Enabling Britain’s military
Enabling Britain’s military
Open Briefing | No. SDR-08.2024
This is the eighth in a series of Open Briefings to the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) from the Council on Geostrategy. Our aim is to analyse ten key questions facing the Defence Review Team, from the vantage point of how the United Kingdom’s (UK) adversaries and strategic competitors see us (an approach known as Opposing Forces, or ‘OPFOR’). We will avoid euphemisms and address the challenges head-on. After holding an expert seminar, we will formally submit the briefings at the end of September. Our contributions are deliberately candid – and we invite comment and challenge from all quarters. This eighth Open Briefing looks at Britain’s military enabling capabilities:
Enablers are a crucial aspect of military power. These include reconnaissance capabilities, space-enabled navigation, heavy lift transport aircraft, air-to-air refuelling, sealift, and command, control, and communications systems. The UK and other advanced armed forces rely on enablers to offset limited mass. Since the 1980s, a wealth of enablers has been a key strength in every conflict the British Armed Forces have fought or planned to fight. The compounding effect of multiple enablers generates strategic advantage while affording the UK, United States (US), and others significantly greater military options in crises across Eurasia. Enablers are also crucial to British and allied support for Ukraine – the UK in particular has leveraged its intelligence and communications expertise to assist Ukrainian operations, allowing the Ukrainian military to fight smarter against a much larger adversary.
Enablers are a key British military strength against a broader hollow force. Since the Cold War’s conclusion, the British military has traded capacity – the raw amount of combat power it can deliver – for advanced capability and reach, affording it remarkable interoperability with US forces:
The UK fields 30 medium and heavy-lift transports and another nine tankers, for a fleet only slightly smaller than France’s older sustainment force;
It is a core contributor to the combined UK-US RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance fleet and operates the American-designed P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft;
British intelligence support for Ukraine has been essential since 2022, while British experience in communications technology is an invaluable training tool for the UK’s partners.
The British Army is increasingly hollow, and the Royal Navy struggles to sustain its operational tempo. But the British Armed Forces still understand these technically complex, operationally essential, enabling capabilities. Without this experience, UK participation in multilateral initiatives such as AUKUS would be far more difficult.
When considered against British military requirements, however, the UK’s enablers are insufficient for strategic demands. If considered in isolation, certain British enablers would be sufficient to sustain combat operations, although the scale at which these operations could be conducted is unclear given the broader force hollowness. But the UK military is not designed to deploy independently for good reason. British strategy centres upon alliances, whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Special Relationship, or now AUKUS. Allied security is inseparable from British security. Hence, when evaluated against broader alliance needs, and the UK’s position in its alliances, British enablers are increasingly insufficient to the task.
The risk of American retrenchment increases the need for independent European enablers, placing greater responsibility on the UK. Regardless of the result in the US presidential elections in November, Washington, DC will de-prioritise Europe throughout this decade. Over the coming years, there is a growing risk that the US redeploys many of its airborne and naval enablers to the Indo-Pacific, which will place significant stress on European deterrence. European security will retain obvious relevance to the UK given geographic reality. Ensuring the gap can be filled by European members of NATO, of which the UK is well placed with its extensive military experience, will be crucial. Moreover, if the European powers can fulfil their enabling functions without collaboration with the UK, London risks being isolated from maturing European defence structures.
British adversaries understand the centrality of enablers to the UK and allied combat model, and will target them in a future war. Russia has targeted enablers in Ukraine, jamming satellite guidance, disrupting Ukrainian command-and-control, and demonstrating a growing ability to strike high-value targets in rear areas. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has developed anti-satellite capabilities which can hit British or allied space assets. Both the PRC and Russia may be developing full-blown offensive space- based capabilities, while cyberspace operations are clear tools that can disrupt allied capacity.
British aerial enablers look good on paper, but have serious operational issues. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) allowed a two-year airlift gap with the early retirement of its 15 C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft. Procuring additional A400M transport aircraft is essential to close this gap unless the UK is to lose the leverage the Royal Air Force (RAF) airlift capacity provides it in Europe. Britain’s early warning gap is more critical – the RAF still awaits its E-7 Wedgetails early warning and control aircraft, and has already cut its purchase from five to three aircraft. These moves come just as NATO’s European pillar will need such capabilities to back-fill for American assets.
