John Foreman was formerly Britain’s defence attaché in Moscow. Before that, he was Britain’s defence attaché in Kyiv.
Huge crowds of locals, plus families and friends of the crew, greeted the return home of the nation’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, last week. It was a fitting climax to a flawless, highly significant, eight-month, 40,000-nautical-mile deployment to the Far East. Sailors spoke about the emotion of their homecoming, pride in their hard work,
Next month Jonathan Carley will appear in court in Carmarthen, charged with wearing military uniform without permission. This charge comes after a man purporting to be a Rear Admiral was pictured at a Remembrance Sunday service in Llandudno while wearing an impressive row of medals. One was Britain’s highest awards for gallantry – a Distinguished
On Tuesday, Admiral Tony Radakin finished his term as Chief of the Defence Staff much as he started it – dealing with the immediate and long-term consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There is an irony that Radakin, appointed by Boris Johnson to ‘restore Britain’s position as the foremost naval power in Europe’ as part
In June, a grim milestone passed. The Ministry of Defence said that one million Russians had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. The Guardian reported that fatalities alone are ‘five times higher than the combined death toll from all Soviet and Russian wars’ after 1945. Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, stated that Russia had already lost
Some weeks ago at an army conference I listened to senior officers discussing the lethal, agile, ‘integrated’ British military of the future as set out in the government’s recent Strategic Defence Review. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what they said. The Chief of the General Staff Sir Roly Walker answered questions on what the SDR
There were many tributes when John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, the last surviving fighter pilot of the Battle of Britain, died in March. Prince William said he was saddened about the death of the ‘last of The Few’ while the prime minister saluted Hemingway’s ‘extraordinary life’. There were no such statements in February on the death of
Aficionados of zombie films will know that some ghouls just won’t stay dead. In 2013, the economist Paul Krugman came up with the concept ‘zombie ideas’ – propositions that have been refuted, and should be no more, but keep returning because they serve a political purpose, or appeal to people’s prejudices. In the run up
It’s quite something when the Chinese Ministry of Defence is more transparent than its British equivalent. Despite the Prime Minister on assuming office promising ‘transparency in everything we do’, a flying visit to Beijing last Wednesday by the UK chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, only emerged via a Times scoop a day later. Official silence from an
There’s something about Donald Trump that sends Europeans mad. The President and Vladimir Putin agreed last week to commence talks about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. From the hysterical reaction, you would have thought Trump had handed Putin the keys to Kyiv. Shrill cries of surrender, betrayal and appeasement are premature; extremely difficult negotiations lie
Britain is heavily dependent on its underwater infrastructure. Ninety-nine per cent of our digital communications overseas are carried through subsea fibre optic cables. Significant damage to them at the hands of malign actors would jeopardise our way of life. Defence Secretary John Healey reported to parliament on an incident last November when a Russian spy
The quietly spoken, thoughtful, brilliant Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, four times winner of the Distinguished Service Order and co-founder of the Special Air Service, was nothing like his profane, psychotic, paddywhacking caricature in the cartoonish BBC series SAS: Rogue Heroes. His hideous portrayal does him a grave disservice and has understandably upset his family. Truth about Mayne
As fighting continues between Israel and Hezbollah, planning for a potential evacuation of British nationals from Lebanon has seen troops, ships and aircraft preparing in Cyprus and the wider region. Defence Secretary John Healey has chaired meetings in London to avoid the government being caught on the hop as happened before the evacuation from Kabul in
Ukraine’s cultural autonomy is again under assault by Russia. Vladimir Putin appears to believe that ‘Ukraine and Ukrainian culture independent of “Mother Russia” do not exist’. Travel to the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly, to see the untruth of that statement. The exhibition, In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900 –
On his flight back to London from Washington DC, Keir Starmer will have been satisfied with the outcomes of his first Nato summit. He will be concerned about the vigour of President Biden and the rhetoric of his presidential challenger. He and his European colleagues can do more to help assure the future of the
Hugh Jones was 29 when he was killed in action. On Wednesday, the eve of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, his grave at Bayeux – and those of 22,000 Commonwealth war dead in cemeteries across Normandy – was illuminated in a vigil to these silent witnesses to the pity of war. All Commonwealth war cemeteries
A week after the UK expelled the Russian defence attaché, Colonel Maxim Yelovik, for being ‘an undeclared intelligence officer’, Russia predictably responded on Thursday by expelling my successor, Captain Adrian Coghill, from Moscow. He has a week to leave. Russia has also promised to retaliate to visa restrictions placed on Russian diplomats by Britain, and
The Prime Minister’s announcement this week of an increase in UK defence spending from 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 was unexpected. Debate continues on whether this is indeed, as Sunak claimed in Poland, ‘historic’, or sufficient for the UK to ‘re-arm’ in the face of ‘real risks to the United Kingdom’s security and prosperity’. All
Air defence was in the news this week, after Israel, with the help of allies including the UK, shot down around 99 per cent of over 300 cruise and ballistic missiles and drones fired at it by Iran. The perils of depleted air defences were shown by Russian missile and drone bombardments of Ukrainian energy
There is a lot of war fever about. In January, Grant Shapps, Britain’s tiggerish defence secretary, said the UK was in a ‘pre-war’ period. The West’s adversaries in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are mobilising, he said. Not wanting to be outdone, Shapps’s Labour shadow John Healey wrote in the Daily Telegraph: ‘If Putin wins,
