Hamish Mundell

We as a society need to become more resilient. That might mean changing our work practises in order to make sure that we have a greater levels of cyber security... The future of war might not just be a mass of guns and bullets on the front line. It might be an industrial endeavour. So being able to ramp up our production in this country is important and it matters to young people because there's lots of opportunity there ... defence industry means AI, and it means mechanical engineering, it means software development and many other things which I think people would find really engaged to get involved with."

There remains little evidence that the UK has a plan to fight a war lasting more than a few weeks," argues Rusi's Hamish Mundell. "Medical capacity is limited. Reserve regeneration pipelines are slow… The British plan for mass casualty outcomes appears to be based on not taking casualties." With classic British understatement, he says: "This could be considered an optimistic planning assumption." He adds that to fight a long war you need proper back-up. "It demands a second and even third echelon; personnel, platforms and logistics chains that can absorb losses and continue the fight. Yet this depth is notably absent from current British force design."