The Veterans Minister Alistair Carns has warned that the British Army would be destroyed within 6 to 12 months should a full-scale war break out.
If the British Army had to fight on the scale of the Ukraine war then within six months it would no longer exist.
Carns said that if we suffered casualty rates similar to what is being seen in with Russia’s war which is around 1,500 killed or injured daily, the British Army would be “expended” between 6 to 12 months.
The former Royal Marine Commando Colonel said the military needs to “generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis.”
Sky News reports, Carns said in a speech at a conference on reserves at the Royal United Services Institute defence in London, “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 multinational coalition – in six months to a year.”
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Carns added, “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.”
Carns said, “The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process.
“Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks.”
He stressed that the British Army has to “catch up with NATO allies” and put a greater emphasis on reserves.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said John Healey, the Defence Secretary has said about “the state of the armed forces that were inherited from the previous government.”
The spokesman said, “It’s why the Budget invested billions of pounds into defence, it’s why we’re undertaking a strategic defence review to ensure that we have the capabilities and the investment needed to defend this country.”
