Acknowledgement. This essay is based on a paper selected from student essay submissions to the United Kingdom Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Land). This course exists to educate, train and assess British Army and Royal Marine Majors, instilling a manoeuvrist mindset and intellectual edge essential to winning in war. The views expressed in this essay are not official UK policy and do not represent the official UK view.
Introduction
Large-scale combat operations (LSCO) represent the most demanding form of land warfare and remain the British Army’s core purpose.[i] Yet after two decades shaped by counterinsurgency, fiscal retrenchment, and reductions in force structure, questions persist about the Army’s suitability to conduct high-intensity conflict.[ii] As the British Army’s focus returns to state-on-state competition, this paper assesses its suitability for LSCO within the realistic context in which it would fight: as a contributor to NATO collective defence. The central question is not whether the British Army can defeat a peer adversary alone. This is neither a realistic benchmark nor a practical one.[iii] More valuable is determining the distinctive value the British Army can contribute to maximise alliance warfighting. Just as success in Iraq depended on US–UK coalition, so too will future LSCO depend on NATO integration. This shifts the debate, often dominated by concerns about mass and capability gaps, towards a more productive focus on the comparative strengths of the British Army.
The analysis adopts a two-stage methodology. First, it examines whether the Army of today could conduct the LSCO of yesterday, using the most recent example of British LSCO: the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Operation TELIC 1). Second, it evaluates the Army’s suitability against the most likely future adversary, a Russian ground force. In both cases, the assessment applies the physical, conceptual and moral components of fighting power. The TELIC 1 comparison raises the most critical question of this paper: does the Army’s historical readiness to enter combat despite inadequate preparation indicate extraordinary moral resilience, or enduring institutional failure?[iv] Ultimately, the paper contends that while the Army of today could conduct a timebound LSCO such as TELIC 1, future LSCO will be far more intensive and demanding. For the future, significant challenges exist across the components of fighting power, but it is in the conceptual and moral components where comparative success within NATO can be cultivated. The British Army’s relative strengths in doctrine, operational experience, staff competence, and morale should be the focus.
Defining Large-Scale Combat Operations
The British Army categorises LSCO under the broader descriptions of ‘warfighting’ and ‘major combat operations’. Unlike the stabilisation campaigns of recent decades, LSCO are defined not simply by intensity but by their scale, their complexity, and the demands they impose on the force.[v] LSCO involve significant armed conflict requiring the application of the manoeuvrist approach at the operational level and the orchestration of cross-domain integrated action. The defining threshold is the manoeuvre of combat formations of at least divisional strength. Operations at this scale generate consumption rates that fix the entire focus of the field army and sharply differentiate LSCO from smaller, sustainable interventions.5
Although LSCO do not necessarily entail an existential threat or full national mobilisation, they invariably carry major strategic consequences and demand strong political will. By these doctrinal criteria, the Army’s recent historical benchmarks for LSCO include the invasion of Iraq (TELIC 1), the liberation of Kuwait (GRANBY) and the Korean War. Conversely, the protracted counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and the later phases of Operation TELIC, despite their complexity, do not meet the threshold for LSCO.[vi]
Comparing Today’s Army to That of Op TELIC 1: Considerations for a Future LSCO with Russia
A. The Physical Component: from the ‘Non-Visible’ to the ‘Non-Existent’
In 2003, the deployment of 46,000 personnel within 10 weeks was a significant logistical achievement. Operational success during TELIC 1 was driven primarily by the UK’s technological overmatch—specifically, the combination of the Challenger 2 tank, superior night vision and absolute air supremacy.[vii] Critically, this technological overmatch allowed the British Army to easily overwhelm a much larger Iraqi Army.
