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Hello and welcome to another Remote Warfare Programme podcast. Today's discussion will be on the UK's report on the Modernising Defence Programme. So I will be asking our two experts some questions. Our two experts today are Megan and Liam. Do you want to introduce yourselves?

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Yep, so I'm Liam, I'm the Advocacy Officer for the Remote Warfare Programme. And I'm Megan, I'm the Research and Policy Assistant for the programme. Thank you both for coming. So let's start off with asking why was there a Modernising Defence Programme review? That's a good place to start. So this

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came about not long after the 2017 general election where the government basically wanted to look at the threats facing the UK. This all came about the perception that the threat had changed since the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, which would have been undertaken by the previous

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government of course. And that's when they came up with the National Security Capability Review, the NSCR. So this was going to be led by the government's National Security Advisor, who sits at the Cabinet Office, so has a very close relationship with the Prime Minister, Sir Mark Sedwell. Now what happened

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really was there was a controversy around the fact that the NSCR was going to be fiscally neutral. And that wasn't entirely clear. Do you want to just touch on what fiscally neutral means? Yeah, sure. So fiscally neutral basically means that there wasn't necessarily going to be an uplift in spending on

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capabilities. So we just look at what the threat picture looks like out there in the big wide world, and we then sort of rearrange our capabilities. Now of course that means that if you are going to prioritise certain capabilities over others, that if you're not going to put more money into it, that you'd have to

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cut other capabilities. So this led to a big controversy around the Royal Marines. This was not just around the prospect of their numbers being cut from around 10,000 to around 6,000, but also cutting their amphibious capabilities, their HMS Albion and HMS Boardwalk. And then maybe just to add to that, so it was actually quite likely that the NSCR was going to lead to cuts,

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because the 2015 SDSR came out at the same time as the spending review, and it didn't, it made more commitments than the spending review allowed, so they had to find somewhere to kind of make some cuts to the budget. That's part of the reason that the defence strand of that review was taken to be a different thing, so they wouldn't have to be fiscally neutral.

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Yeah, so as Megan's touched on there, eventually we got to a position where, with the new Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who took over from Sir Michael Fallon, who had to resign because of certain allegations about his conduct with women. So he resigned back in November, and Gavin Williamson, who was the Government Chief Whip, a fairly sort of unknown individual among the military, sort of seen as a fairly youthful individual coming along,

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and not being exactly experienced for the job. But anyway, to his credit, he did secure in January a commitment by the Government that they would, as Megan's touched on, have a separate defence-led modernising defence programme. So that's how we ended up with the NSCR, which was led by the National Security Advisor, and then the MDP, which was going to be defence-led, and I think it was the first time the review was put in the hands of the MOD itself.

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So it was quite significant, and also fundamentally, it was not going to be fiscally neutral. So there's that phrase again. It was going to be, if necessary, if the review came out and said, we need more money, at least this is what it was sold as, then okay, the Government would explore that and consider putting more money in capabilities.

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It was quite clear from the beginning that Gavin Williamson very much expected to have more funds into defence, and he expected it to be relatively easy, I think, but there was a feeling that he really thought that it was going to be quite an easy job. I think he definitely wanted his legacy to be tested on his commitment to getting more spending into defence. And I mean, it had come from, as I say, being a PPS to David Cameron.

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PPS. Yeah, sorry. Effectively a parliamentary aide to David Cameron, to then being Theresa May's Chief Whip, to then being Defence Secretary.

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So you can definitely see his climb, and there's a lot of speculation that he sees himself as being a future Prime Minister, so we shall see. All very interesting. I think we should move on now. Yes, from the politics of it all, yeah.

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So what did you want, or what did the Remote Warfare Programme want the NDP to do and to say? So I think for us, we were very much hoping that given the NDP was going to be a, it was going to resolve the issue of spending within UK defence, we thought that it was going to address one of the most common forms of engagement,

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which we define as remote warfare. Do you want to just describe what remote warfare is? Yeah, absolutely. So remote warfare is the move away from large boot-in-the-ground deployments by Western forces.

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So that's the Iraq and Afghanistan type operations. Yeah, exactly. So very much after the history of Iraq and Afghanistan, we've seen a move towards supporting local forces instead of deploying Western forces themselves,

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so often through air support or training and getting equipment. But we often see that they support local systems. We've seen that, for example, against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And regional forces as well, like in Saudi Arabia.

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Yeah, absolutely. So we very much thought that that was going to be the review. It was going to address the most common forms of engagement, and that's not quite what we've seen yet.

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Yeah, I think Megan's absolutely bang on. And I think something that we did back in March 2017, which, of course, Abby, you were very much a part of, was a report on this move towards what is a much more discreet sort of approach to warfighting.

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As Megan has alluded to, you're using special forces, you're using intelligence sharing, sort of capabilities that are not as transparent as the big operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, where you've got a lot of regular conventional forces on the ground.

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And therefore, we sort of thought that it was an opportunity to look at the shortcomings in terms of transparency and accountability on figures around deployments, around financing of these remote warfare capabilities as we see them, and thinking, right, OK, let's look at where we are spending money.

