A U.K. defense minister warned the British Army could be wiped out within six months of a large-scale war. Alistair Carns, the nation’s minister for veterans, said a rate of casualties similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to the army’s demise.
“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 multi-national coalition, in six months to a year,” Carns said.
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The former Royal Marines colonel stressed the importance of building up Britain’s military reserves.
The country’s personnel statistics from October revealed the British Army had 109,245 personnel, including 25,814 volunteer reservists.
Carns compared the numbers to the Russia-Ukraine war. He said Russian losses were around 1,500 soldiers a day at certain points during the conflict.
“That doesn’t mean to say we need a bigger army, but it does mean we must be able to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis,” Carns told the Royal United Services Institute.
His analysis followed a recent warning from U.K. Defense Chief John Healy who said the military was not ready to fight a war or prevent an invasion.
“Our forces need to be able to innovate,” Healy said in October. “We need to take new technologies and some of the lessons from Ukraine and make what we do more lethal and, therefore, a stronger deterrence.”
The Ministry of Defense took notice of the concerns, acknowledging personnel and equipment shortages. It’s looking to boost spending by NATO’s recommended amount of 2.5%.
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