However, beneath the tactical supremacy lay a logistic system operating at the edge of collapse, characterised by the breakdown of asset tracking and by critical shortages in equipment. These deficiencies raised fundamental questions about the Army’s ability to sustain high-intensity warfighting beyond the invasion phase.[viii] TELIC 1 demonstrated that the Army had become a ‘one-operation force’: capable of mounting a single large-scale intervention but lacking the mass to regenerate, or the stockpiles to sustain, successive operations.[ix] Applying this benchmark to the contemporary Army reveals both evolution and regression. While the Army today is markedly smaller and would be unable to deploy a force of the same size, reductions in mass have been compensated, on paper, by technological shifts which increase lethality.[x] The pivot towards deep fires, network-enabled targeting and reconnaissance-strike integration suggests that a modern 3rd (UK) Division could deliver lethality broadly comparable to that achieved in 2003.[xi]
However, any lethality gains are undermined by a parallel reduction in enablers. The critical vulnerability remains munitions stockpiles and vehicle spares, with estimates suggesting that artillery ammunition would be exhausted in days, not weeks, under high-intensity consumption rates.[xii] Additionally, the gifting of 155 mm artillery to Ukraine, without immediate replacement, has degraded the Army’s divisional firepower to the point where the lethality of any British-led LSCO would be questionable. During Telic 1, the operational logistics challenge centred on forward delivery and the effective management of contracted supply chains, exacerbated by limited visibility over considerable materiel stockpiles.[xiii] Today, that challenge has been deepened by a more fundamental deficiency: the stockpiles themselves no longer exist at requisite scale. Therefore, if Telic 1 were to happen tomorrow, the constraint would shift from the visibility of supplies to the existence of them. Against a future Russian threat, this fragility becomes acute. In Iraq, technological overmatch compensated for a lack of mass; against Russia, the asymmetry would be reversed. Deficiencies in electronic warfare, air defence, counter-UAS capabilities and networked deep fires would be rapidly exposed.[xiv] The Army would face a deficit not only of mass but also of technology relative to its adversary.
This physical fragility has profound implications for how the Army must prepare. Attempting to match Russian mass unilaterally would be futile and unaffordable.[xv] Instead, the Army must accept its role as a specialised contributor within NATO’s collective capability, focusing investment on capabilities where Britain can offer disproportionate value: in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), precision fires and electronic warfare integration, while relying on alliance partners for mass. However, the focus on a lighter but more lethal Army cannot be at the expense of wishing away the logistics to sustain it.[xvi] The physical component alone is not Britain’s competitive advantage; it must, however, serve to enable the conceptual and moral components where comparative strength lies. In short, the British Army must still have sufficient physical depth to survive beyond the first battle.
B. The Conceptual Component: Atrophied Warfighting Competency
Comparing the conceptual component of fighting power of today’s Army with that of 2003 reveals a divergence in corporate warfighting knowledge but many similarities in the doctrinal competence to fight and win LSCO at the tactical level. In 2003, the Army deployed with a mindset, organisational culture and intellectual heritage shaped by the Cold War and reinforced by the experience of Granby in 1991. Although the generational link between 1991 and 2003 was far from seamless, the lasting institutional effect was significant: the Army’s collective outlook remained fundamentally oriented towards adversarial, high-intensity conflict.[xvii] Underlying this mindset were the doctrinal pillars of the manoeuvrist approach, mission command, and the adoption of AirLand Battle concepts, embedded during General Bagnall’s reforms of the 1980s. Designed originally to defeat a Soviet armoured ground force, in many respects the concepts were tailor-made for the characteristics of the Iraqi Army in 2003. A combination of operational design and operational art, the invasion was in many ways a near-perfect expression of the doctrinal theory the Army had spent two decades refining.[xviii]
In contrast, the British Army of today emerges from a very different intellectual landscape. Two decades of counterinsurgency operations have fundamentally reshaped the Army’s institutional mindset, its professional military education and much of its doctrinal development. The experience of Afghanistan and Iraq has been ‘etched so deeply into the psyche’ of those who served there that it has proved difficult to reorient thinking beyond concepts optimised for stabilisation operations.[xix] A generation of commanders have thus emerged educated primarily for counterinsurgency rather than for LSCO.[xx]
However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has catalysed a rapid conceptual pivot back towards warfighting. Contemporary doctrine such as integrated action (IA) remains anchored in the manoeuvrist approach and mission command. IA seeks not to replace warfighting but to situate it within a broader framework that synchronises all available levers of national and military power. Crucially, then, the Army has not lost the doctrinal foundations that underpinned its tactical effectiveness in 2003. Mission command and manoeuvre remain core principles, and modern concepts such as IA, reconnaissance-strike, and multi-domain integration represent evolutionary continuations of AirLand Battle.[xxi] These concepts, had they existed in 2003, would almost certainly have accelerated the destruction of Iraqi forces.
