00:00Hi there, Neil Paterson, host of the Sky News Daily podcast here. Today we are focusing very
00:05much on defence because the government has just announced the conclusions of the Strategic
00:09Defence Review. Sir Keir Starmer has been up at a shipyard in Glasgow saying that the government
00:14will follow through on its 62 recommendations but at the core of his speech he says we must
00:20be ready for war. Britain must be on a war footing but that raises an awful lot of questions
00:26not least about what sort of war we will be fighting. Professor Michael Clarke our defence
00:32analyst is back on the podcast. I mean Michael this SDR the Strategic Defence Review was supposedly
00:37all about making us war ready. The question then becomes which war is it that we are preparing
00:43to fight? So it's against any warfare but in particular what gives it immediacy is the feeling
00:48that we're on the road to some sort of conflict with Russia in the next few years. It may not be
00:53a war but almost certainly it is said it will be a militarised conflict. The review is sort
01:00of based on the idea that there's an urgency about the Russian threat but there's a general
01:04problem that we've got to leap into the future rather than be left behind. So what does that
01:09future look like? I mean we're not talking about fixing BNX anymore. There are reasons
01:14why boots on the ground still matter but it's a question when do they matter and the ministry
01:19is moving towards a sort of model it's sometimes called the 20-40-40 model. So 40% of what you do
01:24is electronic cyber it's drones and you lose a lot of it and then another 40% are the electronic
01:32and the drones that you don't want to lose the big stuff and then the 20% is the heavy metal and the
01:36troops who go in at the end of an engagement and occupy the ground. Sooner or later warfare does come
01:44down to the willpower of individual people to kill and be killed to injure and risk injury to put
01:51themselves on the line. So on the basis of what you've heard from the Prime Minister from the
01:55Defence Secretary do you think this SDR lives up to that that war-ready promise? Well it sets Britain
02:02on a road that will get there they hope within let's say 10 years. It's a 10-year document. I mean
02:08we're absolutely not ready now and I don't think anybody would admit that would say that we are
02:12and the document is intended to say this is the road down which we've got to go. Here are the
02:17things we've got to do. Some of them are clearly costed. Some of them are aspirational. As I think
02:22was anticipated this defence review scared the horses a bit because anybody who reads it will say
02:28well whatever the government is saying about 2.5% of GDP to be spent on defence and 3% maybe by the
02:34end of the next parliament that won't be enough. At the end of the Cold War we were spending about the
02:37same on defence as we're spending on the health service and now we're spending about a fifth on
02:42defence as we spend on the health service. So the argument the reason that this has scared the horses
02:46is that it suggests that some pretty fundamental priority shifts will be necessary if this review
02:53is to get to where it aims to get to in 10 years time by 2035. 12 attack submarines but look as well
03:00at what John Healy has said about the levels in the army. I mean we're not expecting to see numbers
03:05there go up until until the next parliament. I mean that gives us an idea of a shift in strategy
03:12doesn't it? Yes. I mean the army numbers are everyone knows are too small. Officially it's
03:17supposed to be 72,500. In fact it's down at 70,000. They can't get it up to 72,500. So that's a big
03:25problem but in terms of looking after northern Europe and the North Atlantic which is our strategic
03:31neighbourhood. It's the thing that we can most usefully do for our European allies, our NATO
03:35allies in Europe. So attack submarines are really useful. Does this imply then that there's more of
03:41a regional focus to our defence now? I mean the last defence review focused on the Indo-Pacific. I mean
03:46this seems to be focused as you were saying there Atlantic and to the east. Yeah it did right Neil.
03:51But this is much more about our neighbourhood and whereas the last review certainly didn't neglect
03:56Europe but it didn't say enough about it. This review is based I think on a very clear idea. It's
04:01NATO first and that's written into the review NATO first because the North Atlantic and northern Europe
04:08is the area where we've got to safeguard our interests. One of the hangovers from the Cold War
04:13is our nuclear deterrent on which we will be spending 15 billion quid. I mean what is the logic of
04:19that given it is the one item we have never used and it is the one item we never hope to use?
04:25So that if all else failed if we were facing nuclear annihilation let's say by Russia and
04:31the Russians threaten it on their Russia programs almost every you know once a week or so. But if
04:40we were faced with that they would know that the British independent deterrent can hit back
04:44and whatever they could do it would easily destroy Moscow easily. Is it so smart these days? I mean it's
04:49a huge amount of money and a huge amount of money that could be spent really really quickly elsewhere.
