Army is 'product of three decades of disinvestment', service chief says
The head of the British Army has warned that soldiers are being forced to rely on ageing kit and equipment from the 1980s.
The comments were made by General Sir Patrick Sanders as he took part in the ABF The Soldiers' Charity's General Talk podcast, in a discussion about the future of the British Army.
The Chief of the General Staff said that British soldiers lacked drones, artillery and ammunition, and that the war in Ukraine had highlighted "gaps in our inventory".
Speaking with the host Harry Bucknall, General Sir Patrick spoke about the lack of investment in the service.
He said: "But we are also a product of three decades of disinvestment. The Army has now halved since 1990, we've taken about £30bn out of the Army's budget since 2015.
"We are an Army that is also a product of some 1980s legacy equipment, equipment that we bought rightly, to optimise and prepare ourselves for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and that has caused some of our warfighting skill and capability to atrophy.
"So, the sort of things we are seeing coming out of Ukraine are gaps in our inventory. We don't have enough lethality, we don't have enough long-range precision and massed fires, we are not strong on electronic warfare and the Russians are.
"We don't have enough unmanned aerial systems and our defence has fallen behind."
The Army chief said things have changed "quite fundamentally" since the Integrated Review was published in March 2021.
When asked about reducing the size of the British Army, Gen Sanders responded: "The size of our Army should match the commitment that we make to Nato.
"I do think it would be perverse to be cutting the Army, so I think we should reverse the cuts in the Army and begin to grow through a combination of regulars and reserves."
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