Scottish Defence Policy II: nation and army comparisons
part 2 of my look at the defence policy of a future independent Scotland
This is part 2 of my look at the defence policy of a future independent Scotland. In part 1 I made some general comments on the utility of military force, asking "What are armed forces for?". Here's I'll compare British defence policy with those of other countries, looking at how they differ, and more importantly why they differ.
The countries I've chosen to compare the UK with are Finland, Greece, and Singapore. All of these countries are smaller (in terms of population and GDP) than the UK, but of a similar size to Scotland.
Nation data
First, some statistics on population, GDP, per capita GDP, defence spending as a %age of GDP and defence spending (in billions of US dollars). For completeness I’ve included Scotland in the comparison, assuming it has the same per capita GDP as UK and spends 2% of GDP on its armed forces.
Abbreviations used:
USD = US dollars
G = Giga/billion
k = kilo/thousand
GDP/cap = per capita GDP
DefSp = Defence spending
Sources: population, GDP, and defence spending as a proportion of GDP all come from Wikipedia. Scotland is assumed to have GDP in proportion to its share of UK's population. Other figures are calculated. It's entirely possible you might come across different figures for defence spending, as (1) this changes from year to year, and (2) exchange rates with the US dollar aren't constant.
I'm assuming that independent Scotland (iScotland or iScot from now on) will spend the NATO recommendation of 2% of GDP on defence.
From these figures we can conclude:
Scotland has about the same population as Finland or Singapore
Scotland has about the same GDP as Finland or Singapore
Scotland is about as developed (in GDP/cap) as the other countries: greater than Greece and less than Singapore
iScot defence spending would be similar to Greece or Finland
Army data
Now let's look at some figures for the size of these countries' armies:
The 1st row, defence spending (DefSp) is just copied from the previous table. Peacetime size is the number of soldiers in the army at peace time, including conscripts. Conscripts is the number of people, within peacetime size, who are conscripts. Mobilised size is the number of soldiers in the army on mobilisation.
Looking at army equipment, I've included the number of main battle tanks (MBT), infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) and armoured personnel carriers (APC) for each army. While these are not the only types of vehicles used in these armies, they are three important categories, and are indicative of the size of maneouvre elements of these armies (i.e. those capable of swift battlefield movements involving armoured vehicles). I'll look at each type of vehicle in turn.
Main battle tanks typically weigh about 60 tons and are the most heavily armoured vehicle on the battlefield. The are generally armed with guns of calibres of around 120 mm capable of firing solid armour-piercing projectiles at velocities of about 1 mile per second. These rounds are designed to defeat the armour of other tanks. The UK uses its indigenous Challenger 2 tank, which is good but not as good as the German Leopard 2, used by Greece, Finland and Singapore (as well as 15 other countries).
Note that Greece has many more tanks than the other countries listed. This is because as well as having 353 Leopard 2 they also have 890 older tanks (500 Leopard 1 and 390 M48A5).
Infantry fighting vehicles each carry an infantry squad (about 10 soldiers) and are also armed with a gun of >=20 mm calibre (this is the definition of IFV used by The Military Balance). They might weigh 20-30 tones, are typically tracked and are heavily armoured. IFVs are often also armed with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM).
Armoured personnel carriers also carry an infantry squad. They are less well armed than IFVs (typically just a machine gun), and their armament is meant to get them out of trouble rather than be used offensively, as their role is that of "battlefield taxis". They generally weigh less than IFVs, are less well armoured, and are more likely than IFVs to be wheeled instead of tracked.
Why is the British army so small?
Looking at the sizes of these armies, the things that most stands out is the British army is much smaller than the others, despite Britain spending vastly more on defence than the other countries (Britain spends 6 times as much as Singapore, and 13 times as much as Greece).
There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that Britain spends a lower proportion of its military budget on the army than the other countries (I estimate that UK spends about 30% on its army, whereas for the others it's 50-60%).
