ROYAL SIGNALS INSTITUTION DINNER AND AWARDS CEREMONY 12 NOVEMBER 2024

During his speech, General Wooddisse provided his reflections on evolving Challenges in modern conflict across three distinct eras.

In summary, he explained that the trajectory of modern conflict can be examined through the lens of three distinct yet interconnected eras. The first era unfolded with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the conclusion of the Cold War, marking a transition into conflicts such as those in Kosovo and Bosnia. This period heralded a new geopolitical landscape, characterized by the fragmentation of old alliances and the emergence of regional instability.

The second era was defined by the events of September 11, 2001, which precipitated global counter-terror campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. These conflicts underscored the complexities of asymmetric warfare, reshaping military doctrines and necessitating adaptive strategies to counter evolving threats.

The third era, commencing on 24 February 2022, was marked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This confrontation signifies a broader global dynamic, potentially reshaping the established world order in ways that challenge prevailing norms. NATO's swift and decisive response, including the unprecedented accession of Finland and Sweden to the Alliance, has reinforced its cohesion and purpose.

The ongoing support for Ukraine has highlighted NATO's commitment to collective defense and its capacity to adapt to emerging challenges. These efforts are underscored by the necessity to mobilize industry and society, particularly when juxtaposed against the scale of Russian production capabilities.

Furthermore, the evolving nature of warfare demands a deeper understanding of emerging technologies, including the proliferation of drones, advancements in the electromagnetic spectrum, and the integration of artificial intelligence. Rapid innovation and collaboration with industry, academia, and allied nations are now indispensable to maintain a competitive edge.

As we navigate this era of global confrontation, these reflections emphasize the need for strategic foresight, operational adaptability, and robust partnerships to deter and, if necessary, overcome adversaries in the evolving character of conflict.

His speech is reproduced here by kind permission.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure and a privilege to be here this evening, and to speak to such an interesting and important group, and in such magnificent surroundings. And what a joy to be able to speak early in the proceedings - what a modern, forward looking organisation you are.

My name is Ralph Wooddisse I have the privilege of commanding is the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. We’re based in Gloucestershire and we’re a British led NATO organisation with 2/3rds of the staff coming from the UK and the remainder from 21 NATO nations. Its an organisation that has led NATO’s most difficult operations. We led NATO’s response to Bosnia, the Kosovo conflict, where the late Gen Mike Jackson was doing my job, and Afghanistan.

A Corps is the largest military formation that we have in the Army. It can number up to 100,000 people and its job is to fight battles, by doing three things. We hit enemy logistics, headquarters and key weapons at distance - potentially hundreds of kilometers beyond the front line. We synchronise and coordinate large number of soldiers in attack or defence, and we manage and protect a highly complex logistics set up designed to keep a large force supplied with food, ammunition, fuel and medical support, all while contending with whatever the enemy decides to throw at us. It is a fascinating job more of which later.

To do this we need all of the obvious things - weapons, ammunition, supplies and well-trained people - but the secret sauce is communications which enables shared understanding faster and better decisions.

I’m going to speak to you on two themes this evening; the first to offer a perspective on the geo-political picture that and set of circumstances that we find ourselves in, and NATO’s response; the second, the advent of technology, and in particular the data revolution that we are experiencing; and then I’ll try to stitch the two themes together explaining how one could help us deal with the other.

As I look back on it I reckon that my 33 year military career has been defined by 3 era’s.

The first started at the end of 1989 with the end of the Cold War marked most obviously from my perspective by the breaching of the Berlin Wall. We clearly didn’t know it at the time, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the behaviours that the Cold War demanded heralded a period of small, sometime vicious wars that dominated my first 10 years of service. Bosnia and Kosovo were my stomping grounds of choice, wars that were horrid for those involved but were brought to a relatively swift conclusion once the United States and its allies intervened. This was the height of Pax Americana, a period when a single superpower dominated world events almost without challenge and when academics pontificated on whether we had seen the end of history.

The second started, definitively, on 11 Sep 2001 with the attack on the Twin Towers. The counter terror campaigns that followed dominated my life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of others, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, not to mention the millions of civilians that were affected by our actions. We paid a price in blood and treasure that our countries found hard to bear, and we damaged the reputation and power of the west. It felt to me like Pax Americana suffered a series of blows, most strikingly by the ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan in the August of 2021. And while we were concentrating on fighting terrrorism our global competitors, particularly China and Russia, were gearing up their conventional military forces and nipping away at US dominance, in Crimea, in Syria, in the South China Sea, and in parts of Africa.

The third era started on 24 Feb 2022 with Russia’s full scale invasion of the Ukraine. It is an era which I believe marks a new period of global confrontation with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran setting themselves up at varying levels of effort to bring about a change in the international order.

A change that speaks more to the power of the state than a rules based system that we would support, a change where might is right, where spheres of influence are awarded to the strong, where some states are more equal than others, and where geo-economic advantage for the remainder of the 21st century is the prize.

