Sir Tony Radakin: new armed forces head faces a fiendish task
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin is the first sailor to become head of all British forces as Chief of the Defence Staff in two decades. His selection by Boris Johnson and defence secretary Ben Wallace is recognition of the importance of the Navy and naval strategy to Britain’s defence and security – as well as to the outstanding qualities of Sir Tony himself.
He is credited with revolutionising the way the Navy is run, with an approach to command, planning and strategy fit for the series of crises now set to dominate the mid-21st century. The Navy, UK security, and the other two services are going to need this approach – in spades.
The new CDS will have much on his immediate checklist. Maritime strategy and the tilt to the Indo-Pacific, the thinking behind which he helped lead, will be way down the list of immediate priorities.
His first concern must be the coalition of crises that are likely to involve the armed forces at some stage – and in some ways not immediately obvious to government – the ministers themselves and their officials. It will require a shift in thinking about the management and ethos of defence forces as well as their recruiting and training.
This means that the various pronouncements about defence and strategy made earlier this year need urgent reassessment – and reshaping with a healthy dose of realism and practicality. First comes the eloquent and elegant Integrated Review – John Bew’s overview of where Britain should stand in the world. It now looks more like wishful thinking rather than a blueprint for the planning of policy and the necessary tasks and roles for the security services as a whole – and at an affordable price.
The Integrated Review, and its accompanying white papers on defence and defence industries, need to be cut down to a practical form: a summary of what must now be done. Last year Australia carried out just such an exercise and published on 1 July 2020 its Revised Strategic Review. It did so against the growing aggression from China, which last year started waging an undeclared economic war against the Canberra government.
The document is a model of its kind, succinct and to the point. It includes two break-out pages summarising the threats and tasks to be handled by Australian security and defence, and the way they should do it. These two pages should put the new UK Chief of Defence Staff on notice. He should aim to produce something like them.
He should look particularly at the sixth bullet point under the heading “Australia’s Strategic Environment”, which reads: “Threats to human security, such as the Coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters, mean disaster response and resilience demand a higher priority in Defence planning.”
Resilience planning has not been regarded as a major priority by the British Army command. Two years ago, General Sir Patrick Sanders, Commander Strategic Commander, said he didn’t recognise resilience as any part of core homeland defence tasks for British forces.
Since then we have had Covid and had to learn what resilience preparation and contingency planning means for the country’s security. Yet I am still not convinced the Army believes in this kind of activity as a proper job for soldiers.
The forces will have to aid frontline responders and provide backup in a whole range of disruptions and threats from major infrastructure collapse, to weird weather disasters, terror attacks along with pandemics and their impacts. The forces are the nation’s backup for civil protection. It is fascinating how the Scandinavian allies, and the Dutch, seem to understand this, with their movement of key personnel between elite armed forces and their superbly trained paramilitary police – such as the Marechaussee in the Netherlands, possibly the best trained police service in the world.
While Sir Tony will be called on for advice on the long term planning, training, equipping and funding of the services, and how and when they are deployed, his first priority will be crisis management. Already the Army is providing fuel tanker drivers, and assisting with the rolling vaccination programme. The vital role they played in the early stages of Covid, and the initiation of vaccination, has received scant public recognition. Senior NHS figures are known to have begrudged their role and expertise. Only Dame Kate Bingham has given fulsome public praise to their role in organising the logistics of the roll-out.
The armed forces are faced with an increasing list of tasks through the winter. Next they are likely to be called on to bury hundreds of thousands of pigs shot on farms because of the lack of abattoir capacity. In the next four months, a huge gas shortage is due to hit the UK – for which there has been little contingency planning – and the forces will be asked to pick up the slack in reaching the needy who are suffering the consequences.
With military drivers now being enticed to the private sector by inflated wage offers, one may wonder if there will be enough Army or Navy or RAF to go round when Boris Johnson next snaps his fingers.