04:53We let the development of nuclear warheads drift away and the Atomic Weapons Establishment
04:58that Aldermaston was you know just let go and we lost a lot of people expertise. We actually just
05:03don't have the expertise so they're having to put a lot more money in now surprise surprise.
05:07This review is all about NATO first. What does that mean? It really goes back to where we were in the
05:131960s and 70s that we can't contemplate defending ourselves except as part of our allies. And of
05:21course in those days we look to the United States but we also know that the US has become a very
05:26unreliable allies so we've got to take a deep breath and decide what can we as a group of European
05:31nations do? I mean how can we do it better? And in that respect I mean NATO in a sense is more important
05:37to Britain than ever before. I you know when this the review was when the review process was set in
05:41train it was before Donald Trump won the American election they were talking about it and I remember
05:45talking to some people in the MOD saying you know you may get laughed at for this because the critics
05:50will say oh they're talking about NATO when NATO's finished you're talking about the importance of
05:53America with Trump you know are you kidding? And I said look in response to this the argument you
05:59should be making is that NATO is even more important now because of President Trump. It is even more
06:04important that the Europeans understand the centrality of NATO because none of us are big enough to stand
06:10up say to Russia on our own because the Russians are just so much bigger but collectively collectively
06:16the European nations are 10 times richer than Russia 12 times in fact so there's no reason why
06:20we can't stand up to Russia if we had to as long as we are collectively sensible. So if warfare has
06:26dramatically changed from that Cold War period just just walk me through it what does does war now look
06:32like this 40 40 20 model you were talking about? Yeah well it goes on from the you know muddy trenches
06:37on the ground up to satellites in space and Starlink you know very cheap satellites which can provide
06:42fabulous coverage which can't be blocked very easily because there are so many of them you know 20
06:47000 um satellites moving around in one area means that nobody can actually jam all of them
06:56and so it's warfare now that's across the whole spectrum from things our grandfathers and great
07:00grandfathers would have understood to things which only our grandchildren will fully understand
07:05and so it's that it is also the maturity of air power and not just aircraft but robotics
07:14and drones we talk about drones all the time but we've seen them we've just seen them being used to
07:19great effect in Russia by the Ukrainians haven't we? Yeah the spider's web attack which is
07:24is uh up there with the you know the the Israeli attack on Hezbollah using uh exploding pages i mean
07:30as a just as a technical achievement it's phenomenal actually what the Ukrainians have managed to do and
07:36that will be a wake-up call to the Russians as well in the clever use of drones so we're talking about all
07:41of those sort of systems and and AI i mean if you can digitize the battlefield using AI then you do an awful
07:50lot without using troops on the ground and as we often say a future battlefield will seem to be
07:55quite deserted for long periods because everything that's happening will be going on in space in cyber
08:01with AI and with rear area area attacks and disruption and only in the later stages do the boots on the
08:08ground the people have got to you know use the bayonuts as it were do they occupy the battlefield when
08:13it's easier for them to do so so how close are we to that war i mean is this too little too late or am
08:20i being daft and we're already in it oh i mean we are already suffering um cyber attacks i mean several
08:26thousand cyber attacks um you know every year i mean launched we know by Russia and by groups that
08:31Russia sponsors uh trying to disrupt our system the Ukrainians are you know they they get an attack
08:37literally every day you know cyber attacks sabotage um at least um 12 of our internet cables have been
08:45cut in the baltic in the last 15 months by ours i mean north europeans nato cables sure so what a kind
08:50of permanent state of conflict then permanent state of incipient conflict yeah it hasn't broken out from
08:56our point of view yet into outright killing or bombing but we're not so far away from it and the argument
09:02of the defense review again is that the best way to avoid getting us ourselves into that
09:07shooting war is to deter it and to deter it you've got to be prepared to fight it you've got to have
09:11the the equipment to fight it and show the other side that you've that you've got the will to do so
09:16psychological as well as physical have we recognize that too late then well with it's certainly late
09:22um but it's not it may not be too late i mean what what the armed forces are saying is look we can
09:27make pretty good progress within uh let's say from 2027 to 2035 the danger period um and all the
09:35the chiefs kind of say this is the next two to three years when whatever we invest now will not
09:41pay off for a little while and the public won't see much benefit for all this money being put into
09:45defense they won't see much change for two to three years michael thanks very much
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