General Carter on the BBC:
Some people argue that the modern, Western way of war is at arm's-length - exemplified by armed drones and stand-off weapons fired at great distances from their intended targets.
By such readings the traditional army - leaving aside maybe the special forces - seems strangely out of step with the apparent new reality.
But General Carter disagrees.
"I don't subscribe to the view that we find ourselves in a new era of warfare where you can do it all with stand-off; you can do it all with bombing; you can do it all with special forces and you can do it all with proxies," he tells me emphatically.
"Those are all simply fallacies. The bottom line in all of this is that, in the final analysis, people live on land and it is ultimately the land component that has to 'mix it' where people live. History proves that that is a requirement.
"Our policy makers absolutely understand that you have an army because, in the final analysis, armies are the business when it comes to a decision, and ultimately it's about a decision."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40534771
Leaving aside his missed opportunity to explain why we need a regular army beyond the "armies are the business" explanation I do sense that the British Army has a rather closed view of modern warfare.
Gen Carter points to history as a reason why we need a regular army but appears to overlook modern history where air power has been either the lead or sole power used. In equal regards he failed to explain what the 2 recent regular army 'boots on the ground' campaigns have achieved. We are rapidly approaching 16 years of conflict in AFG and 14 years in Iraq.
Worryingly this attitude is reflected at lower levels in the British Army. Indeed, at a recent symposium I endured a brief by a Colonel and his team expressing the weakness of air power by using Kosovo as an example. He seemed to take great pride in the fact that the campaign took many more weeks than expected. Yep, he used the term 'weeks' without a hint of irony.
Of more concern was the boundless optimism in the ability of the British Army to operate under an air threat or against modern stand-off weapons launched from the air/land/sea environment.
The British Army finds itself at a crossroads, admittedly not of its own making. Recent history has not definitively shown the value of 'boots on the ground' and perhaps more specifically, not shown the value of relativity low numbers of 'boots'. Turning to General Carter's history books it is impossible to find a land-centric campaign that achieved enduring success with a force as small as that currently fielded by the British Army. If you need 'boots on the ground' you need lots of them and this is simply beyond the gift of the current force structure.
Right now General Carter has only one regular army operational deployment located on the eastern fringe of Europe. Beyond operating as political trip-wire, should Russia flex its muscles again, I am not sure what military effect these 'boots' would offer. General Carter needs to use his time more effectively to explain why a regular army is needed and what numbers and capabilities are required to keep them relevant.