British air-to-air refuelling is better than most allied counterparts, but remains limited in capacity. The RAFs A330 refuelling aircraft are capable, but the UK’s P-8 Poseidon patrol fleet struggles to operate with them given technical differences. Moreover, a baseline fleet of nine aircraft, with five more in reserve, is a fraction of total continental European capacity. British tactical air forces are likely to be surged forward in a crisis, but limited air-to-air refuelling hampers the UK’s leverage over a more robust European conventional defence.
The UK’s naval sustainment system is showing signs of exhaustion owing to years of underinvestment. The Royal Navy’s deployment struggles are well known, from an insufficient number of conventional and nuclear-armed submarines given operational requirements, to the British Carrier Strike Group’s struggle to deploy with a sovereign air wing and escorts. Even more worrying is the state of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), the crucial sustainment force for the Royal Navy, and for British and allied expeditionary operations:
The UK is proceeding with a contract for three Fleet Solid Support Ships (FSS), but the yard tasked with the contract has gone into administration, with no sign of fiscal support from Westminster;
RFA personnel numbers are also shrinking. RFA Mariners have had a real-terms 30% pay cut since 2010, and are going on strike. RFA Cardigan Bay, previously forward-deployed to Bahrain as a crucial sustainment ship and test bed for advanced unmanned systems, has returned to the UK. But it cannot be moved from Portsmouth to Falmouth for refit, since the RFA lacks the mariners to put together even a skeleton crew.
As British naval sustainment atrophies, it will rely even more on allied goodwill and availability of the relevant allied assets, a dubious proposition as the US shifts its focus to Asia.
British reconnaissance capabilities work well in a US-enabled system, but poorly without American assistance. The UK does field Rivet Joint aircraft, highly sophisticated signals intelligence platforms which have proved their value in supporting Ukraine. Its nine P-8 Poseidon aircraft have also proven critical for anti-submarine operations against Russia. But both fleets require extensive US sustainment, and the Rivet Joint fleet is part of a pooled capability, not a sovereign asset. Moreover, while high-endurance unmanned systems are central to modern reconnaissance, the UK’s fleet is concentrated on more vulnerable, lower-endurance drone aircraft, such as the MQ-9A Reaper and the upgraded Protector.
Recommendations for the Defence Review Team:
Enablers should be the UK’s central contribution to NATO in Europe. The UK provides a wealth of high-technology expertise and extensive experience in joint and combined operations, along with a direct line into sensitive intelligence-sharing relationships with the US and other Five Eyes partners. The UK also has established a robust partnership with both Ukraine and other Eastern flank states which centres upon its enablers, particularly intelligence and reconnaissance. British defence should prioritise expanding enablers over and behind front-line combat elements in the next six years, particularly given the scale of UK force hollowness.
The UK should expand its Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEWC), Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), airlift and refuelling capacity well beyond current plans. The Wedgetail aircraft buy should be returned to five aircraft and ideally expanded after that. Similarly, sovereign airlift, refuelling, and ISR capacities should be increased by a quarter to a third, in a broader shift towards enablers in the RAF. The Rivet Joint fleet could also be increased depending on procurement timelines,production capacity and budgetary considerations. The UK should also invest in a larger fleet of high-altitude long-endurance ISR platforms, comparable to the RQ-4 Global Hawk or MQ-4 Triton drones – at minimum, this will significantly bolster British ISR capacity.
British sovereign sealift requires a comprehensive reboot, beginning with personnel. RFA pay should be increased rapidly to attract new personnel and retain talent. Procuring the FSS and Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance Ship (MROS) is a good first step, but the UK should expand its numbers of the latter to at least three, given clear gaps in British and allied force structure.
The UK should emphasise sovereign enablers where possible, rather than relying too heavily on pooled capabilities with the US and NATO. Sovereign enablers will provide the UK with significantly greater leverage over shifting European defence structures, particularly in ISR contexts, even if they are operated under NATO command structures. The platforms themselves need to be British-owned, allowing the UK to contribute to European defence in a much more comprehensive way than simply providing combat power.
Harry Halem is an Associate Fellow at the Yorktown Institute.
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