![]() Mobilising the Army to prevent war is as tangible and concrete an act of leadership as I can offer - the UK will lead by example. The upcoming Madrid Summit is a timely opportunity to demonstrate our leadership in NATO and our enduring commitment to our allies. We have already provided UK-based training for 650 AFU soldiers, and in the coming months, the British Army will deliver battle-winning skills to a further 10,000 Its just started. Our bi-lateral relationship with Kyiv has gone from strength to strength this year alone we have supplied 9500 anti-tank missiles, of which over 5000 were NLAW. Defence has worked at a phenomenal pace to bring together a coalition of partners to provide materiel, intelligence and training to sustain Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invaders. Under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary, the United Kingdom has risen to meet Moscow’s aggression. This process, given a name Operation MOBILISE, will be the Army’s primary focus over the coming years. It is instead an acceleration of the most important parts of Future Soldier’s bold modernisation agenda, a move to a positional strategy, an increased focus on readiness and combined arms training and a broader institutional renewal that creates the culture required to win if called upon. This is not the rush to war at the speed of the railway time tables of 1914. But today is about mobilisation, and to mobilise effectively we will need to suppress our additive culture and guard against the ‘tyranny of and’ – we can’t do everything well and some things are going to have to stop it will mean ruthless prioritisation.įrom now the Army will have a singular focus – to mobilise to meet today’s threat and thereby prevent war in Europe. ![]() I will concentrate on one area alone - how I intend to mobilise the British Army – our Regulars, Reservists and Civilians - to deter Russian aggression. It will not be the traditional tour of the horizon covering the full breadth of Army business. So I will not take the usual approach of a new CGS to this event. So surely it is beholden on each of us to ensure that we never find ourselves asking that futile question – should we have done more? I will do everything in my power to ensure that the British Army plays its part in averting war I will have an answer to my grandchildren should they ever ask what I did in 2022. ![]() We are not at war - but we must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion. Now, as then, our choices will have a disproportionate effect on our future. I believe we are living through a period in history as profound as the one that our forebears did over 80 years ago. In all my years in uniform, I haven’t known such a clear threat to the principles of sovereignty and democracy, and the freedom to live without fear of violence, as the brutal aggression of President Putin and his expansionist ambitions. For us, the visceral nature of a European land war is not just some manifestation of distant storm clouds on the horizon we can see it now. The deliberate targeting of civilians with 4,700 civilian dead. Ammunition expenditure rates that would exhaust the combined stockpiles of several NATO countries in a matter of days. 77,000 square kilometres of territory seized – 43% of the total landmass of the Baltic states. A casualty rate of up to 200 per day amongst the Ukrainian defenders. Up to 33,000 Russians dead, wounded, missing or captured. The scale of the war in Ukraine is unprecedented. But let me be clear, the British Army is not mobilising to provoke war - it is mobilising to prevent war. There is no need to continue doing a thing merely because it has been done in the Army for the last thirty or forty years – if this is the only reason for doing it, then it is high time we changed and did something else.įor us, today, that “something else” is mobilising the Army to meet the new threat we face: a clear and present danger that was realised on 24th February when Russia used force to seize territory from Ukraine, a friend of the United Kingdom. We have got to develop new methods, and learn a new technique…. In relative obscurity, and recognising the impending danger the nation faced, the then Brigadier Bernard Montgomery wrote this in the pages of that magnificent publication Royal Engineers’ Journal of 1937: As I do, I’m reminded of the words of a man in whose footsteps I tread. I stand here as the first Chief of the General Staff since 1941 to take up this position in the shadow of a major state on state land war in Europe.
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