The UK and its European allies are facing a defence crisis, as the US turns away from Ukraine – and possibly Nato altogether.
President Trump’s decision to side with Russia at the UN Security Council, co-operation with Vladimir Putin over a Ukraine peace deal, attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky and growing trade isolationism have rung alarm bells across Europe.
Defence insiders across the Continent – including within the UK – feel there is a growing need for Europe to take charge of its own security and move away from relying on an increasingly unstable White House, in the face of an increasingly aggressive Kremlin.
Keir Starmer this week announced an unexpected £13bn uplift in British defence spending, before heading to Washington DC to meet Trump.
As Europe grapples with how to bolster its defences, The i Paper breaks down the capabilities of British forces – and how they compare to Russia.
At the end of the Cold War, the UK had approximately 308,800 military personnel across all three services of its Armed Forces.
By the start of this year, this number had shrunk to 180,779 total personnel in the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
This includes nearly 137,000 regular service personnel, 32,000 volunteer reservists, as well as more than 4,000 Gurkhas and 8,000 other servicemen and women.
The overwhelming majority – 108,413 – are part of the Army, with 37,601 in the Navy and 34,765 part of the RAF.
But the UK’s military power has been in decline since the 90s and subjected to repeated funding cuts.
Almost 20,000 service personnel have left the forces in the past two years alone.
Data released by the Government in 2024 also showed a decline in the number of personnel who are considered medically deployable over the past three years.
In April 2024, the Armed Forces fell below the target size for full time trained strength for the first time since it was set; the RAF by a significant 10 per cent.
The problem revolves around both recruitment and retention.
Between 1999/2000 and 2023/24, there have only been six years when the number of recruits joining the UK Regular Forces was higher than the number leaving, according to a Parliamentary briefing.
The total number of trained reserves has also declined in recent years, from a peak of 33,010 in July 2020.
Between October 2013 and April 2024, the trained strength of the armed forces reserve increased by 29 per cent – but only the RAF hit its target size for reservists.
But the Army does not regard dwindling manpower as an insurmountable problem.
The head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, has acknowledged that the UK now has a “medium-size army”, but said the force can still increase its power without adding personnel.
General Sir Roly has pledged to “double our fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade” by “doubling down on modernisation”, leveraging technological advances and AI to improve capacity.
Should the UK go to war, it would almost certainly be in cooperation with Nato allies.
In 2019, Nato had the power to call on at nearly 3.5 million personnel, troops and civilians combined.
This is likely to have increased significantly, after Finland joined in 2023 and Sweden in 2024, and the boost in defence spending and recruitment from some Nato allies since the war in Ukraine.
Russian forces have been increasing since the Cold War and vastly exceed British personnel numbers – but still make up less than half of Nato’s collective power.
In September 2024, President Vladimir Putin ordered the regular size of the Russian army to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen.
This would make its force the second largest in the world, after China, which has two million active duty service personnel.
The move was the third time that Putin expanded the Army since invading Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia has a much larger population to recruit from, at approximately 143 million compared with the UK’s 68 million.
However, it has suffered serious losses in Ukraine, with an estimated 700,000 soldiers killed or wounded and 400,000 unable to return to duty.
It has struggled to recruit fast enough to cover the losses, and has resorted to drafting troops from North Korea and releasing convicts from Russian prisons to keep numbers up.
But these troops will be less well trained than conventional UK forces and Russia has struggled to generate morale among its battle-hardened ranks.
Putin has been vague about recruitment, claiming in December 2023 that 490,000 contracted soldiers had been recruited to the Armed Forces during the previous 12 months before amending this to “more than 300,000”.
Russia’s annual budgetary report showed approximately 330,000 one-time payments (of 195,000 rubles or £1,786 each) to contracted soldiers during that period of time, according to the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
The budgetary report for the first three quarters of 2024 – the only data currently available – suggests less than 230,000 signed up to Russia’s military between January and September.
CEPA estimates that a further 60,000 to 70,000 joined in the final quarter, taking the total recruitment for last year to 300,000.
Britain has 10 submarines and 72 vessels, as of the most recent data provided, in 2023.
The UK has 3,207 pieces of combat equipment including 845 armoured personnel carriers and 882 armoured fighting vehicles.
This is a reduction of 433 since 2022, in what the Ministry of Defence says was due to planned retirement of some kit ahead of replacement and donations to Ukraine.
The UK’s forces also had 212 artillery and 148 engineering equipment pieces in 2023.
As of 2023, there were 564 fixed-wing aircraft and 294 rotary-wing aircraft in the UK Armed Forces.
It possesses 225 nuclear warheads, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
The UK doesn’t have an integrated air defence system, such as Israel’s Iron Dome, but each branch of the Armed Forces has its own system to repel incoming missiles.
Last year, the Russian armed forces possessed approximately 4,780 barrel artillery pieces, 1,130 multiple-launch rocket systems, 2,060 tanks and 7,080 other armoured fighting vehicles, according to an assessment from leading defence think-tank Rusi.
These are supported by 290 helicopters, of which 110 are attack helicopters, and 310 fast jets.
The Russian Navy has one of the largest submarine fleets in the world at around 64 and possesses around 5,580 nuclear warheads, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
But Russia has also become highly effective at using cheap, commercially available kit to tackle Nato’s most powerful and expensive weaponry.
During a trip to a Nato base in Romania, officials told The i Paper that drones costing as little as £850 pose “one of the most important threats” to Nato defences, able to take out multi-million pound air defence systems.
Dr Marina Miron, of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, said that the capability of the UK – and Nato more broadly – depended on what type of conflict it entered.
“The understanding currently is that any new fighting would be a war of attrition. It would be heavy on artillery and firepower. The best countries at this currently are Russia and Ukraine,” she said.
“There have long been hopes for a short war, heavy reliance on air power, with the fewest possible troops on the ground and least possible contact with the adversary. But in Ukraine, it has been the opposite. Most fighting is done on the ground.”
Dr Miron said that repeated cuts to the UK’s military spending were “very alarming”, with other European countries also struggling with resource.
“After the Cold War, the idea of any future war was vague because there wasn’t an adversary. Personnel numbers dramatically reduced, and there was a focus on developing air power instead.
“In 2015, the German forces used painted broomsticks instead of guns during a Nato exercise because of severe equipment shortages. Spain used to have an armada but can’t fund its own ships.”
“The cuts and decline in the UK have been worsened since Brexit. This is a particular issue if the conflict reaches space; the UK used to be able to rely on Europe’s Galileo space programme – but since Brexit it can’t.”
And Dr Miron warned that new technology could not always be relied upon to replace personnel.
“The war in Ukraine means that technology is having to update constantly. Every two weeks, Russia is adjusting its electronic warfare and Ukraine then has to adjust its drones,” she said.
“Even if Nato’s technology is better, it doesn’t have enough kit. The assumption is it has about 90 days’ worth of precision munitions. What do you do after that?”
These resource issues would be exacerbated if the US withdrew from Nato, which Trump has hinted at.
“Nato is very dependent on US logistics, planning and command structures. If the US pulls out, we have a very significant problem, and we don’t know what’s going to happen when Starmer meets Trump,” Dr Miron said.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said that British armed forces are “among the best in the world and are always ready to defend the UK.”
“Protecting national security is the foundation of our Plan for Change, which is why the Prime Minister has announced the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, boosting funding to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, an increase of £13.4 billion in cash terms,” they said.
“The Strategic Defence Review will explain how we’ll use the new funding to invest in modern capabilities, keeping us secure at home and strong abroad.”
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