Britain needs to establish a new Home Guard – and fast

Mentioning the need for home defence is too often met with sniggering about 'Dad's Army', writes Francis Tusa. But with threats from hostile nations growing, it's no laughing matter

- Francis Tusa

The government has set out what the UK needs to protect itself from direct attacks in an increasingly hostile and dangerous world. In short, the assessment is that we need to be ready to go to war – and fast. State powers – Russia today, maybe China tomorrow - have the capability to cause major damage to the UK, its economy and its way of life, and we currently have no viable plans or forces to protect the country.

The strategic defence review recognised the threats, but did not address crucial facts - for instance, that if faced with drone attacks of the type that Ukraine suffers almost nightly, the UK would have absolutely no means of stopping them.

The National Security Strategy, whose publication last week followed that of the review earlier in June, also talked about the need to bolster what it calls home defence. “The UK is directly threatened by hostile activities including assassination, intimidation, espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks, and other forms of democratic interference,” it noted.

“Meanwhile, critical national infrastructure - including undersea cables, energy pipelines, transportation and logistics hubs - will continue to be a target.”

But neither of these documents addressed, directly, the fact that the army cannot be deploying divisions into Europe while also defending the UK homeland - the two missions are contradictory. And neither acknowledged that the country is naked against any missile attack, so needs to actually buy something quickly.

The police force in the UK is not large enough, or trained to undertake home defence outside of a very small range of missions. Protecting critical national infrastructure requires troops on the ground, patrolling, to provide physical protection as well as deterrence.