The UK Defense Secretary, Ben Wallace, said in an interview with Sky News published on Monday that the British Army “has fallen behind” compared to other countries with which it can compare, so it “needs investment”.
Wallace acknowledged the need for “an urgent recapitalization” of the Army, while stressing that the government is already investing £34bn ($42bn) in the military equipment plan by 2033.
However, the senior official indicated that the changes cannot take place immediately. “There are no magic wands or factories that work like car factories, where you just push buttons,” he said.
“There are only two countries in the world that can maintain nearly constant production lines: China and the US,” Wallace asserted, adding that weapons can be bought abroad, but then “there won’t be an aerospace and defense industry in the UK” and it will not be possible to provide troops with “the exact equipment they want”.
On the other hand, the official spokesman for the British Prime Minister asserted that Rishi Sunak believes that the Army is a high-level fighting force. According to the senior official, the UK government ensures that troops “have the equipment and capabilities they need to deal with tomorrow’s threats” through a 10-year £242bn [298bn] equipment plan. of dollars].
Meanwhile, former NATO Secretary General George Robertson noted that “the British Armed Forces may have weakened recently, but they remain a formidable fighting force.”
Earlier, a senior US general told Wallace that the UK Army is no longer considered a top tier force, according to several defense sources cited by Sky News. The sources note that decades of cuts to Britain’s defense budget in favor of non-military projects have eroded the country’s combat capabilities, and urged an urgent review of this policy in the context of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.
