Air and missile defence? ‘One out of 10.’ Civil force? ‘One out of 10.’ Naval ability to keep sea lanes open? ‘Two out of 10.’ Production speed? Again, ‘two out of 10’.

This is how General Sir Richard Barrons graded parts of the British military in terms of preparedness for a future conflict amid the looming threat from Russia .

Ever since 1989 – the end of the Cold War, marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe – the UK has not invested in ‘the things it needs for a long war, ’ leaving them to ‘wither’.

The ex-commander of the Joint Forces warned that UK institutions are still operating on the complacent peacetime assumption that protracted wars do not happen anymore.

He told RUSI’s Long War Conference in Whitehall that

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