The former head of the British Army has warned that war between the UK and Russia is a “real possibility” in the next five years and therefore Westminster must invest to bolster the nation’s depleted defence capabilities.
Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, who led the British Army from 2022 to 2024, lamented that London does not appear to be taking the defence of Britain seriously in light of the potential threat of war with Moscow.
The former head of the Army said that it is a realistic possibility for a hot war involving Russia and the UK within the next five years, warning that the current environment is more dangerous than during the Cold War.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Sanders noted that any attack from Russia on a fellow NATO ally could trigger Article 5, which would mandate Britain to come to their aid. In the case of the Baltic states, Gen Sir Patrick pointed out that there is a British battle group stationed in Estonia, meaning that if a Russian attack were to occur there, “British troops would be involved from day one”.
“If Russia stops fighting in Ukraine, you get to a position where within a matter of months they will have the capability to conduct a limited attack on a Nato member that we will be responsible for supporting, and that happens by 2030,” he said.
The size of the British Army has declined significantly in recent decades. Since 1989, the number of active personnel has been cut in half, with only around 73,000 active duty troops, the smallest since the Napoleonic era. In contrast, Russia has around 1.3 million soldiers at its disposal.
Gen Sir Patrick said: “At the moment, the British Army is too small to survive more than the first few months of an intensive engagement, and we’re going to need more.”
“Now the first place you go to are the reserves, but the reserves are also too small. Thirty thousand reserves still only takes you to an army of 100,000. You know, I joined an Army in the Cold War that was about 140,000 regulars, and on top of that, a much larger reserve.”
In addition to direct spending on the military, Sanders warned that there are crucial needs in Britain’s resilience infrastructure going unmet, claiming that the government is hesitant to spend money of defence.
“Finland has bomb shelters for 4.5 million people. It can survive as a government and as a society under direct missile and air attacks from Russia. We don’t have that,” he said.
“I don’t know what more signals we need for us to realise that if we don’t act now and we don’t act in the next five years to increase our resilience … I don’t know what more is needed.”
Gen Sir Patrick pointed to countries like Estonia, Poland and the Nordic nations as taking a “proactive, serious approach” to their own defence, including on training their populations about how to respond in the event of an attack.
“And so they give them a set of instructions on how to prepare for the consequences of that – loss of power, loss of fuel, storing food, they encourage them to have their own defensive bunkers, whether that’s in cellars or civil defence – they encourage people to volunteer for civil defence roles to protect key bits of infrastructure.”
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