford for eastern Europe or Germany to be coerced or taken over by Russia. Unfortunately, it is now the case that neither the UK or Europe can expect the USA to intervene in a future European war, and it is also clear that modern european wars can last for many weeks, months, or years without a nuclear exchange.

To comprehend this change it's important to understand that the Ukraine war has demonstrated some fundamental changes in land warfare since Gulf War 1. 

First lesson - it's possible to remove your enemies strategic capabilities from the battlefield. The Ukrainians have managed to largely neutralise the Russian air-force. The Ukrainians have no real air-force at the moment, the Russians do, but they can't or won't make use of it because of the Ukrainian air denial system. The same is true of the Black Sea fleet; the Russians have sea power, the Ukrainians don't, but they have made it not matter as they have sea denial capability. 

Second lesson - defence is much easier than attack if you don't have complete surprise. The if part is important. The first few weeks of the Ukraine war saw a relatively unprepared Ukraine cede large chunks of territory very rapidly. A poorly organised Russian front enabled the September 2022 Kharkiv counter offensive to achieve complete surprise and led to the loss of 12,000 square kilometers of land by Russia. However, battles where surprise was not achieved or where initial gains were not capitalised on and reinforcement was effective have deadlocked very much in the mold of the 1914-18 European war. This is because the battlefield has become transparent, artillery is now extremely accurate, long range and mobile (negating counter battery fire) and it's very difficult to assemble forces and create mass for attacks as a consequence. 

What does this mean for a future European confrontation with Russia?

By definition, Russia will be the aggressor. The European nations will not attack Russia, they will not retaliate against Russia in the case of a failed attack. The Europeans have no appetite for large scale losses and no appetite for inflicting civilian casualties on Russia. The Russians have demonstrated that they are completely comfortable with killing civilians and are comfortable sustaining large casualties themselves. If anyone attacks anyone else it will be Russia attacking Europe. This may happen several times; failed assaults or raids leading to withdrawal and retrenchment before another strike at perceived weaknesses. A successful surprise attack may yield the outcome that Russia wants, and they only have to manage it once, and they can have as many goes as they like.

The tactical picture will be that Russia will attempt to grab a swathe of land and then defend it. It will not sustain an attack if it faces rapid and competent resistance, but if there isn't successful resistance then the Russians will bite and hold what they can defend, and then dig in. The Russians will hope that they can defend while the will of the Europeans is strong and then convert their gains to permanent concessions of territory or reparations (depending on what they think that they can get) when European will waivers. They will have the advantage if they can pull this off, and they have the military experience to do it as well - post the defensive success of the summer of 2023.

Russia will learn from the Ukrainians and will seek to neutralize domains that the Europeans are strong in. This is in fact Soviet doctrine rehashed - the Soviets never believed that they would match NATO in the air, but they believed that they could defend themselves on the ground. The Russians will use both tactical and technological novelty to limit the effect of the European's weapons. 

Russia has demonstrated that it's armed forces are adaptive and learning organisations. As discussed above it's feasible for Russia to strike repeatedly and disengage from conflict, after all there aren't any consequences for this that the Russian leadership care about. On the other hand, for every encounter between Russian and European forces the Russian army will learn lessons, identify weaknesses, and identify opportunities for future exploitation.

So what does this mean for Europe's and by extension the UK's preparation for the next European war?

Europe must not design a closely integrated force structure that relies on multiplicative effects to defeat an enemy. Instead the force structure must be modular, autonomous, redundant and robust. One trump card, like SEAD or DEAD is not enough. 

Europe must be ready for a sustained war. This means that industrial capacity must be available to deliver ammunition and equipment. One lesson of the Ukrainian conflict is that suboptimal or old kit can still kill or protect. Modern production technology such as vehicles manufactured using giga-presses and carbon fibre armour won't produce equipment that meets UK armed forces requirements for heavy armour, but it will provide capability in excess of that which would be available without this kind of industrial capacity. These kinds of vehicles should be produced in advance of a military crisis because their availability will help deal with any crisis, provide proof to the Russians that a production capability exists and additionally validate and enable development programs.

Similarly, chip fabs that produce 40nm tech rather than 5nm tech won't compete with M3 Max or Ultra technology, but they will provide more than adequate processors for missile and drone guidance systems. 

Fundamentally core military production must be restored. The UK has no current capability to manufacture 155mm (and smaller) barrels, this is a key strategic weakness and must be fixed. We have no store or capability to manufacture at scale artillery propellant. We have a very limited capability to manufacture shells.

Military stocks must be built. The UK needs at least 1M rounds of 155mm, and millions of rounds of 30, 40mm and 120mm. 

The UK needs to develop dispersal and hardening for its forces. Shelters and rapid dispersal plans need to be created and hydrated. For example, munitions and stores need to be in place in dispersal bases. 

New capabilities must be created. UK national missile defence is required, in particular for Barrow in Furness/Sellafield, London, Sizewell and the East Anglia Airfields, Holy Loch, Devonport, Amersham, Reading, and Salisbury/Porton Down. The UK also needs about 1000 rounds of tactical conventional strike capability, a decent SEAD capability (F35 facilitates this but we should consider procuring a squadron or two of F35-A to deliver although despite what the torygraph would have you believe both Eurofighter and F35-B are useful in this role). 

The second most horrible thing we have to consider is that the Russians have learned a bad lesson about nuclear weapons. In Russian gangster culture the worst and most shameful thing that you can do is to make an empty threat, and yet the Russians have done this with nukes. It is entirely possible that a Russian attack of opportunity might involve the use of either tactical or battlefield/theartre nuclear weapons. To prevent and deal with this the European nuclear powers must have tactical and battlefield nuclear weapons. Most importantly they must have developed doctrine and capability to use these to retaliate and counter Russian attacks facilitated by Russian first strikes. 

The UK must develop a new generation of small nuclear weapons, with less than 50TJ yield which can be delivered by mobile missile systems with ranges of ideally 600km (from Suwałki to Tallinn) or deployed from F35. These should be rapidly capable of being forward deployed and dispersed so as to present a diffuse and uncertain target for Russian counter strikes. They should be able to sustain in the field for an extended period, and should have force protection and concealment capabilities as part of the deployment package.

The most horrible and difficult thing though is the necessity to harden our civil infrastructure against Russian manipulation. Strong and deliberate state intervention is now required to remove Russian influence from media platforms. This will not be pleasant, and it is not good for our society - much like the treatment for a horrible disease. Unfortunately it will have a chilling effect on debate and our social compact, but the alternative is to be made vulnerable to our actual destruction.