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This book analyses UK defence as a complex, interdependent public-private enterprise covering politics, management, society, and technology, as well as the military. Building upon wide-ranging applied research, with extensive access to ministers, policy makers, senior military commanders, and industrialists, the book characterises British defence as a phenomenon that has endured extensive transformation this century. Looking at the subject afresh as a complex, extended enterprise involving politics, alliances, businesses, skills, economics, military practices, and citizens, the authors profoundly reshape our understanding of ‘defence’ and how it is to be commissioned and delivered in a world dominated by geopolitical risks and uncertainties. The book makes the case that this new understanding of defence must inevitably lead to new policies and processes to ensure its health and vitality. This book will be of much interest to students of defence studies, British politics, and military and strategic studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners.
A revelatory, explosive new analysis of the British military today. Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Britain has changed enormously. During this time, the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither war achieved its objectives. This book questions why, and provides challenging but necessary answers. Composed of assiduous documentary research, field reportage, and hundreds of interviews with many soldiers and officers who served, as well as the politicians who directed them, the allies who accompanied them, and the family members who loved and -- on occasion -- lost them, it is a strikingly rich, nuanced portrait of one of our pivotal national institutions in a time of great stress. Award-winning journalist Simon Akam, who spent a year in the army when he was 18, returned a decade later to see how the institution had changed. His book examines the relevance of the armed forces today -- their social, economic, political, and cultural role. This is as much a book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.
This book examines the key dimensions of 21st century war, and shows that orthodox thinking about war, particularly what it is and how it is fought, needs to be updated. Accelerating societal, economic, political and technological change affects how we prepare, equip and organise for war, as well as how we conduct war – both in its low-tech and high-tech forms, and whether it is with high intensity or low intensity. The volume examines changes in warfare by investigating the key features of the conduct of war during the first decades of the 21st century. Conceptually centred around the terms ‘kinetic’, ‘connected’ and ‘synthetic’, the analysis delves into a wide range of topics. The contributions discuss hybrid warfare, cyber and influence activities, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the use of armed drones and air power, the implications of the counterinsurgency experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the consequences for law(fare) and decision making. This work will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies and International Relations. Chapters 1, 2, 5, and 19 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
This edited volume explores and analyses strategic thinking, military reform and adaptation in an era of Asian growth, European austerity and US rebalancing. A significant shift in policy, strategy and military affairs is underway in both Asia and Europe, with the former gaining increasing prominence in the domain of global security. At the same time, the world’s powers are now faced with an array of diverse challenges. The resurgence of great power politics in both Europe and Asia, along with the long term threats of terrorism, piracy and sustained geopolitical instability has placed great strain on militaries and security institutions operating with constrained budgets and wary public support. The volume covers a wide range of case studies, including the transformation of China’s military in the 21st century, the internal and external challenges facing India, Russia’s military modernization program and the USA’s reassessment of its strategic interests. In doing so, the book provides the reader with the opportunity to conceptualize how strategic thinking, military reform, operational adaptation and technological integration have interacted with the challenges outlined above. With contributions by leading scholars and practitioners from Europe and Asia, this book provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of strategic and operational thinking and adjustment across the world. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies, defence studies, Asian politics, Russian politics, US foreign policy and IR in general.
Offers views on how the Labour government's Strategic Defence Review of spring 1998 might forge a national consensus on defence. It covers resources required to contribute to a major peacekeeping mission; and how Britain could play a part in collective military action in regions adjoining Europe.
British defense policy experts discuss the role of defense in British foreign policy and the problem of assessing national priorities.
This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda.
The UK continues to face challenging and uncertain threats to its security. Our Armed Forces must be prepared to conduct a wide range of operations from conflict prevention through counter-terrorist operations to high-intensity warfighting. To do this, it is critical that government and industrial Research and Development (R&D) investment in science and technology is properly targeted to ensure we provide effective and affordable military capability that can be maintained and developed throughout its life. This Defence Technology Strategy (DTS) provides the clarity and direction needed for success by describing the underpinning technologies that are important to Defence. For the first time we are publishing an unclassified, openly available document setting out the MOD's priorities for the science and research community. This DTS provides direction on where we should focus our research and how we must push promising research into a development pipeline and on to exploitation. It identifies those areas that are key to our national interests; where we could meet our defence needs through collaboration; and where we might rely on off-the-shelf purchase from the global supply base. It is a major step forward in the actions we must take to maintain R&D investment at an appropriate level in those areas that are key to defence capability and national competitiveness. We now need to work together to develop this template in collaboration with industry and the university sector to ensure the UK maintains a strong research base in these areas.