Tri-Service

Comment: Why The Boss Of MI5 Is Going Public

Andrew Parker, Director General of the UK Security Service (MI5) says a terrorist attack on the British Isles from Islamic State is "highly likely".

Considering the security state in the UK was SEVERE in January 2015, that suggests nothing has changed.

That threat status comes from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. In recent times, it has got more right than not.. a considerable achievement.

An even greater success is the fact that MI5 has foiled six recent attempts by terrorists to cause tragedy in the UK. The threat is up about 35% during the past five years. The spread of counter terrorism action is up twice that amount.

It would seem on paper that the UK is holding its own against the terrorist threat. That is an easily corrupted illusion.

Each year a planned major attack is discovered. The rate of planned attacks is increasing. But the resources of MI5, the lead counter terrorism agency in the UK are weaker in practical terms.

MI5 chief Andrew Parker

Throwing money into the Security Service Budget is all very well but resources really mean trained manpower. It also needs a vastly important catch-up programme of intercepting international terrorist communications by inner and dark webs from unknown electronics to street level Elint (electronic intelligence), for example, pay-as-you-go mobiles.

Use once and bin is an almost perfectly secure street communicator where the only real hope is to find the contact being called rather than the caller.

Most of all, resources are not instant action solutions. Manpower is an example. A raw probationary intelligence officer without any Service background can take two years to train to any higher standard than monitoring.

A Service of about 2000 trying to track and monitor say 2700 known radicals is an obvious unbalanced force.

Technically, and using all other agencies (MI6 and GCHQ plus police) the find-track-monitor rate is almost inevitably always a most demanding and often exhausting task.

MI5 may never have had a harder role especially as it cannot easily get to the source of the threat, IS in Syria.

The intervention of Andrew Parker (who headed the investigation in the July 2007 London bombings) at this stage suggests an important link to David Cameron's expected Commons Motion asking for Parliamentary support for the UK to join the coalition bombing campaign over Syria.

More from Forces.tv: Comment: Syria Drone Strike - The Consequences

MI5 wants to take out the IS command and planning targets in Syria. That is where the direction for an attack on the UK is taking place, as the RAF drone attack reminded us. The spy chief would like the UK to go after that specific target rather than using resources to attack Assad troops.

So we can see Parker saying today that Parliament should vote Yes to Syria bombing.

Meanwhile there is a sub-clause to what he had to say: there is a Treasury move to wrap the Intelligence budget in with the Defence Ministry.

Mr Parker wants to make it clear that this is nothing more than paper accounting. He needs hands-on always for his own budget, he needs a much bigger one and especially a technical development budget with GCHQ.

There is a ready source of increased budget for them both: delay Trident update for six years. Give the money and the resources to the Intelligence people.

They need it more than Trident Replacement. MI5 is in excellent hands but this its need to be guaranteed even more trained and technical resources than now they have. Maybe Mr Corbyn at next PMQs could get Chrissie from Sussex to ask the PM why this should be made so.

Christopher Lee is BFBS's Defence Analyst - He can be heard every week on British Forces Radio's Sitrep, the only regular programme devoted to discussing the big issues in Defence.