Britain ‘may not be fully prepared to fight full-scale war alone’

Britain may not be fully prepared to fight a full-scale war on its own, a general has suggested.

Maj Gen James Martin said the Army was trying to get “back on track” after years of focusing on counter-insurgency, which had left it in “in the process of losing the skills” to mount an all-out campaign.

Decades of fighting insurgents during wars Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan meant the Army’s focus was on those campaigns rather than major conflicts between states, he said.

With the war in Ukraine and the threat of Russia to the rest of Europe, the Army has shifted its focus to readiness for war, and this week thousands of British troops were in western Poland as part of Nato’s largest military exercise since the Cold War.

Nearly 2,400 British troops took part in Operation Immediate Response, which culminated in a complex river crossing involving more than 1,000 vehicles including Challenger II tanks, in 24 hours.

It was one of several exercises as part of Nato’s Exercise Steadfast Defender, a war game and the largest deployment to Europe in 40 years, involving over 40,000 personnel including 16,000 from the British Army.

Speaking at the end of the operation, near the small town of Drawsko Pomorskie, Maj Gen Martin who leads the Army’s 3rd Division, told The Telegraph: “After 20 years of counter-insurgency campaigning, we were losing this [war-fighting] capability... I think we are now very much moving back on track.”