Sky News Daily | 'War ready’ - but for what war?｜with Prof Michael Clarke - video Dailymotion

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Sky News Daily | 'War ready’ - but for what war?｜with Prof Michael Clarke  Sky News is the ultimate source of Top Stories, News Updates, Breaking news, Top headlines, Investigative reports, Human interest stories, Weather updates, Natural disaster coverage, Crime reports, Editorial opinions, Fact-checking articles, Global events, global news, global news, global news updates, latest news, latest updates, news updates, and world news updates.  The prime minister has launched a 10-year Strategic Defence Review setting out how Britain will operate in an ever-more worrying geopolitical environment.   Sir Keir Starmer says "every citizen has a role to play" in "defence of the realm", but do we know what kind of war we're preparing for?    On today's Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson is joined by Sky's defence editor Deborah Haynes and military analyst Prof Michael Clarke to discuss whether the defence review meets the mark.    Stay informed with the latest headlines and in-depth coverage from around the world — follow Global News Updates for real-time news you can trust. Don’t miss a story — hit follow now!  GLOBAL NEWS  #news #newsupdates #GlobalNewsUpdate #BreakingNews #WorldNews #NewsToday #LiveNews #DailyNews #24x7News #TrustedNews #TopStories #InternationalNews #globalnews #worldnews #skynews

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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

Sky News Daily | 'War ready’ - but for what war?｜with Prof Michael Clarke

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