Britain is dropping its hybrid conflict with Russia and is unprepared for battle, warns prime former US aide | EUROtoday

Britain is failing in its efforts to struggle a hybrid conflict with Russia and is unprepared for a wider-scale world battle, a prime former authorities aide and senior analysts have warned.

As conflict in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz depart the world reeling from increased oil, petrol, meals and fertiliser costs, and battle grinds on in Ukraine, elementary planning to guard the UK will not be happening.

Fiona Hill, former director for European and Russian affairs within the National Security Council in Donald Trump’s first administration, describes the UK’s contingencies for coping with current and future disruptions as “not fit for purpose”.

As one of many co-authors of the UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review, Dr Hill will this week ship a speech on the Imperial War Museum meant to galvanise Britain’s response to threats in opposition to its infrastructure.

In a stark interview with The Independent, she warned: “In the UK, our systems are not designed to cope with major disruptions. It is up to the leadership to come up with a plan because, at the moment, what is there is not fit for purpose.

“We have seen the effects of choke points in the Gulf, disruptions to transport. The NHS cannot cope with mass casualties, and we need to build up food supplies and systems to cope with disruption to imports.

“We don’t have archives of maps digitised and no analogue systems to use if digital systems collapse. This is an urgent national debate that needs to happen now.”

With no single minister answerable for nationwide resilience in occasions of disaster, Dr Hill, chancellor of Durham University, says there is no such thing as a signal the federal government is taking motion.

Her intervention comes after her co-author of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), Lord Robertson, a former secretary normal of Nato, accused the federal government of “corrosive complacency” over what he said was a failure to implement the review’s 62 recommendations.

His criticisms largely focused on the political conundrum faced by the government, which is the trade-off between spending on areas such as welfare versus the need to expand military capabilities.

Britain’s security officials have been increasingly warning that the country has been in a form of modern war for months. “We are now operating in a space between peace and war,” the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, said last year.

Russia, she said – as have the heads of the British army, navy and air force – is the principal threat.

But Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war is not confined to military targets alone – cyber attacks and assaults on supply lines, power grids and even food are also in the mix.

“There are so many soft targets around the UK it’s impossible to count them,” says Dr Hill, highlighting that the nation has no effective system even to monitor small drones that could be weaponised to “fly through the windows of the tallest buildings”.

The UK is seen as largely defenceless against long-range missile attacks – or drones – and vulnerable to attacks against its military and civilian undersea communications cables, gas pipelines and electrical connections to Europe.

In the past two years, there has been a 30 per cent surge in surveillance of some of Britain’s most sensitive undersea strategic communications and supply lines by Russia.

“The preparation moment of sabotage takes years and years, and that is what we’re seeing,” warns Dr Sidharth Kaushal, senior research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute.

The Royal Navy and Nato allies recently exposed the work of the Russian Akula attack submarine and two undersea spy boats surveying British cables and other critical infrastructure.

These operations have been going on for decades, led by Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, known as Gugi, and Nato has no dedicated equivalent sea spying system to match.

In the UK, other vulnerabilities include dangers such as the nation’s gas supplies from Norway being cut in times of war. Both Dr Hill and Dr Kaushal highlight attacks on the Langeled and Vesterled pipelines, which supply 60-80 per cent of the country’s gas.

Combined with the dangers posed by tens of thousands of cyber attacks on the UK’s critical infrastructure every day, they warned the nation had little capacity to cope.

The SDR, published last June, said the UK should “build national resilience to threats below and above the threshold of an armed attack through a concerted, collective effort involving – among others – industry, the finance sector, civil society, academia, education and communities”.

Although some private companies build resilience into their systems, there is no national, much less compulsory, programme to survive a disaster or an attack of the kind prepared for by Norway, Sweden and Finland, Dr Hill warns.

She says the UK should devolve authority to local government to build its capacity to deal with disasters that could otherwise overwhelm the country. Ukraine has been a model for its ability to respond to a massive invasion.

Every city’s mayor is responsible for coordinating emergency services. Every provincial governor is responsible for the wider management and resourcing of civilian survival in the face of relentless attacks by Russia, and works closely with the military.

In Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekov showed The Independent a secret bunker where all civilian emergency responses from energy to fire services worked together alongside military officers running early-warning systems so that a response could be prepared when drones and missiles were in the air – before they even landed.

No such system exists in the UK.

“When you factor in the global external events and the reasonable risk of kinetic war fighting in mainland Europe – if Russia decides to go all in – it becomes significantly challenging for the UK,” provides Stephen Arundell, vice chair of the Emergency Planning Society, the skilled physique for specialists within the discipline.

“Because we’ve frankly not been investing in resilient matters because we’ve had a very long, sustained period of peace.”

The UK defence overview known as for a “whole of society” response to the hybrid and future threats and assaults that the UK faces. Sir Keir Starmer has endorsed the concept and known as for extra work to be performed within the discipline.

But the specialists all agree that the UK is lagging far behind its European allies, and politicians are failing to make the case for extra spending to coach and equip native authorities and civil defence items – in addition to shying away from laws that may pressure the non-public sector to step up its personal defence.

In response to the problems raised, the Ministry of Defence mentioned in an announcement: “We have the resources we need to keep the United Kingdom safe from attacks, whether it’s on our soil or from abroad. The UK stands ready 24/7 to defend itself, and as a founding member of Nato, we benefit from the alliance’s collective defence capabilities, including its integrated air and missile defence systems.

“This government has made air and missile defence a priority after years of underfunding. That is why last June, following the Strategic Defence Review, we announced up to £1bn in new funding to strengthen our defences and keep the UK secure. This investment also boosts the UK’s contribution to Nato, ensuring we play our part in protecting our allies and ourselves.”