British Army deemed ‘too small’ as Keir Starmer tipped to make Ukraine defence pledge

Defence experts have raised the alarm over the size of the British Army, warning it could be too small to help defend once ’s war ends.

Sending the troops to to assist with peacekeeping efforts has reportedly been an issue being discussed between Sir and Ukrainian President in recent days.

British soldiers would be joined by French troops to protect the country once ’s men pulled out of the war-torn territory, as part of a joint Franco-British mission.

The Prime Minister issued his strongest indication yet that he is open to the idea on Thursday night, during a joint press conference in with Mr Zelensky. However, he stopped short of making an outright commitment.

Sir Keir said: “We will work with you and all of our allies on steps that would guarantee robust enough to guarantee ’s security.”

But former leading military officers have suggested that Britain could struggle to help Kyiv.

Sir Richard Dannatt, former Army head, : “I don’t think the size of our Army is large enough to do that with everything else that it’s doing currently. I think we would struggle.

“We could do it, but then we would have to certainly put more resources into the Army, and set about growing the size of the Army. It’s a major issue that relates directly to the future size of the British Army. You start to run out of troops quite quickly.”

Ex-Army chiefs believe between 5,000 and 10,000 British troops would be needed to help keep the peace under the plans.

Hamish de Bretton-Goron, a former commander in Iraq, said this could put a “huge amount” of pressure on the country’s defence budget.

He said: “We have such a small Army, we’ve taken so much risk with defence that if we did this, we would be able to do nothing else”.

This is not the first time the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been warned about the size of the Army, with experts and politicians having raised the alarm for years.

In 2023, Labour MP Dan Jarvis told Express.co.uk: “MPs on all sides of the house feel we are not investing enough resources in our defence capability. Take the size of the army, it is smaller than it has been for hundreds of years.

“The terminology the Government uses is that it is ‘refreshing’ the Integrated Review, I’m not convinced that important piece of work is on the right trajectory to make sure we reverse the reductions that have taken place.

“The army is too small and we need to invest in our land capability to make sure the forces are appropriately sized.”

Since then, the government has pledged ramp up defence spending to 2.5% of GDP each year. NATO guidelines state that each member state should spend at least 2%.

But some claim that more is still needed to help Britain combat growing threats facing the country.

Lord Stirrup, a crossbench peer and former chief of the defence staff, told the House of Lords: “Investment in defence needs to be above 3% of GDP, not the 2.5% that the government say that they aspire to but for which they have not so far set out a firm plan.

“It is worth saying that 3% of GDP for the UK, allowing for all the accounting changes that have taken place in recent years, would not be much more than we were spending in 2010, when Europe was not facing a severe threat from .”