UK would ‘lose war with Russia’ in current setup, as Army chief calls for greater use of attack drones and missiles

17 June 2025, 14:00

The British Army is spending too much money on tanks and helicopters, the force’s chief has said, as he signalled a move towards investing in more drones and missiles.

General Sir Roly Walker, the Chief of the General Staff, 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.

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“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.”

Last month, the government’s strategic defence review said the country had to get back to a “war fighting posture” that we’ve not had since the end of the 1980s, warning the Ministry of Defence must be prepared to endure “long campaigns” in future.

Defence Secretary John Healey told LBC: "In the end, we prevent wars by being strong enough to defeat the enemies that might think of attacking us.

"That's the reason that NATO has been the most successful defensive alliance for over 70 years.

"Now is the time to meet those threats, both through NATO, but also as the UK. "And the way we do that is to recognise the way that the war is changing.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister told LBC that the "threat level" to the UK has gone up as he pledged to implement all 62 recommendations of the report.

"We're in a new era and we're in a more unstable world,” he told us, “So it's vital that we carry out the recommendations of the review.

General Sir Roly Walker welcomed the ambition on the review to increase the UK’s fighting power by 10 times, as he said the Army has so far trained 3,000 drone pilots with another 6,000 to come over the next year.

And he said advances in technology - including by embedding artificial intelligence into existing equipment - has allowed some divisions to become more lethal in their exercises.

One team, he explained, has become four times quicker at engaging targets - down from 16 minutes to four - and are now able to hit 10 times as many in a day as a result.

“I believe we’re on track, for now, to double our fighting power by 2027,” the chief told the RUSI conference in Central London.

“The results are encouraging though I acknowledge not all soldiers in all formations are experiencing this transformation yet. But it is coming.”

He added: “We are building ever more lethal land forces, capable of operating over ever greater distances, in ways that will make fighting us such an unfair proposition that no-one in the right mind would do so.

“But if they did, we will fight.”