Starmer: Top general is right – Army must be ready for war within three years

Sir Keir Starmer “completely agrees” with the new head of the Army’s warning that Britain has three years to prepare for war, Downing Street has said.

General Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the General Staff, said the Army had “just enough time” to “prepare, act, and re-establish credible land forces” in an “increasingly volatile” world.

Sir Roly said he aimed to double the Army’s fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade.

Asked whether the Prime Minister shared the former special forces officer’s view, his official spokesman said Sir Keir had spoken himself of the “generational threat of Russia aided by the likes of North Korea and Iran”.

Asked whether the strategic defence review, which the Government aims to complete within a year, was the best use of time given the apparent urgency, the spokesman said: “The Prime Minister completely agrees with the thrust of the head of the Army.

“He’s talked previously about the new and dangerous era we live in and that is why we’ve launched a strategic defence review to assess those dangers, assess those challenges, and ensure we have got the capabilities we need to respond to those challenges as and when they arise.”

Sir Roly, in his first public speech on Tuesday, vowed to increase the “lethality” of his force without the need for greater troop numbers in the face of an “increasingly aligned axis of upheaval”.

If “called to battle before” his overhaul, troops would have to fall back on “old hardware” and “work within the limits of their stockpiles and their logistic support systems”, he said.

Sir Roly, who took over as the Chief of the General Staff last month, told the land warfare conference at the Royal United Services Institute that defence forces had struggled to shake a “big army mindset, where some still believe that raw troop numbers alone determine fighting power”.

“We are, in fact, a medium-sized army and we should embrace that as the catalyst that drives even greater integration for a more powerful joint force,” he added.