In that context I would contend that Ukraine isn’t a crisis implying a start, an end, and a return to normal. Rather it is a chapter in a wider, global confrontation that may well deliver a very different world order than any of us are used to or would welcome. And the way that conflict in Ukraine ends will likely shape the next chapter in the confrontation.

So with this as a backdrop let me set out how NATO, the most successful and powerful military alliance that the world has seen, is shaping up for the challenge. I think Russia and many other’s underestimated NATO’s resolve as they planned the invasion of Ukraine.

In many respects it has strengthened the Alliance bringing purpose and cohesion to an organisation that had only a few years before been declared brain dead.

We collectively moved further and faster than Russia thought we could, achieving consensus as we went. We, NATO, were braver and more determined than was expected. We gave generously to Ukraine in terms of arms and ammunition, we helped to train their army, we looked after their people, and we galvanised public support across the Alliance. All those things are still true.

Most importantly Putin’s actions caused Finland and Sweden to join the Alliance, a process that was achieved at record speed, something which the Cold War failed to do.

So if Putin’s aim was to breakdown the effectiveness of NATO his invasion has done quite the opposite; I would argue that we are stronger right now than we have been at any stage since the end of the Cold War.

That’s not to say that we can rest on our laurels - there are cracks and fissures in the Alliance that may well widen. But for now we should feel broadly satisfied that at the political level NATO is in good shape.

At the military level NATO’s response has been equally effective. We now have plans for the defence of Europe based on where we think Russia could take us on. We are practicing those plans, developing an understanding of where we might have to fight and the techniques that we would need to do so.

While most of NATO’s armies are allocated to what we call front line states - those that border Russia or Belarus - the British Corps’ role is to respond to any threat anywhere in NATO, including acting now to deter Russian aggression and to reassure Allies. I have spent much of the last few months talking to Army commanders in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Romania, Poland and the Baltic states, discussing how we could help.

So the Geopolitical winds are getting stronger, NATO has responded and the UK has made a commitment to the NATO plan, and the British Army, through the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps are planning and exercising now in support of those plans. But we should not underestimate the military challenge that we face.

Russia is spending 6% of GDP on defence now, or 30% of government spend. And they seem to be able to get much more for their money. Russia is making 3.5 million artillery shells a year and are receiving trainloads of ammunition from N Korea. In comparison, European manufacturers make about 750,000 shells and the US about 1m. We in the UK make between 30-40,000. Russia recruited 480,000 soldiers last year and aim to have an army of 1.5 million by 2030. We in the UK struggled to recruit 7,000 last year for an army of 70,000.

So while we do not stand alone the odds are not great so we have to make the most of the Army that we have, to deter and if necessary fight Russia. And that’s where you come in…….. because warfare is changing.

Drones are a fact of life in modern warfare. They allow both sides to see further and strike further than has been the case before. Ukraine is producing 10s of thousands a week and lose them almost as soon as they can build them.

Electronic warfare is back but with greater scale and scope - the ability to detect and jam the electro-magnetic spectrum is vital to success, and while Russia has proved to be something of a tactical disappointment in Ukraine, their electronic warfare capability is tier 1, making many of the precision weapons that we have come to rely on much less accurate than has been the case.

And crucially we are seeing the potential that modern, commercially available technology provides in every part of the battlefield. There are many but I’d highlight the difference that artificial intelligence and machine learning provide, allowing the processing of data in ways and at speed that is an order of magnitude better than what we have been able to do traditionally. Indeed without these tools the level of data that is available to us on the battlefield would risk paralysing our ability to make a decision.

But with these tools we can decide, move and act much much faster than has been the case in the past. We can develop shared understanding of the battle, we can generate targets at a speed unimaginable in the past, and we can link targets to weapons in ways that will revolutionise our ability to fight at distance.

Indeed it may well be that these technologies represent a change in the way that wars and battles are fought that is every bit as profound as that experienced at the outset of the first world war or as a result of the proliferation of nuclear weapons after the second world war.

So if we want to deter effectively, and if we want to win, then we have to develop those capabilities and do so quickly. And that requires us to develop levels of partnership and cooperation between Defence, Academia and Industry that we have not seen for many many years.

It requires us to be generous with our Allies to make sure that we can share data seamlessly, it requires us to be innovative with an emphasis on software not hardware, it requires us to find more space for systems engineers and computer scientists in our order of battle, people who can harness and manipulate the data that will be the lifeblood of the Army of today and tomorrow.

And it requires us to do better at unleashing the potential of our soldiers so that they have every opportunity to display the qualities of tonight’s award winners, people who have the imagination, innovation and motivation to grab technology and turn it into a battle and war winning advantage. This is a remarkable generation and my proximity to 1 Signals Bde tells me that the Royal Signals has exceptional young men and women who do incredible things.

Thank you for listening. We are at a significant and serious juncture where much is at stake. Russia has proven to be a resilient, determined and resourceful country with a capacity to suffer. It has embarked on a course where war is once again a policy choice, a means to an end.

We need to respond. By tapping into the relationships engendered by organisation like this, by focusing on those technological advantages that allow us to fight better, to deter better and if we need to, to win better”.