The deeper conceptual challenge, however, lies not in doctrine but in institutional mindset. The habits of thought required for sustained, attritional, high-intensity conflict have atrophied. The Army is sluggishly emerging from its counterinsurgency hibernation, a period in which dangerous assumptions were made about logistic lightness, short-duration deployments, industrial depth and procurement processes.[xxii] While conceptual attention has refocused on defeating Russian tactical formations, broader questions remain underexamined: how to sustain divisions under intense attrition; how to manage tens of thousands of casualties or prisoners of war; how to balance homeland resilience, reinforcement and fighting strength.[xxiii] In summary, the British Army has done much of the thinking required to deliver a single large-scale operation grounded in strong doctrine and credible tactical competence, but arguably lacks the conceptual depth for a future war. In 2003, this deficiency resulted in a catastrophic misunderstanding of the stabilisation requirement; in a future conflict with Russia, it would manifest as an inability to sustain divisional operations for more than a few weeks.
Thus, for the future, the British Army should double down on the doctrinal sophistication which brought it success in Iraq, recognising that the British Army’s operational experience, refined doctrine and military education are of unique value to NATO. The British Army’s ‘get to the start line’ approach flows from an operational mindset and agility which takes decades to foster and will be vital in the next NATO LSCO. Investment and focus, therefore, must concentrate not on matching Russia vehicle for vehicle, but on ensuring that British headquarters, targeting cells and doctrinal innovation remain at NATO’s intellectual cutting edge. That said, Army leadership must be prepared to think more widely than simply warfighting doctrine. Even within NATO, an LSCO with Russia will require a reanimation of a Cold War mindset focused on regeneration, national resilience and mobilisation—topics with which the Army is yet to fully engage.
C. The Moral Component: the Will to ‘Make It Work’
The moral component, when 2003 is compared with today, shows continuity in leadership and fighting spirit but divergence in the strategic environment that shapes the Army’s moral foundations. The 2003 invasion was among the most politically contentious military decisions of the postwar era. Public opposition peaked at 77 per cent prior to the invasion.[xxiv] Yet the political controversy surrounding TELIC did little to affect the immediate morale and combat effectiveness of deployed forces. That the Army preserved such cohesion despite ambiguous public backing and acute logistical shortfalls only underscores the depth of its professional ethos and its soldiers’ confidence in their units and leaders.
This highlights an enduring characteristic of the British soldier—the willingness to ‘make it work’ despite imperfect conditions—which remains central to the Army’s moral resilience. As Colonel David Kelly, commander of 8 Transport Regiment on TELIC 1, reflected: ‘[When we deployed], we weren’t fully confident that we had everything we needed to be able to do it … but we did. We just made it work. That’s what we do’.[xxv] This disposition remains an enduring cultural trait of the Army today and would be critical to the success of any future LSCO.
Despite this, in a future conflict, the depth of moral resilience would be far less assured. Whereas in 2003 the government retained a degree of control over the narrative environment, such insulation would be virtually impossible today. Contemporary LSCO will take place in a ‘global goldfish bowl’[xxvi] of pervasive social media, real-time reporting, and adversaries adept at manipulating perceptions. Considering these elements in a potential future conflict with Russia, the moral component presents a complex challenge. The Army retains the institutional confidence and the intrinsic willingness among its soldiers to fight the first major battle regardless of public ambivalence. Yet the broader political environment is shaped not by mobilisation or national resolve against Russia (or against any other threat) but by fiscal constraint, geopolitical caution and an increasingly transactional understanding of national security. The public simultaneously perceives Russia as a threat while resisting material trade-offs—only 29 per cent support increased defence spending if it requires reductions in National Health Service funding.[xxvii] For the Army’s suitability to conduct future LSCO, this disconnect is problematic. Soldiers in combat will confront adversaries adept at exploiting these vulnerabilities through disinformation, deepfakes and targeted psychological operations designed to fracture public support and erode unit cohesion.
In this environment, Clausewitz’s assertion that the ‘will of the people’ is indispensable becomes more relevant, not less.[xxviii] Large-scale combat with Russia would demand not only the mobilisation of equipment and doctrine but the preservation of the moral contract between society, the state and the Army. This is an agreement increasingly strained by the UK’s current politics and worsened by a small number of high-profile cases of sexual assault, racism, bullying and procurement delays within the British Army.
