Ben Barry

Ben Barry is a former infantry officer, battlegroup and brigade commander and was director of the British Army Staff. A fellow of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, he is the author of the Rise and Fall of the British Army 1975-2025 (Osprey, 2025). An updated and expanded second edition will be published in November 2026.

Cuts to army training will have lethal consequences

From our UK edition

The army’s soldiers and officers are greatly disappointed by the suspension of much necessary army training and cuts to the activity of the part-time army reserve. No amount of naive spin or over-simplistic briefing by ‘defence officials’ can disguise the inconvenient truth that these cuts lessen the fighting power, credibility and lethality of the army, reducing its ability to deter the Russian army and influence the US and Nato. Military expertise and fighting power will inexorably erode and become more difficult to sustain. In war, achieving mission success will become more difficult and casualties will increase. Since 1990, successive governments’ reductions in defence spending greatly reduced the armed forces’ ability to fulfil their national and Nato tasks.