As confirmed by the UK’s National Security Council, ‘no definitive evidence of an active experimentation programme in the development and implementation of Army 2020’ had been provided. What was consistent through these restructuring initiatives was that decisions were being made not only within significant financial constraints but also with little to no evidential decision-making actually occurring. This round of changes, nattily named Army 2020 Refine suggesting a continuum rather than the complete re-hash that it was, sought to make the Army both more ‘useful’ (generating light, agile, and more ‘lethal’ forces under the guise of an expeditionary-minded 1 ST UK Division) and more ‘ready’ (focussing on the Armoured formation of 3 RD UK Division which sought to generate ‘the full spectrum’ of warfighting capability at appropriate readiness scales). This time the focus was on a Divisional level of operations. The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, under the context of the rise of Islamic State and the 2014 invasion of Crimea, sought to reorganise the Army. Fast forward five years and, once again, the MOD decided that changes were needed. It reorganised the Army’s structure by focusing on sustaining an enduring brigade level operation. Produced in 2011, following the outcomes of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (and working within substantial financial constraints), Army 2020 was the British Army’s plan to make itself both more useful and more ready. 2 Whilst these outputs have stayed constant for decades, views on how an Army might achieve them have not. The British Army states that it exists for four reasons: to protect the UK, to prevent conflict, to deal with disaster, and to fight the nation’s enemies. Today, there is a paradox at the centre of the British Army: does it want to be ‘useful’ providing options across the military spectrum for our politicians, or does it want to be ‘ready’, being able to fight and win when required? It has, after more than a decade of trying, demonstrated that it cannot be both.
1 As the British Army and, more broadly, the Ministry of Defence work through the implications of the third strategic restructure inside a decade, it is clear that the British Army is struggling to find its role and with that its relevance. Adding that its people, its skills, its equipment, and how it operates had been adapted to such an extent during the counter-insurgency campaigns that elements may no longer be relevant. In 2015 the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Nicholas Carter, stated that the British Army had ‘bent significantly out of shape from 2007 onwards to be able to deal with the challenge that we were confronted with in Helmand’.
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