In preparing for the future, preserving the British Army’s fighting spirit—ingrained in its culture well before TELIC 1—will be critical to the success of future LSCO. It builds into the expeditionary mindset which is valuable both to the UK and to NATO. In detail, future LSCO success will be dependent upon the Army countering adversarial information campaigns, working with government to pre-emptively build public understanding of LSCO realities (casualties, duration, costs) before commitment. Most critically, the Army must advocate forcefully for rebuilding the civil–military compact, addressing internal failings in conduct that erode public trust, and ensuring that when commitment comes, it is politically sustainable. The moral component cannot be generated in crisis; it must be cultivated in peace.
Discussion: the British Army Has Only the Pants It Is Wearing
The preceding analysis points to a clear strategic conclusion: the British Army cannot prepare for future LSCO by pursuing physical parity with peer adversaries. Instead, it must embrace its role as a high-value contributor to NATO in a specialised physical capability which supports the British Army’s comparative strengths in the moral and conceptual components.
On the positive side, the TELIC comparison suggests cautious optimism if future LSCO is short, discrete, and fought against an adversary where technological advantage compensates for limited mass. It also highlights that physical shortfalls in mass or fragile logistics can be offset by an expeditionary mindset, a will to win and the application of appropriate doctrine. However, LSCO against a peer adversary would almost certainly be more intensive and more challenging, and would be conducted over months rather than days or weeks. In such protracted operations, the UK’s constrained sustainment capacity and insufficient strategic depth would quickly become decisive liabilities, even within NATO.
Therefore, the British Army’s capacity to endure LSCO remains contingent on closing critical gaps, mostly in logistics and magazine depth, either through urgent operational requirements—as in TELIC 1—or through NATO provision. Both are plausible; neither is guaranteed. The reliance on late-stage augmentation and procurement is a gamble that soldiers instinctively distrust but both soldiers and politicians have repeatedly accepted. It is reflected in countless historical LSCO failures: Singapore, the First Boer War, France in 1916, and Dunkirk.[xxix] These examples raise the uncomfortable question that threads throughout British military history: does this pattern of willingness to fight despite unpreparedness demonstrate extraordinary moral resilience, or repeated institutional negligence?
In reality, it reflects a broader truth: armies tend to expand only when public and political appetite coincides with pragmatic need. The pervasive ‘negligence’ is less a failure of military foresight than a recurrent product of a democratic political economy. History shows that states routinely downsize their armies in periods of perceived peace, only to rebuild them hurriedly and unevenly when threats re-emerge. Despite this, the ambition for the Army to possess strategic depth is nothing new, and it was neatly illustrated by General Rupert Smith in an early meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair: ‘You need three pairs of underpants—one to wear, one in the wash, and one kept aside for accidents—so it is with military campaigns’.[xxx] His point, simply, is that it is insufficient for the Army to generate only the force required for the immediate task, such as the UK’s single Strategic Reserve Corps, without understanding that if the capability is committed, you need another ‘pair of pants in the wash’ and ideally you would have a third pair for ‘accidents’.[xxxi] The British Army of today has only the pants it is wearing.
Most concerning is that Britain’s future strategic depth is likely to be more constrained than in the past. Today, a politically polarised society, economic strain and pervasive social media distortions complicate the mobilisation of national will. The Army must therefore confront a paradox: it must be capable of winning the first major engagement with what it currently possesses, while simultaneously recognising that the resources required to win a war may not materialise until the moment of crisis or, possibly, not until it’s too late. The difficulty lies in the fact that it is neither affordable nor politically credible to argue that the British Army should maintain three corps to generate the single Strategic Reserve Corps required by NATO. Within this constraint, the Army must therefore double down on its enduring strengths: doctrinal sophistication, tactical competence, and the fighting spirit of its soldiers. Addressing critical capability gaps remains essential, but this must occur within a broader conceptual and moral framework focused on how Britain would fight successive large-scale operations, not merely the first. This demands serious, immediate thinking about how the Army could expand at pace should a Russian threat crystallise— planning for recruitment surges, accelerated training pipelines, increased industrial output, replenished ammunition stocks, replacement equipment programs, mobilisation infrastructure and national information resilience. In short, the moment calls for the kind of coherence and clarity once provided by General Bagnall.
