BFBS Radio Sitrep

Could more British troops be sent to Eastern Europe, or as peacekeepers in the Middle East? Will Donald Trump return to the White House, and would it guarantee defeat for Ukraine? And where in the world might the next war break out?Kate Gerbeau and Professor Michael Clarke take on the big questions about what’s in store for our defence and security in 2024.They hear from the UK’s top military officers, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, General Sir Patrick Sanders, Admiral Sir Ben Key and Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton, who tell us what they’ll be working on in 2024.And some of Sitrep’s expert guests from the last year share their thoughts to help explain what might happen in the next 12 months.

The Defence Secretary has called the Army’s ban on beards for most soldiers “ridiculous and outdated”, as the Chief of General Staff reviews the rules.Kate and Mike are joined by former Chief of Defence People, Lieutenant General James Swift, to discuss whether facial hair really matters to recruitment, discipline and operational effectiveness.The next head of the Army has been named as General Sir Roly Walker, so Sitrep takes a look through his CV to see what experience he brings, and explains the challenges he’s taking on.And we go into The Valley of Death with the Welsh Cavalry, on a unique desert exercise where unseen controllers keep changing the game to push troops to their very limits.

HMS Diamond has been sent to the Red Sea after missile and drone attacks against British owned cargo vessels, and RAF spy-planes have been deployed to search for hostages held in Gaza.Professor Michael Clarke and former Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe explain what these assets and personnel can achieve, the limitations & risks of their missions, and the possibility of more UK military capability joining them.Sitrep also looks at another big deployment much closer to home, a new Royal Navy task group trying to protect critical undersea power and data cables, alongside European allies.And does military history repeat itself, or just rhyme? Kate talks to military historian Lucy Betteridge-Dyson, General Sir Mike Jackson and General Lord Richards about how the study of past conflicts shapes the wars of today.

Sitrep’s Simon Newton has just returned from Ukraine - he reports for Sitrep from a drone testing centre where new models are trialled before being used in combat.Sitrep also hears from the former Champion Boxer, and now Mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, on his country’s will to resist.Also on Sitrep, as tensions remain high in the Middle East, Britain deploys a Type 45 Destroyer HMS Diamond to the Gulf and America sends the USS Eisenhower through the Strait of Hormuz. Sitrep looks at how Aircraft carriers are used to deploy both hard and soft power and hears from the Commanding Officer of the UK’s biggest warship HMS Prince of Wales.  

As winter sweeps across Ukraine the ideal window for its counter-offensive is now closed, with seemingly minimal gains from five months of hard fighting. So what happens next? Sitrep assesses whether Ukraine has another chance for a significant fightback next year, and if so how it could do that.Professor Michael Clarke, Ukrainian researcher Mariia Zolkina, and former infantry officer Ed Arnold discuss the military options, and we hear from Kyiv about the mood there.And we get an insight into one of Britain’s newest military units, the National Cyber Force, from Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes who oversees their defensive and offensive operations.

Cyber-warfare was is no longer simply science-fiction, it is now a military fact that hits hard. Military communications, power systems and nuclear processing plants have all been taken offline in recent years by purely digital attacks. The UK’s capability for this domain sits in the National Cyber Force, created three years ago as part of Strategic Command, bringing together military and intelligence teams for both defensive and offensive cyber operations. Kate Gerbeau talks to Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes, the Deputy Commander of Stratcom, about the cyber threats the UK faces and how the force is tackling them.

The Army’s future is built around the new Ajax armoured fighting vehicle. After years of delays, faults, and even injuries to troops, ministers say the Ajax programme is now ‘in recovery’.We take a look for ourselves, from the production line to training on Salisbury plain and hear from soldiers using the first of the vehicles.Another cold-war treaty has collapsed. It aimed to prevent surprise attacks by limiting Russia and NATO’s options for massing their military might. We assess whether NATO will take advantage of the extra flexibility it’s just got.Plus the British Army’s former top legal adviser in Iraq talks us through the laws of war, and how the big questions he faced in Basra 20 years ago are mirrored in Gaza right now.

Every single country in the UN is signed up to the same laws of war, but Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is reminding us interpretations of those laws often differ.In this extra Sitrep podcast Kate Gerbeau talks to Rev. Nicholas Mercer, who was the British Army’s top legal adviser in Iraq 20 years ago.He explains the key principles that govern the legality of military action, how he applied them in the midst of battle, and how the Israel Gaza war mirrors many of the difficult decisions he faced in Basra.

He’s been called a strategic and tactical genius – but he also abandoned tens of thousands of his soldiers to their deaths.Sitrep goes behind the Hollywood gloss of the new Napoleon film to assess his true military legacy, and Professor Michael Clarke explains how Napoleonic innovations are still used in wars today.Japan is on a massive military spending spree aiming to become the worlds 3rd largest military budget. We assess what military capability it has, and what it needs to face down China and North Korea.Ukraine’s Commander in Chief has declared the war in his country at stalemate. But why, and what does it tell us about tensions at the top in Kyiv. Simon Newton explains all.

Japan is one of the world’s third biggest economic power, but until now its military power has come nowhere close to matching that.That’s changing though, with a 5-year defence-spending spree to include new counter-strike capabilities which will enable Japan to fire on enemy land for the first time since World War Two.Kate Gerbeau talks to the author of ‘Japan as a Global Military Power’, Dr Chris Hughes, about how capable Japan’s forces already are, what the extra spending will add, and why Britain is key to Tokyo’s plan for greater military might.