story-type: ForcesWatch comment

The MPs and the arms company reps

Screenshot of the seating arrangement for the 2021 Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme graduation dinner. It shows six tables around which are seats MPs, ministers, military top brass and representatives from some of the worlds largest arms companies.

In November 2021 ForcesWatch released its first investigation into the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme (AFPS), an annual ‘course’ that purports to educate MPs and Peers about the daily experience of service personnel. To do so, the AFPS puts parliamentarians in uniform and lets them get tactile with tanks, helicopters and automatic weapons. It is as if MPs live vicariously through the Scheme, which presents a kind of martial optics for them to burnish their militarist credentials.

The Conservatives have traditionally enjoyed organic connections to the military and have always been well represented on the AFPS, but an ever increasing number of Labour MPs are taking part. Although this trend began long before Keir Starmer became leader of the party – and started appealing to the patriotism he believes is key to winning back the Red Wall – our analysis shows that many recent participants are on the Labour front bench.

This has a number of implications. Firstly, the Scheme further normalises close connections with – and a favourable ‘understanding’ of – the military as a prerequisite for elected officials. Secondly, with Labour high in the polls, there is a real chance that key brief holders in the next government will have been exposed to military and arms industry influence.… Read more

From Militant to Military Labour

The UK is experiencing a period of industrial militancy. Transport workers, dockers and postal workers have all been out on strike in recent weeks. Even barristers have taken to picketing, while nurses and firefighters are balloting on walk-outs. Strikes invariably inspire reaction, in every sense of the word. One mode of that reaction, especially when strikes shutdown key industries or public services, are calls to summon the army as “scab” labour to keep vital services running.

The practicalities of bringing in soldiers to run the ticket barriers at Euston or Lime Street, let alone operate trains, should be enough to put anyone off. And yet the calls emerge each time, especially on social media. And in truth, the British military has stepped in during periods of militant worker’s activity in the past. Generally, they do so in one of two ways: the first, to break strikes with force, actual or implied; and secondly, to literally step in and take over jobs worker’s have withdrawn their labour from. We will examine both, as well as the prospects for them reoccurring now.

This is relevant not only because of the current climate of organised labour activity, but because of the increasing lionisation of the military in public life during the transition to power of a fourth Tory prime minister in 12 years.… Read more

Overselling the Military

A powerfully built robot lopes tirelessly across an apocalyptic battlefield. It weaves its way through shattered buildings, past burned out cars, crushing a rusted oil drum underfoot without breaking pace. A sensor built into its head emits beams of light as it stops, limbs rotating inhumanely while it appears to assess the horizon. The scene zooms deep into the robot’s camera-like eye as a woman’s voice, itself robotically altered, asked us:

‘What does the army of the future look like?’

The camera pulls back from the eye. It now belongs to a young female soldier. She’s intensely focused, her face beaded with sweat. A further adjustment to the shot shows she is holding a small helicopter drone in an outstretched hand. It flies into the air, and we are told, in the same robotic voice:

‘It looks… like you.’

Another woman’s voice – not robotic this time – takes over:

‘In the future, technology will help us do incredible things. But nothing can do, what a soldier can do.’

Behind the woman, other soldiers appear, mucky from battle, rifles raised to their shoulders, as they advance through the bombed-out ruins. Another big zoom out and we see vehicles and infantry advancing determinedly through a shattered village towards some distant location several hills away.… Read more

Pioneering a dystopian future

It is the season of airshows, back on full power after two years of pandemic cancellations. The Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) finished at the weekend and the Farnborough International Airshow is running from Monday to Friday this week.

For those concerned about the environmental affects of aviation the airshows provide little consolation. While sustainability and low emission air travel are touted as key themes of the events, climate change experts and Parliament’s own Climate Change Committee are casting doubt on the government’s ‘jet zero’ policy on the future of aviation, launched this week. They warn that the technologies this relies on will not be commercially available until 2050 and a strategy to cut down on flights is needed. ‘Pioneer the Future’ looks great on the Farnborough publicity but perhaps at this stage it amounts to little more than securing the workforce and contracts to keep the defence and aerospace sector going.

ForcesWatch take in interest in airshows because of the predictably heavy involvement of military and defence interests but primarily because they are important sites for defence engagement with the public. Many are community-led events where the top spectacles are the RAF Red Arrows, Typhoon or Falcon display teams. Others, such as Wales Airshow and Southport also have a significant military presence on the ground, with hardware and military-themed activities and demonstrations.… Read more

The Military-Entertainment Complex

War films populated our video collection as a child. My dad would watch them regularly. Oliver Stone’s Platoon was a favourite. Hamburger Hill, another, more down-market Vietnam movie, featured prominently. Heartbreak Ridge, which had a grizzled Clint Eastwood whip a group of errant marines into shape in time for the US invasion of Grenada, was virtually always on. Iron Eagle, a slightly budget Top Gun substitute with a powerful coming of age narrative, was wheeled out occasionally. And of course Top Gun itself, which would often be playing on a Sunday.

I was born in 1982 and watched these films during the early 90s. None of these movies were remotely political artifacts for me at that time. They were simply stories, and exciting ones at that, absorbed without any acute judgment at all. Three decades on I am far better informed. And with a long-awaited sequel to Top Gun in cinemas, it is worth examining both the implications of militarism in movies and why military intervention in culture is so prevalent.