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Because you can't talk about— I mean, the Defence Committee has been really strong on saying we need to spend at least 3% of GDP on defence. Dr Julian Lewis, who chairs that committee, says we need to spend 3% to keep us free.

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Make it 3 to keep us free, I think is his catchphrase. But, of course, you have to look at what sort of military do we want, what sort of capabilities do we want, in terms of what are our priorities as a country.

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If we're going, as Megan describes, the most likely tasks are going to be remote warfare operations. And I think from our perspective, we'd say that that's likely to probably be predominantly the way things are going to go

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over at least the next decade. Then, surely, we need to have a discussion about those capabilities and then think, OK, well, let's invest more money in those capabilities. That's kind of where we were hoping it was going to go.

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But it doesn't seem, at least so far— and that might be changing because we've got the expenditure review this year— but thus far, it doesn't seem like that conversation really has happened. So, I mean, you talked about some of the aspects of remote warfare.

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I want to draw everyone's attention to the excellent blog series you did. But do you want to talk a bit on some of the things you highlighted within that series as areas of the MDP that you hoped would be covered?

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Do you want to talk about defence engagement generally? Yes, absolutely. So I think one of the big things we were hoping for was to figure out more about defence engagements,

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which is this very blurry category of engagement by the UK Army. I think they started to describe it as the non-combat use of their military. But that seems a very fluffy category. I'm not quite sure what it means and what it entails.

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And, of course, I think on that point, if you're putting troops in theatres, they're always going to be near the front line in some way. And it's about drawing that distinction,

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as we've sort of tried to do in terms of combat and non-combat, and why the government would define something as combat and non-combat, whether that's because of the nature of the operation or actually as a political decision,

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because they don't want too much attention being drawn to it. Yes, definitely. So saying that something is non-combat doesn't mean that it's not, and it's not going to develop into being a combat mission, definitely.

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So other than defence engagement, what are the other areas that you looked at within that blog series? So just quickly, we also looked at the UK's investment in drones. So specifically around the new drone fleet, the protected drone fleet,

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the government's investing in 20 of these, but also we're looking at in terms of the operating costs for them, which includes equipment, managing and their repairs, etc., but also in terms of munitions dropped as part of the counter-ISIS approach.

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And we also looked at special forces, which is one of the most secretive parts of the UK's military, as well as intelligence sharing, which is a big part of remote warfare as it is at the moment.

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Very good. And I would encourage everyone to go out and read them. But since they were published, the MDP was released, how did it square with what you wanted it to do?

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What are the big takeaways for you both? So I think for me, fundamentally, and it goes back to when Earl Howe, the defence minister, was announcing this in the House of Lords,

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one of the peers turned around and said that this was just such an underwhelming report, given that it's the longest strategic review, if it is that, of Britain's defence capabilities ever,

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and it's a fairly vacuous document. But I think if we're actually going to look at it in terms of what it does tell us, it definitely confirms that the shift in strategic focus

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has pivoted towards state-based threats and specifically around the threat posed by Russia. Actually, Meghan and I were talking earlier that you can tell from the language of the report

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that they obviously have gone to great lengths to mention Russia and insert that in there quite frequently. And also haven't spoken very much about terrorism. For example, only mentioning, I think, one time

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in the entire report, which is quite noticeable. Yeah, exactly. But in terms of maybe the relevancy to our work, there's definitely a focus on investments

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in placing defence capabilities in Africa and also around increasing cooperation with Gulf countries. So that, I would say, that's probably the key takeaways. I think, I mean, it's interesting that you mention

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the UK's focus on the continent of Africa. I think the line in it was around the British Peace Support Team, which obviously me and Emily, our colleague

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at the Remote Warfare Programme, were there in September last year. And it was interesting that this was held up as an example of the way in which the UK

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was doing well at defence engagement. When we were there, we really got the sense that the rhetoric didn't match the reality, that what they were being asked to do

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far surpassed the resources that they had. So they recently changed from being the British Peace Support Team East Africa to the British Peace Support Team Africa

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to focus on continental capability. And they had three extra people. So they said themselves that they didn't know how they were supposed to do the knowledge retention

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and the passing on knowledge to new people coming through with such an influx in capabilities. So, I mean, it's interesting that those are the two things highlighted as defence engagement

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as we look at it. Because I think it's interesting to look at defence engagement as it's framed in this report. Yeah, so first of all, it's just very difficult

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to figure out where they are, in fact, talking about defence engagement. Because it is a blurry category. We don't know when that's what they're referring to

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because they don't say those words. But for example, they outline 25 tasks that they want to fulfil to help deliver the national security objectives.

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And those objectives are to protect our people, protect our global influence, and promote our prosperity. And within those, they have 25 goals. But it's difficult to really figure out

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which ones are defence engagements and how they're paid for, and whether they're cost efficient, actually. But for example, just to give an example,

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one of those tasks is to conduct capacity building with partners, allies, and with national organisations in support of the UK strategy. So again, that's just a very broad goal.