Secondly, Britain is the only one of these countries not to have conscription, and also has a low ratio of reserves to peacetime soldiers; the other countries all expect to mobilise large reserves to fill out their wartime armies.
Thirdly, Britain always likes to have the latest military equipment, which means replacing older equipment with newer (and usually more expensive equipment) more quickly than other armies do. For example, in 2005 Britain replaced its Swingfire and MILAN ATGMs with the newer Javelin system, even though Javelin was significantly more expensive. Swingfire and MILAN both continue (in 2021) to be used in other countries around the world.
Fourthly, there's a lot of waste in British military procurement. Britain often doesn't like to buy off-the-shelf kit used by other armies. Instead it wants the very latest bleeding-edge technology, which is inevitably more expensive and often unreliable, for an example see the Ajax IFV debacle. It also doesn't help when the UK government keeps changing its mind about what it wants (as they have done multiple times with the Ajax program).
But the main reason is that the British armed forces are designed for expeditionary warfare, whereas the other countries' armed forces are configured for homeland defence.
Expeditionary warfare
The British army -- and the UK armed forces in general -- are configured to fight expeditionary wars, mostly with small forces, a long way away from home. Examples are the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent occupations of those countries.
In expeditionary warfare, a main constraint is transport to the theater of war. If you can only fly in a small number of soldiers, it makes sense that they be well-trained regulars and not reservists. It is also less politically sensitive to use regulars rather than reservists or conscripts. Similarly for vehicles and other equipment: if you can only bring in a certain number of tons of equipment, then it makes sense for it to be the highest quality equipment.
Looking at the Royal Navy, it has significant amphibious warfare capability, and is able to conduct landings on an opposed shore. (Though I expect if it tried to do so against a peer or near-peer opponent, it would face significant difficulties.)
And the Royal Air Force has large numbers of transport aircraft: 8 Boeing C-17, 20 Airbus A400M and 14 C-130 Hercules. Again, these are all useful for expeditionary warfare, but less useful for homeland defence.
The expeditionary operations the UK has engaged in so far this century have not been cheap, as this graph (source) of UK military spending on operations shows:
Note that these figures are in billions of £s (GBP) whereas the other figures are in billions of USD. 1 GBP is worth about 1.35 USD. The graph shows an average spend of £2.5bn a year which is about $3bn.
America's poodle?
When you Google "America's Poodle" the first link returned is a BBC article from 2003:
"America's Poodle" is the insult of choice hurled by critics of Tony Blair for his support for President Bush. It's not, it is has to be said, a particularly original insult.
I've heard it used against previous British governments during previous international crises that have seen the UK side with the US in the face of opposition both at home and abroad.
Note that the UK's poodling for the USA from 2001-2021, at a cost of maybe $ 50 billion, doesn't seem to curried the UK any favour with the US, given that the Americans don't seem very keen to give Boris Johnson the trade deal he wants.
Nor can it be said that the occupation of Afghanistan was vital to the West's security -- if it had been, the Americans wouldn't have pulled out earlier this year.
So what the UK gained from being America's biggest poodle? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
UK army configured for homeland defence
What would the UK army look like if it was configured from homeland defence and not expeditionary warfare?
To answer this we can look at what each of the comparison countries spends on its army and scale it up. More precisely, by using this equation:
multiplier = (uksp * ukap) / (csp * cap)
hstat = cstat * multiplierWhere:
c in variable names denotes one of the comparison countries (Finland, Greece, Singapore)
uksp = UK defence spending
ukap = UK army's proportion of UK defence spending (which I'm going to set at 30%)
csp = the comparison country's defence spending
cap = comparison country's army's proportion of its defence spending (which for this calculation I’m assuming is 60%)
cstat = a statistic for a comparison country (i.e. mobilised size, MBT, IFV, APC)
hstat = hypothetical statistic for UK army
This gives us what the UK army's size would be if it was the comparison country scaled up. We can then take the average of the comparisons (Finland, Greece, Singapore) and get a final figure.