This will probably require a restructuring of the way things are done at the top. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has already proposed at the Conservative conference that he wants a major reform at the top of the Ministry of Defence. He might start by appointing an Inspector General of Forces to audit the present effectiveness and funding of the armed forces – a figure like General Sir Gordon Messenger, the former Vice Chief of the Defence Staff just called in to report on the management of the NHS.
Sir Gordon is a reminder of a mess on Sir Tony Radakin’s doorstep that he should not be allowed to sidestep. Sir Gordon openly disagreed with Tony Radakin when as Chief of Naval Staff the latter oversaw the reform (many would say downgrading) of the Royal Marines. The structure of 3 Commando Brigade – which was the key to the successful land campaign in the Falklands in 1982 – was dismantled and the Marines split principally into small packets of raiding groups, plus one Commando or battalion formation. Ranks were lost and status reduced. The Commandant General of the Royal Marines, Major General Matt Holmes, a distinguished veteran of Afghanistan, was sacked halfway through his tour. Last month he committed suicide. The handling of the reduction of the role of the Marines, a vital part of the Naval service, was unnecessarily brutal, say critics.
As a result, there is to be no automatic promotion for a new head of the Navy. Ben Wallace has proposed a full competition for the post, so neither Hine nor Vice Admiral Ben Key, the other favourite and who is credited with a successful evacuation from Kabul this summer, are to get an automatic nod. One might speculate whether a senior Royal Marine should apply for the role.
The confusion in the Army is more extensive. The force seems hollowed out after being focused too much on the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly by the two previous CDSs, Generals Carter and his predecessor General Richards. There is a gap in equipment renewal and future strategic planning. Elements of the Army are not ready to fulfil Nato commitments as they should be.
The debacle in Afghanistan has thrown a spotlight on the way the Army operates and fights. The equipment programme is chaotic – epitomised by the likelihood that the blue chip programme for a new light tank, the Ajax, is likely to be canned after more than 20 years’ gestation. It has cost at least £3.5bn, without one single operating vehicle to show for it.
The Army needs to nurture its logistical, engineering, and communications specialities and units. These, however, are not favourite topics of mess conversation by most top brass, who for this century have been drawn from the Infantry (Guards and Rifles to the fore), Cavalry and Artillery. The first task of the new Inspector General should be the Army Audit, carried out in months not years, and if necessary behind closed doors.
As a Navy man, and a deep thinker about maritime strategy, Sir Tony Radakin is bound to focus on the new AUKUS pact with Australia and the US, and give it a dose of realism. Rightly, the headlines have been about nuclear submarines for Australia, and countering the very real Chinese maritime threat. But it is about much more than submarines and submarine technology. Besides, a lot of what has been mentioned as being the new kinds of submarines for Australia won’t be needed in their present form. The core of the alliance includes cooperation on artificial intelligence, cyber technology and quantum computing. It is not so much to counter-balance US dominance in this field – but to complement it, and at the Americans’ request. Uncle Sam can’t do it all on his own. It is more than likely that Canada will soon join the partnership.
The main commodity Sir Tony will have to offer the government and country in his role as CDS is advice. He is there to advise on all aspects of war, peace, security and strategy. He will need his own circle of advisers, formal and informal. Here I suggest he lives up to his nickname in the Navy, “Radical Radakin” and looks to the mavericks, the thinkers outside the box, as much as the government-patronised think tanks, of which there are more than enough.
Above all he must continue to take his own counsel, taking the quiet moments to go away and think for himself. In this he has two outstanding predecessors as Navy men who became great Chiefs of the Defence Staff. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Terry Lewin was a Second World War veteran who guided Margaret Thatcher through the totally unexpected Falklands conflict. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mike Boyce advised Tony Blair in the initial operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mrs Thatcher liked and respected Lewin. Tony Blair didn’t like what he heard from Boyce – to his detriment. This was because both knew how to speak truth to power. Sir Tony will have to find his own way of doing so.