Furthermore, future strategy must also call for the British Army’s comparative advantages to be cultivated within a NATO context: first, by maintaining an intellectual edge that makes British headquarters and tactical innovation indispensable to alliance operations; second, by building the institutional and societal foundations to sustain commitment; and last, by accepting limitations in mass by focusing on force multiplying capabilities. These capabilities include ISR, deep fires integration, electronic warfare and strategic communications, which will enable alliance warfighting disproportionate to their cost. If TELIC 1 offers a positive lesson, it is that shortfalls in equipment and logistics, however serious, are the elements most readily rectified in crisis.[xxxii] They can be bought, surged, or supplied by allies. By contrast, the doctrinal competence and moral resilience required for LSCO take years to cultivate and are far harder to improvise. Napoleon’s observation that ‘the moral is to the physical as three is to one’ remains instructive; wars are often lost by the army that is out-thought rather than out-fought.[xxxiii] The analysis does not call for downplaying the physical component; it simply notes that while a small lethal force must be properly resourced, the British Army’s most worthwhile contribution to NATO lies in its conceptual and moral strengths, which should remain the focus of preparation for future LSCO.
Conclusion
This paper has evaluated the British Army’s suitability for LSCO by comparing its present capabilities with those of TELIC 1 and assessing its ability to contribute to NATO defence against Russia. The analysis shows that while the Army remains capable of delivering one decisive large-scale operation, its ability to sustain successive campaigns remains critically limited—a constraint reflecting a longstanding political reality in which strategic depth is chronically undervalued until crisis makes it unavoidable.
Physical shortcomings, while acute, are ultimately most tractable: equipment, munitions and logistics can be expanded under pressure, as urgent operational requirements demonstrated in 2003. What cannot be generated in extremis are the conceptual clarity and moral resilience that underpin tactical excellence and operational cohesion. TELIC 1 succeeded because of Cold War thinking and the extraordinary professional ethos of British Army soldiers. These are strengths that remain the Army’s most reliable comparative advantages.
The British Army cannot resolve the political and fiscal constraints that shape its force structure, but it can ensure that it is intellectually and morally prepared to fight within those constraints. The British Army must therefore commit to three preparation priorities: first, investing in the doctrinal, educational and intellectual infrastructure that makes it NATO’s conceptual leader; second, addressing moral resilience through strategic communications, institutional reform and civil–military engagement; and third, accepting physical limitations while focusing on sustaining capabilities that enable alliance warfighting and provide disproportionate lethality against reduced mass. Only by concentrating on these comparative advantages can the British Army hope to be suited to future large-scale combat operations.
About the Author
Major Charlie Kenzie
British Army, The Royal Irish Regiment
Major Charlie Kenzie commissioned from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst into The 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment in 2016. After completing infantry training at the Infantry Battle School, Brecon, Charlie commanded a Platoon on Operation TORAL 4, Afghanistan. On return to the UK, he instructed at the Divisional infantry training team and was employed as an Observer Trainer for the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment’s mission rehearsal exercise to Afghanistan. Charlie has deployed on various UK and NATO exercises, including to Norway and Oman and a tour of Mali in 2022, spanning employments as a Company Second in Command, commander of the Regiment’s Light Close Reconnaissance Platoon and as the Adjutant of the 1st Battalion. Most recently, he completed two years as an Assistant Military Assistant to Commander Land Forces. He completed the Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Land) at the UK Defence Academy in 2026. He is currently employed in the Land Forces Headquarters.
Endnotes
[i] Ministry of Defence, Army Doctrine Publication: Land Operations (Warminster: Land Warfare Development Centre, 2017).
[ii] Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman, ‘Blair’s Wars and Brown’s Budgets: From Strategic Defence Review to Strategic Decay in Less Than a Decade’, International Affairs 85, no. 2 (2009): 247–261, at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2009.00792.x.
[iii] Jens Ringsmose, ‘NATO Burden-Sharing Redux: Continuity and Change After the Cold War’, Contemporary Security Policy 31, no. 2 (2010): 319–338, at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2010.491391.
[iv] Hew Strachan, ‘The British Way in Warfare’, in David G Chandler and Ian Beckett (eds), The Oxford History of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 417–434.
[v] Ministry of Defence, Army Doctrine Publication: Land Operations 2017.
[vi] Theo Farrell, ‘Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006–2009’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 4 (2010): 567–594, at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2010.489712.
[vii] House of Commons Defence Committee, Lessons of Iraq: Third Report of Session 2003–04 (London: The Stationery Office, 2004); National Audit Office, Operation TELIC—United Kingdom Military Operations in Iraq (London: The Stationery Office, 2003).