Based on these figures the UK would have:
So here the UK would have vastly more soldiers, MBTs, and APCs, and a few less IFVs. (Obviously I'm not say these are the exact numbers of each time of vehicle that the British army would have if configured for homeland defence -- merely that these figures are indicative of approximately the size it might have).
This would be a much bigger army capable of making a bigger contribution to NATO defence against Russia, but less capable of taking part of expeditionary operations like the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq.
Wars of choice versus wars of necessity
I think this is a fair trade-off since if Russia successfully conquered parts of Eastern Europe (or worst still all of Eastern Europe) it would massively weaken the West as a whole and thus the UK. Whereas the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and the occupation of Afghanistan were totally or partially unnecessary, since they did not involve vital UK or Western interests. (Arguably the initial invasion of Afghanistan was important since it was in response to the al-Qa'ida attack on the USA).
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wars of choice: the West (and particularly the UK) did not have any vital interest that needed defending by invading those countries, and if those wars hadn't happened Britain would have been no worse off. This can be seen in the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which happened because the Americans were fed up with fighting there -- this only happened because the Americans believed that there was no over-riding strategic interest in them staying in Afghanistan. Similarly the British retreat from Kabul in 1842, while disastrous for the British army in Afghanistan (who nearly all died), did not fundamentally weaken British power.
Wars of choice are wars a country can choose to fight, because if it doesn't fight them, or if it loses, its fundamental interests are not seriously weakened. This is in contrast with wars of necessity, where a nation's fundamental interests are at stake. Thus it doesn't particularly matter if a nation chooses not to fight a war of choice, or even if it loses one, but it does matter very might if a nation loses a war of necessity.
Therefore all nations should gear their military and foreign policy grand strategy towards winning (or at least, not losing) wars of necessity.
A homeland defence army would be mostly reservists
While the current British army is mostly regular soldiers, a homeland defence army would be mostly reservists. The reservists might receive 1 week of refresher training per 2 years in times of low tension, and more, say 3 weeks a year in times of high tension.
This is important for 2 reasons.
Firstly, the UK could use increased training as a signal to a foreign power that it is annoyed with it. Of course, the government could just tell the foreign power "we're annoyed with you", but that wouldn't work, because talk is cheap and therefore in an adversarial environment the only signals that are reliable are costly ones. The peacock's fancy tail is a good example of a costly/reliable signal, because it signals to peahens "I'm a really high quality male because I can afford to carry this beautiful encumbrance of a tail around with me at all times". It also gives me an excuse to include a photo of a peacock:
So if the UK government was annoyed with another country, say Russia, then increasing reservist training would be a way of signalling its annoyance, which would be believed.
The purpose of armed forces can crudely be thought of as fighting wars, but deterrence is at least as important a role; while there have been many wars fought in history, there have been many more wars that didn't happen because one side stepped back from escalating.
The second advantage an army geared towards homeland defence is you can make the active duty army bigger more quickly. Imagine there was a diplomatic crisis, and the UK with its present army wished to greatly increase its size. They would have to train lots of raw recruits and they would also have to equip them. Training a raw recruit takes more time than giving refresher training to someone who is already a trained soldier.
More importantly, equipping them would take even longer than training the recruits. With a homeland defence army, Britain would have approximately 1200 more tanks than it has now as an expeditionary army. How quickly could Britain acquire 1200 tanks? It would probably not be able to buy them as in a global crisis, everyone else would be wanting to buy new tanks too. So it would have to build them. Creating a new production line for Challenger 2 tanks, re-learning how to build them (remember the last one was built in 2002, 19 years ago) and building the things would take many years.
In contrast, calling up reservists and getting existing tanks out of mothballs would take a matter of weeks. So a homeland defence army is one that whose active component could be quickly enlarged in time of emergency.
Summary
The British army is currently set up to do expeditionary operations, but if it was instead set up for homeland defence, it would be larger, more capable, and therefore more useful in times of crisis.
Observant readers will note that I've titled this series "Scottish Defence Policy" but haven't said much about an independent Scotland yet; in Part 3 I discuss what the Scottish army might look like.