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We don't actually know what they mean by that and how they're going to implement that. I think it would also be interesting to see, like, taking your point on board

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about the lack of strategic direction that the military are feeling in terms of what's coming out of Whitehall and how it's felt on the ground.

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What's been interesting over the last, sort of, year, I suppose, is I get the sense that there has been

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a step change in the way that the UK is looking at Africa. And I think that's not only because of

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Brexit, we have to say, and wanting to leverage defence as a means to improve its trade links with countries

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like Kenya. There is now a new trade envoy, Pauline Nathan MP, to Kenya. So definitely there's that focus on

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where are we going post-Brexit and how can we use defence as a means to leverage that. And we also saw that

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Theresa May was out in Kenya for the first time. The first Prime Minister for 30 years to go and visit Kenya. So there definitely has been

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that change in terms of the actions that have been taken by the government. But, going back to your point,

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is it simply rhetoric that's not actually trickling down across the departments and actually reaching the troops

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on the ground in terms of upscaling resources, making it clear exactly what the UK wants to achieve? Because it's sort of, going back to what

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Megan was saying about defence engagement being fairly wishy-washy, but exactly what the UK wants to achieve is still wishy-washy. I think that's a great point and it comes

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to some of the things that you were talking about in the blog series as well. How well are we winning the narrative? How well are we communicating

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what we want to achieve? Would you say that any of those problems more broadly have been addressed by the MDP? It's definitely

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in the report. But how much it moves away from what has been committed in the past is questionable.

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We know that back in 2010 with the strategic defence review of the coalition government that one of the recognitions was we needed

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to win both the battle of the narrative as well as the battle on the ground. And we have banged on about this as a programme for a very long time in terms of commenting

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more about what special forces are doing in certain circumstances, understanding more about the role that drones are playing, intelligence sharing is playing,

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that's what all this blog series is about. So yeah, it's good to see that it's in there but how much that will

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actually lead to a change is, as I say, questionable. There is another element that was quite positive that came out of this, if I can just touch on that

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and that was the defence policy board. So this is a concept that will basically establish an external body

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or external panel of experts that will feed into defence policy and strategy making. What's interesting about this is it

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links sort of directly with our recommendation in one of the reports that you Abi and Emily wrote about how we improve

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that strategic coherence from what's happening in white or what's being said in white and how that leads to activity on the ground

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in terms of having an external body that feeds into the National Security Council. So it would be interesting to see if the DPB

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as I'm now calling it could be a pilot for perhaps an external people's NSC

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as we've described it or external shadow NSC or whatever you want to call it to feed into those strategic discussions at the top level of government. And I think even, sorry Meghan

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just to jump in, even before we even tried to make this government wide, I think the acknowledgement

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that there needs to be fresh perspectives to cut across the status quo to question fatal

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assumptions is a really positive step and something that we've noticed in our engagement lower down the ranks and it's great to see that that's being brought up

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to the top of the MOD. So I'm going to go back a little bit actually. You were asking before about whether they have any focus on steering the narrative and I think it's

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interesting that even when they do in the report it's often focused on, I think or at least I get the impression that it's focused on cipher and it's very much in regards to

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state based threats as opposed to the kind of information sharing that we're talking about which is very much kind of terrorism focused and remote warfare. So I think it's

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interesting how much the focus has shifted away from the previous ways of engaging to very much state based. I think that's a really good point and

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there is a section in the report where it referenced that defence needs to be a bit more transparent about what it's doing and I think really, although

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that's fantastic but I think really that was a reference in terms of how it has a relationship with service personnel and their families when it comes to talking

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about capita or accommodation which have obviously been big topics over the last couple of years. So I think it would be great

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if they also sort of extended that to more transparency around its operations as well. Yeah and I think

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as well and it comes exactly to Megan's point that there's this assumption that we can win these types

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of battles the information warfare and conflict more generally with additions in capability

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rather than having a strategic assessment of what we need what our people need to be adapted to achieve rather than

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stepping back from that and saying what do we want to achieve and where do we want to achieve it and not starting with

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the assumption that more kit and capability will automatically help us to achieve it. There's that excellent quote that's something like

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if we just advance in technology we'll be a global leader it just seems to miss the point. They kind of link

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having the best capabilities to having a good strategy. Yeah. What they need to do to get that strategy right. I think what's quite interesting

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is that one of the big things about this report is to maximise the lethality, mass and reach of Britain's armed forces as if

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the armed forces have not been operating in that way in the past. I'm not quite sure what that will mean

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in terms of capabilities activities if you create an army that is more lethal than it is already. Surely soldiers are trained

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in a way that they're meant to be lethal operators, right? That's what they're there for that's what defence is most often about.

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So yeah, I think there's some strange and interesting things in there that haven't quite yet been clarified entirely. I think what you just said I'm not quite sure what they mean, that's already a fine conclusion

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for me. And I think maybe there is a great place to end then. Thank you very much for both speaking to me. I hope that's

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not created more questions than it started out with although I fear it may have done. Speak to me whenever you want. Thank you very much.

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Speak to you soon.