Human Security Centre Human Rights and International Security Research
3 October, 2024
The House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee has published its report Ukraine: a wake-up call. The paper outlines the central lessons of the Russia-Ukraine conflict for UK defence policy.
The report concludes that the war has exposed critical shortfalls in the UK’s ability to engage in prolonged, high-intensity warfare. These include the limited mass of the British Army and the constraints of the supporting defence industrial base, and a restricted ability to counter aerial and missile threats.
The keys points from the Human Security Centre’s evidence which the report cites include:
- The importance of Ukraine’s ability to draw upon a pool of reservists at the beginning of the 2022 invasion, allowing them to mobilize a force capable of slowing and halting the Russian advance
- The important implications of Russia’s inability to adequately target Ukrainian ground-based air defence systems and the impact of Moscow’s limited stockpiles of precision-guided standoff munitions
- The threat posed to the UK by the Russian Northern Fleet
- The requirement for Britain to increase investment in integrated air and missile defence systems
- The need for the UK government to adopt a ‘high-low’ mix in procurement policy
The committee report’s recommendations include:
- That the UK Government move swiftly to outline its defence priorities and the resources that will be made available to facilitate them
- Better understand “the human aspect of war”, including a better understanding of the motivations of the UK’s rivals
- Addressing the limited mass of the UK armed forces
- Broadening and streamlining defence procurement pathways
- Enhance national and collaborative efforts regarding air and missile defence, as well as the UK’s cyber, space and electronic warfare capabilities
Image: British Army Sky Sabre air defence missile launchers (Source: Corporal Adam J Wakefield, RLC/Defence Imagery via Open Government Licences 1.0)