The second coming of Maverick

Released in 1986, Top Gun was an action-packed Cold War story which centred US naval aviators and provided a vehicle for Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer and Meg Ryan to launch their Hollywood careers. … Read more

The Qatari Connection

The announcement that the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy will take part in counter-terrorism operations during the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar caused relatively little stir when announced at the end of May. Perhaps many in the UK are numb to Britain’s relationships with violent Gulf monarchies and the merging of international sports events with militarist values. Whilst our relationships in the Gulf may vary, there is one constant between them: British military support and huge deals for UK defence companies.

Unsurprisingly, the relationships are riddled with inconsistencies. Britain claims to hold itself as a guardian of human rights and a notional international order based around the rule of law – but on Qatar, as with other Gulf allies, this claim falls apart. Even more so when we take into account the UK’s pursuit of an exclusive deal for Qatari natural gas and how this has, in the past few months, been framed as the answer to reliance on Russian gas in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. Given these conditions, the military relationship between Qatar and the UK has a number of unique and interesting features that warrant closer examination. We decided to take a deeper look at how the two countries have been, and increasingly are, intertwined on matters of war, security and trade.… Read more

Thinking through ‘Lethal Aid’

The term “lethal aid” has come to the fore of public discourse since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine began on 24th February. Unable to intervene directly for fear of an escalation into a wider conflict between nuclear powers, the NATO and non-NATO nations which back Ukraine settled for channeling arms and military equipment to the beleaguered country’s military forces. Yet, British, US and other NATO member support for the Ukrainian armed forces predates the current invasion, stretching back to the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. As a result, Ukraine has, in some ways, become the epicenter of a proxy-war between certain NATO countries and Russia over the past eight years. What has changed is the nature of that support, morphing from the training of the armed forces to providing an ever increasing arsenal of weapons. ForcesWatch took a brief look at the notion of lethal aid, the varied nature of its form, and what its potential implications are for the future.

UK leading the logistical support for weapons to Ukraine.

The British government has certainly tried to position itself as a key provider of lethal aid to the Ukrainian state since the invasion. As early as 23 February – a day before Russian forces crossed the border – Boris Johnson was promising packages of support which would include ‘lethal aid in the form of defensive weapons and non-lethal aid’. 

… Read more

Location vs Doctrine: hybrid warfare and the grey zone

In March 2021, the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace penned an opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph ahead of the release of his department’s Command Paper Defence in a Competitive Age. For Wallace, the paper represented the greatest shift in British defence policy since the end of the Cold War because, with the rise of China and the technology revolution, Western states were now perceiving a totally different threat landscape. If anyone wanted to understand what he meant, they only had to read the news pages of the Telegraph that day. The SAS, according to the paper’s Defence and Security Editor, were soon to deploy across the globe to disrupt “Russian meddling”. And, in what was being termed as a modern-day Battle of the Atlantic, a new spy-ship would come on line in 2024 to stop Vladimir Putin’s submarines from sabotaging underwater internet cables.

For both Wallace and the Telegraph, these moves were vital responses to the new reality of modern conflict. An era in which Britain’s adversaries were using new tactics to operate in the so-called “grey zone” between total peace and kinetic warfare. Or, as the Defence Secretary argued, those ‘aggressive actions below the threshold of open conflict’.… Read more

Pushback? How Britain is militarising the Channel

In recent years the maritime movement of refugees and asylum seekers to the UK has become a touchstone topic across the political spectrum. One expression takes the form of moral panic, rooted in a language of invasion, that has allowed Britain’s militarised political culture to predictably position the armed forces as problem solvers. This came to a head in mid-January, when it was announced that the Ministry of Defence would assume oversight of policing migrant crossings in the English Channel – effectively putting elements of UK Border Force under military command and raising the possibility of regular naval patrols in the world’s busiest shipping route. However, military involvement is not new. Rather we are seeing an escalation of armed forces involvement that was catalysed by a Home Office request for MoD support in 2020.

Within days of sending its request, the Home Office also announced the creation of a new Clandestine Channel Threat Commander within Border Force. Tasked with overseeing plans for detering small boat crossings was Dan O’Mahoney, an ex-Royal Marine who served in Kosovo and Iraq. Now a civil servant, O’Mahoney most recently worked as Director of the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC), an operation based in Portsmouth that monitors the UK’s territorial waters, and from which he would continue to work in his new capacity.… Read more

Soldiers of the Future?

In March 2021, the MoD released its Defence Command Paper as part of the British Government’s wide ranging Integrated Review. Of the three services, the Army had perhaps the most attention and contributed to the process by releasing a 16-page briefing called Future Soldier outlining how it planned to respond to modernisation targets from the MoD. Ostensibly an internal facing doctrine aimed at civil servants and politicians it became the basis for a public facing – and much longer – Future Soldier Guide released eight-months later.

ForcesWatch have analysed the two documents to unpack these major proposals for the new-look British Army. It’s apparent that certain elements are updated iterations of processes already in motion: the new line on military diversity; the military’s claims of an environmental commitment; and increased integration of the military and private sector.

It also includes newer developments from the past 12 months, adding to our knowledge on the Ranger Regiments announced in the Command Paper and giving fresh insight on the incorporation of robotics and autonomous systems. There is also strong emphasis on the military’s planned role in shoring up the Union and the themes of sub-threshold warfare and Whole Force Approach dovetail with a desire to further integrate and expand the Reserves.… Read more