PM agrees with Army chief that service needs to be ready for war in three years

Sir Keir Starmer has said he "completely agrees" with the new head of the Army who warned the UK has three years to prepare for war.

General Sir Roly Walker said the UK had "just enough time to prepare" and must re-establish credible land forces in an "increasingly volatile" world.

He also said Russia would still be "very, very dangerous" and would want some form of retribution, however the war in Ukraine ends.

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Chief of the General Staff Sir Roly said he wanted to double the Army's fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade.

In response to his comments, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said Sir Keir had spoken himself of the "generational threat of Russia aided by the likes of North Korea and Iran".

Asked whether the Strategic Defence Review, which the Government aims to complete within a year, was the best use of time given the apparent urgency, the spokesman said the PM "completely agrees with the thrust of the head of the Army".

"He's talked previously about the new and dangerous era we live in and that is why we've launched a strategic defence review to assess those dangers, assess those challenges, and ensure we have got the capabilities we need to respond to those challenges as and when they arise," the spokesperson said.

Sir Roly's comments came in his first public speech as he vowed to increase the "lethality" of his force without the need for greater troop numbers in the face of an "increasingly aligned axis of upheaval".

The head of the Army said the UK was not on an "inexorable path to war", but warned of an increasingly volatile world and the need to restore credible hard power.

He said that if the Army was "called to battle before" his overhaul, troops would have to fall back on "old hardware".

The Army chief also said they would have to "work within the limits of their stockpiles and their logistic support systems".

Sir Roly took over as the Chief of the General Staff last month and was speaking at the land warfare conference at the Royal United Services Institute.

He told the conference that defence forces had struggled to shake a "big army mindset, where some still believe that raw troop numbers alone determine fighting power".

"We are, in fact, a medium-sized army and we should embrace that as the catalyst that drives even greater integration for a more powerful joint force," he added.