No one should be under any illusion: Britain is under attack

Are we fit to fight? ‘No, we are not’ was General Sir Richard Barrons’ view, delivered at a Defence and Security Forum dinner last week.  He argued that the nation is unprepared both militarily and in terms of public resolve, a dangerous deficiency that must be remedied.

The decades of calm since the Cold War have fostered a sense of ‘strategic decadence,’ where the public feels entitled to prioritise welfare over warfare. This mindset, he suggested, has led to an unwillingness to make the tough choices needed to fund defence adequately.

The consequences of this underinvestment are tangible. Sir Richard highlighted the failure to invest £75bn in an integrated air-missile defence system as a critical vulnerability that could leave Britain exposed to devastating attacks. Current spending plans, he warned, are too slow and insufficient to counter the rising threats posed by Russia, China, and new forms of warfare.

The price of failed deterrence would be catastrophic. Sir Richard cautioned that the cost of this failure could ultimately reach up to 50% of GDP, with the destruction of critical infrastructure - such as the electricity grid - and pervasive cyber-attacks bringing the country to a halt.

The nature of this conflict would not be conventional. Forget tanks on the beaches; a future war would be waged against the UK with armed drones, missiles, and cyber attacks from the outset.

Sir Richard concluded: ‘We need a fundamental rethink on national security’, warning that ‘current habits, outdated models of war, and reluctance to make hard choices leave the UK dangerously exposed to a new era of state-level confrontation, cyber warfare and technological competition.’