[viii] Christianne Tipping, Key Issues Affecting the Provision of Logistics Support to the UK Armed Forces in Expeditionary Operations, RUSI Occasional Paper (Royal United Services Institute, 2008), at: www.rusi.org/publication/rusi-occassional-paper-key-issues-affecting-provision-logistics-support-uk-armed-forces; Paul Dixon, ‘A Grand Strategic Error: The British Military Elite’s Role in the Invasion of Iraq’, British Politics 19 (2024): 84–105, at: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-023-00250-1.
[ix] House of Commons Defence Committee, Lessons of Iraq.
[x] British Army, Land Operating Concept (Warminster: Land Warfare Development Centre, 2024).
[xi] HM Government, Strategic Defence Review 2025: Making Britain Safer—Secure at Home, Strong Abroad (London: The Stationery Office, 2025).
[xii] House of Commons Defence Committee, Ready for War? First Report of Session 2023–24 (London: The Stationery Office, 2024).
[xiii] David Kelly, Keynote Speech to Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Land) (Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, 2025).
[xiv] Matthew Savill, ‘A Hollow Force? Choices for the UK Armed Forces’, RUSI (website), 8 July 2024, at: www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/hollow-force-choices-uk-armed-forces.
[xv] Timothy Edmunds, ‘The Defence Dilemma in Britain’, International Affairs 86, no. 2 (2010): 377–394, at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2010.00887.x.
[xvi] Jack Watling, ‘Closing the Say/Do Gap for UK Land Power’, RUSI (website), 10 July 2024, at: www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/closing-saydo-gap-uk-land-power.
[xvii] Antony King, ‘Britain’s Vietnam? Learning the Lessons of Operation Telic’, RUSI (website), 30 April 2009, at: www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/britains-vietnam-learning-lessons-operation-telic; Ministry of Defence, Operation TELIC Lessons Compendium (London: Ministry of Defence, 2010), pp. 45–48.
[xviii] British Army Review, BAR Special Report—The Gulf War: Volume 1 (2020), at: www.army.mod.uk/media/11016/bar_gulf_war-vol1-final.pdf.
[xix] Andrew Sharpe, ‘What Are the Enduring Lessons?’, in Matthias Strohn (ed.), How Armies Grow: The Expansion of Military Forces in the Age of Total War, 1789–1945 (Casemate Publishers, 2019).
[xx] Warren Chin, ‘Iraq, Afghanistan and the Future of British Military Doctrine: From Counterinsurgency to Stabilization’, International Affairs 95, no. 2 (2019): 269–287, at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy268.
[xxi] Ministry of Defence, Army Doctrine Publication: Army Doctrine Primer (Warminster: Land Warfare Development Centre, 2011).
[xxii] Christopher Dandeker, ‘The United Kingdom: The Overstretched Military’, in Charles Moskos, John A Williams and David Segal (eds), The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 32–50.
[xxiii] Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, Tactical Developments in the Third Year of the Russo–Ukrainian War (Royal United Services Institute, 2025), at: www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/tactical-developments-during-third-year-russo-ukrainian-war.
[xxiv] ‘Blair Losing Public Support On Iraq’, Ipsos, 21 January 2003, at: www.ipsos.com/en-uk/blair-losing-public-support-iraq.
[xxv] Kelly, Keynote Speech.
[xxvi] British Army, Land Operating Concept.
[xxvii] Richard Rose, ‘Britons Give Qualified Support to More Spending on Defence’, UK in a Changing Europe (website), 12 November 2025, at: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/britons-give-qualified-support-to-more-spending-on-defence.
[xxviii] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1976 [1832]).
[xxix] Saul David, Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure (Robinson, 2015).
[xxx] Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (Allen Lane, 2005).
[xxxi] Sharpe, ‘What Are the Enduring Lessons?’.
[xxxii] House of Commons Defence Committee, Lessons of Iraq, p. 84: ‘During the pre-deployment phase of Op TELIC 1, over 190 Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs) for equipment capability were approved at a cost of £510M. UORs were used to both fill previously recognised capability gaps which, for reasons of affordability, had not been funded in the Equipment Plan. Some sought to increase the existing weapon stocks to meet the requirement of a large-scale operation’.
[xxxiii] Ministry of Defence, Army Doctrine Primer.
