The seemingly endless debate about the hollowness of our armed forces has concentrated on size, technical capability and sustainability – never more so than in recent days when the UK’s unreadiness for war, or even to defend its own bases overseas, has been exposed. But there has been no mention of the moral component of fighting power (morale, spirit, will), which is the most important element of combat effectiveness. Napoleon is often quoted as saying that in war, ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’, and history is littered with examples showing this to be true.
The most recent was the evaporation, within days, of the Afghan army on which the US had spent around $20 billion. It was technically very capable but it lacked a willingness to fight. Vietnam was another example.
So, when discussing the state of our own armed forces, the question must be asked whether the moral component of our fighting power is sufficiently robust or has it become as depleted as our combat supplies? There is evidence to suggest that the latter is true, and in my view the main cause of this has been the erosion of our traditional military ethos where individual needs are always subordinate to the common good.
The demands of war are clearly quite different from those of civilian life and consequently servicemen and women require very different disciplines, psychologies and training in peacetime if they are to prevail on the battlefield – even one dominated by drones. They must accept that one day they may be called upon to deliberately sacrifice their lives in pursuit of a common cause, and this requires a unique military ethos quite distinct from today’s social values where rights predominate over duty. We need to create the necessary mental and physical resilience in our service people to enable them to sustain the rigour of battle – and this requires a complex system of education, training and a sometimes harsh, but always fair, discipline.
Of course, our armed forces should reflect the society from which they come. As the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir
Roly Walker, rightly says, the army must stand out as an inclusive employer that values diversity and embraces equality of opportunity – but only to an extent. In any combat–effective force, inclusion must mean excluding the mentally and physically unfit; diversity must refer only to the multiple talents needed to improve lethality and sustainability; equality of opportunity can never mean lowering standards. Yet ‘gender fair’ physical tests at Sandhurst to accommodate women have resulted in a 20 per cent increased failure rate among officers attending the subsequent mandatory battle course.
Walker’s predecessor, General Sir Patrick Sanders, once announced that he was ‘proud to be the army’s LGBT champion and a straight ally’. By contrast, when, as Field Army Commander, I visited the mortar platoon of a famous regiment known to be populated by people from that community, the only thing the soldiers were interested in was: why was the British Army so short of training ammunition? These were very tough soldiers indeed who would have given me a very odd look if I had announced that I wished to be their champion. Times may have changed, but the demands of the battlefield have not.
Complicated health and safety rules are producing a generation of risk-averse service people
The alterations to the courts martial procedure – arising from successive decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – have seriously undermined the integrity of the chain of command in the military and significantly reduced the powers of a commanding officer. Yet, as Brigadier Allan Mallinson recently pointed out in this magazine, regimental identity is a key element in what makes soldiers fight. Regiments are family organisations, with successive generations joining the same one, and soldiers fight primarily for their own regiment. The replacement of the army recruiting system by a civilian recruiting agency, Capita, has not only resulted in a failure to meet recruiting targets, but it has greatly weakened the close-knit nature of regiments by stuffing them with Commonwealth soldiers who come from very different backgrounds. My own regiment, the Coldstream Guards, which last year celebrated its 375th anniversary, is a case in point. Non-UK soldiers now amount to 25 per cent.
Elsewhere, the intrusion of complicated health and safety rules into training is producing a generation of risk-averse service people who are usually required to produce a mass of paperwork before any military activity. Prior to departing for an operational deployment to Iraq, an officer had to produce a lengthy health and safety risk assessment. But as Lord Esher commented in 1904 after the failures of the British Army in the Boer war: ‘The natural results of an inordinately centralised system have been the destruction of initiative throughout the army… and minds brought up to attend to a minutia of administrative detail can scarcely be expected to take bold decision in war.’
Not long ago, I asked a student at the Joint Services Staff College how they debated diversity, equity and inclusion, and was told that it was forbidden to question MoD policy on such matters and that if anyone did, their career would be ended. If this is true, then I fear for the future of our armed forces and this country. It was only because people in the 1920s questioned the supremacy of the horse on the battlefield and argued in favour of tanks and aircraft that Britain was able to defeat Germany in the second world war.
The ways to put the fighting spirit back into our armed forces aren’t hard to identify: derogate from the ECHR, bring back military summary jurisdiction and recalibrate courts martial, put recruiting back into the hands of regimental recruiting officers, make safety the function of minor tactics where it belongs, and bring back single service Staff Colleges where open debate is encouraged. And always remember Major Birdie Martin,
who was ignored when he wrote a paper in 1973 saying that the battlefield one day would be dominated by small, remotely controlled planes carrying cameras and bombs.
General Sir Michael Rose is former Director of Special Forces and Adjutant General.
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