UK war with Russia 'realistic possibility' by 2030, ex-Army chief warns

General Sir Patrick Sanders, who stood down as Chief of the General Staff last summer, said the country must prepare for a potential invasion by building bunkers and investing in air defences.

He urged the UK Government to take decisive action as he cautioned that a war with Putin was a "realistic possibility" by 2030 after multiple "signals".

Sir Patrick told The Telegraph: "If Russia stops fighting in Ukraine, you get to a position where within a matter of months they will have the capability to conduct a limited attack on a NATO member that we will be responsible for supporting, and that happens by 2030."

The 59-year-old said the Government should resume conversations about building bomb shelters after previous talks amounted to nothing as the threat "didn't feel sufficiently imminent or serious."

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Now Sir Patrick has advised the Government to model itself on Finland, which has bomb shelters for 4.5 million people in the event of an attack.

"It can survive as a government and as a society under direct missile and air attacks from Russia. We don’t have that," he said.

“I don’t know what more signals we need for us to realise that if we don’t act now and we don’t act in the next five years to increase our resilience. I don’t know what more is needed."

Sir Patrick also criticised funding for the UK's air defences for being "much lower" than it should be.

It comes the month after General Sir Roly Walker, the Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, shared similar sentiments.

He said the UK would "lose war with Russia" in its current set-up and urged the Government to ramp up spending on attack drones and missiles.

Sir Roly told a conference that "nearly 100%" of the Army’s ability to kill comes from crewed platforms, where soldiers need to be present to fire.

And almost all their equipment budget goes on maintaining and replacing those systems, he said, which could be taken out by "a kid using a £1,000 drone".

Speaking at the RUSI Land Warfare conference, General Walker said: “If those are the only platforms we fight from the land with, no matter the wizardry of our digital targeting web, I reckon we will lose. At the very least, it won’t be the unfair fight that we’re after.

“They take months to make and years to train competent crews for. They’re also in my mind on the wrong side of the cost curve when it comes to price per kill.

“A £20 million tank and four experienced crew members could be lost to a £1k drone operated by a kid with only a few days of training – who probably isn’t even on the same map sheet as the tank.”

Instead, the Army boss says they need to layer their approach with unmanned systems, meaning while boots would still be needed on the ground, they can stay further away from the point of impact and can hold their position more robustly.

“We could double the fighting power of attack helicopters from 16 kills from a 16km standoff to 32 kills from the same distance, by buying two more attack helicopters and making it a four-ship mission,” he said.

“Or, for the same amount of money that the two new attack helicopters cost us, we could layer a system of attritible mule drones and consumable one-way effectors which probably gets you 200 kills from over 50km standoff. That starts to look a lot more lethal and on the right side of the cost curve.”