Sticking Power or Plaster? The UK Armed Forces Bill 2026 and Preparedness

‘Let’s be really honest: it’s a mess.’ That was the assessment offered by Minister for Veterans Al Carns, speaking on social media amid widespread confusion over the Armed Forces Bill 2026 and its proposed modest updates to a mobilisation and recall system based upon the post-Cold War Reserve Forces Act 1996.

The system the bill seeks to amend is poorly understood, and arguably ill-suited to modern escalation. However, the controversy surrounding the bill has obscured what the government is trying to achieve, and, more importantly, what it has so far avoided doing. The Armed Forces Bill 2026 is a useful technical intervention to improve flexibility but is not a substitution for the ambition and funding needed to materially improve the UK’s Reserve Forces and the nations preparedness for war.

What the Bill Actually Does

At its core, the bill updates elements of the Reserve Forces Act 1996, clarifying reserve service across regular and volunteer components and reforming the framework for recall. It updates the current ‘Recall Reserve’ liability and changes the legal threshold for recall to include ‘warlike operations’ rather than solely an ‘actual attack’ on the United Kingdom. The threshold for actually triggering recall will remain higher than call out thresholds for volunteer reserves or the regular reserves and their previous equivalents have not been called out since 1939.

This latter change is significant. It reflects a more realistic appreciation of how conflict now unfolds, through escalation, ambiguity, and hybrid activity; and gives the government a lawful mechanism to raise force posture before a crisis reaches its most acute phase. In that sense, the bill plugs an important gap in providing a staged deterrence option that should be available to our leaders in the event of a crisis.

The bill also raises the maximum recall age for other ranks to 65, aligning them more closely with officers, who have long held recall liability for life. This is not arbitrary. Regular other ranks in their 50s are often among the most experienced trainers, and extending recall liability preserves access to skills that would be essential in a mobilisation scenario. Keeping the current maximum recall age of 55 was leaving us behind our NATO partners who are all raising their maximum reservist recall ages to 65 or above. France, by comparison, has extended recall liability to age 72.

These are not radical innovations and should garner no great criticism, nor great praise.

Misunderstanding, Mistrust and Misplaced Criticism

Public reaction to the bill has been dominated by concern that it represents an ex post facto change to the relationship between veterans and the state, particularly during a period of low trust in government. This anxiety is understandable, but largely misplaced.

Under existing law, all officers, regular and reserve, retain recall liability for life. Other ranks currently have recall liability to age 55 or 18 years after service, whichever is sooner. The bill brings other ranks closer to parity with officers and extends recall liability to volunteer reserve other ranks, aligning them with reserve officers.

Crucially, the primary legislation sets upper bounds, not blanket requirements. Each service will continue to shape its actual recall policy through secondary legislation. For those currently serving, the changes are opt-out; for those already holding recall liability, they are opt-in. Only those who join after the bill becomes law will fall fully under the new framework, and even then will be subject to service-specific rules.

This is technical law, not mass conscription of veterans. Fewer than five per cent of the veteran population are affected. Attempting to make headlines out of these changes was ill-judged, and the repeated use of the term ‘veteran’ on all sides has only fuelled misunderstanding.

The misunderstanding is symptomatic of the widespread ignorance of Reserve Forces and their legislation in the Armed Forces and MoD. This is primarily down to poor service education and the Reserve Forces’ low priority for interest. It is not down to over complicated legislation or overly messy terms of reserve service that need ‘simplification’ as has been claimed. The Reserve Forces Act 1996 is relatively straightforward and powerful legislation. Further, it makes sense to have layered terms of service for reservists at different forms of training and readiness. Other NATO countries have similar. The risk of further simplification is that we lose the flexibility and nuance the current system affords us and moves us instead towards a regular-like model of reserve service that suits only a few and will lack flexibility. This debate also risks distraction from the more fundamental issues at hand.

Recall is Not Force Generation

Taken on its own terms, the bill improves flexibility. But flexibility is not the same as capability.

Expanding the recall reserve does not answer fundamental questions about how the UK would actually fight a protracted conflict. The government has not published a credible long-war order of battle. It has not explained how recalled personnel would be funded for routine engagement, armed, trained collectively, or integrated with under-sized regular and reserve formations expected to generate corps-level effects or how they would integrate into homeland defence forces.

Renaming those who sit in a notional strategic reserve does not transform them into a ready force. Recall remains an emergency measure and is not a substitute for trained, equipped volunteer reserves held at meaningful readiness.

In this respect, the bill repeats a familiar pattern in reserve reform: adjusting labels and authorities while avoiding the harder work of funding and generating usable mass which requires investment. Our close allies, such as France and Canada, to name but a few, are literally doubling their Reserve Forces over the next five years and have backed this up with real funding. As recent reports, point out, our Reserve Forces are by contrast ‘in decline; on capability and equipment we have reached the bottom of the barrel; and on infrastructure where we now see (and will see more) site closures because they are unsafe through lack of funding.’

Covenant in Law, Obligation Deferred

The Armed Forces Bill is supposed to underline the importance of the Armed Forces Covenant and places it on a stronger statutory footing. This is welcome. But it also exposes a deeper contradiction in UK reserve policy.

For years, the effectiveness of the volunteer reserve has been constrained by limited access to training time. Many reservists rely on using their own annual leave, unpaid time off, or informal arrangements with employers to meet their commitments. This restricts collective training, reduces readiness at scale, and undermines integration with regular forces. Ultimately lowering the survivability of the approximately 25,000 men and women the British Army alone would want sent to war if called upon.

The new ‘Defence Readiness Bill’ being prepared is an opportunity to address this directly. A modest statutory entitlement to employers to provide a defined number of days of reservist training leave each year would have had an immediate and transformative effect on capability. It would have improved retention, enhanced survivability and lethality, and made mobilisation more credible. A number of our European neighbours are proposing to do the same. Research in the UK shows that reservists with reserve friendly employer policies are more likely to take time off from their employer for reserve training.

It is also a highly practicable reform. The financial burden would be limited, predictable, and arguably lower than the current approach, which relies on sustained investment in Defence Relationship Management and associated bodies to persuade employers to meet a ten-day ‘gold’ standard that the state already claims to value.

Instead, the bill reinforces principle without obligation. We put the Covenant into law, but decline to use the law to materially reduce the burden borne by individuals preparing for war in their spare time.

This reflects a broader reluctance to use the legitimate powers of the state in support of defence. Other countries are less hesitant. Norway has recently reminded businesses and citizens of the state’s authority to requisition private assets in wartime. France has gone further on recall liabilities. These measures rest on a clear social contract: national defence is a collective responsibility.

A Sticking Plaster, Not Sticking Power

The Armed Forces Bill 2026 is not without merit. It corrects outdated legal thresholds, improves recall flexibility, and has attracted criticism that is louder than it is accurate. Most veterans will be unaffected.

But it ultimately avoids the central question of preparedness: whether the state is willing to invest its Reserve Forces and whether it is willing to compel modest, proportionate support from society to generate real military capacity. By choosing caution where ambition was required, the bill improves flexibility without truly increasing force generation. It offers a sticking plaster where sticking power is needed.

© RUSI, 2026.

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