General says hard-edged decisions to be made if Army is to be most lethal in Europe
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) faces some "hard-edged decisions" if the Army is to achieve its goal of becoming one of the most lethal in Europe, a senior general has warned.
Lieutenant General Rob Magowan, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Financial & Military Capability) was speaking to MPs after the department admitted there was a near-£17bn shortfall for new weapons and equipment over the next 10 years.
Outgoing Chief of the General Staff General Sir Patrick Sanders had previously stated his ambition to make the force the most formidable on the continent by 2030.
Speaking to the Commons Defence Committee, Lt Gen Magowan said: "Lessons from Ukraine and other operations worldwide show that we want more resilience and greater capability.
"There isn't at the moment the headroom within the equipment programme within the Army to reach the level of requirement that we think we need against the threat.
"We are now working as part of ABC (Annual Budget Cycle) 24, but more crucially as part of what we hope is an integrated review with a longer-term settlement to determine what within the Army programme or across defence we might take operational risk on".
He added:"We haven't completed that process so I can't say here today these are the capabilities within the Army or across defence that we're going to delete or defer.
"But we're going to have to make those hard-edged decisions if we're going to realise the operational requirements."
Investment in long-range fire, air defence, electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and logistics has been identified as being needed to modernise the force.
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