III. Doing Less with Less in the Land Domain

Abstract

It is a long-established point of pride for smaller, lighter professional military forces that they can match larger, heavier forces. The US Marine Corps (USMC) has often considered itself as ‘doing more with less’ when compared to the US Army, equivalent to the UK defence cliché of ‘punching above our weight’. Since the end of the Cold War, successive events have pushed most Western militaries to become smaller. The idea of a peace dividend was followed by attempts to make defence more efficient, and despite a brief trend of modest expansion during the War on Terror, this has been followed by further contraction. The official rationale usually involves efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Recently, an additional element of the debate has been brought to the fore: whether older, heavier platforms are survivable in the face of the increasing range, precision and lethality of offensive weapons and technology. The UK’s Integrated Review in 2021 required government policy to directly address these questions, and the result for the most part favoured smaller and lighter land forces. It framed the shrinkage of the British Army as a positive step, stating that ‘the Army of the future will be leaner, more lethal, nimbler, and more effectively matched to current and future threats’ while proposing personnel cuts ‘from the current Full Time Trade Trained strength of 76,000 to 72,500 by 2025’. The necessity of rectifying prior funding discrepancies by difficult prioritisation decisions was