At the same time that France is rediscovering de Gaulle thanks to the very good movies « La bataille De Gaulle », it could be that a new British version of him has emerged in the UK who’s name is Al Carns, former ministry of the armed force who courageously resigned a few months ago from Keirs government to express his strong disagreement with the current UK defense policy.
Would some Brits be braver and more clear-sighted on the reality of the situation we face than my fellow French citizens, officiers and politicians?
Who indeed in France is standing up to tell of few truths to the nation, as de Gaulle did in the 1930’s, even if it may cost him or her a bit in term of career of … pension?

I strongly recommend the listening of the « Battlegroup » podcast episode where Al Carns explains to Saul David the reasons behind his resignation and why he disagrees on the what and above all on the how the approach of UK and Western countries defense policies should dramatically change.

Battleground Podcast – 422. Al Carns MP on Why Western Defence Policy Must Evolve | Free Listening on Podbean App

Below a summary I did with the help of AI transcription which rathers the best quotes of this very important interview:

Al Carns MP on Transforming UK Defence

Summary of Battleground Podcast Episode 422 — « Al Carns MP on Why Western Defence Policy Must Evolve »

Host: Saul David. Guest: Al Carns MP, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak; former Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Armed Forces (September 2025–June 2026); 24-year Royal Marines / Special Boat Service veteran. Goalhanger Podcasts / Acast.

Carns resigned as Armed Forces Minister in June 2026 over three issues: an unclosed defence funding gap, a defence investment plan he judged not transformational, and the unresolved Northern Ireland Legacy Bill. This summary focuses on his central argument, developed at length in the interview: that the character of warfare has changed faster than Britain’s ability to buy, organise and pay for the right capability, and on what he says needs to change in budgeting, procurement and force structure to catch up. Timestamps in brackets refer to the source transcript.

Money alone will not fix defense

Carns says the widely reported £28 billion funding gap (against a Treasury offer closer to £15 billion) was one reason he resigned, but insists funding is not the whole problem. He also objected to the defence investment plan itself, brought to him only two weeks before publication, as « decidedly average, » adding drone and data capability on the edges rather than putting transformation at the central core. His condition for returning to government is seeing both the money and a credible plan to spend it differently:

“Unless we transform the way in which we spend the money, make the best use of taxpayers’ money and transform in line with some of the lessons in Ukraine, it’s pointless giving defense more money because they’ll buy more big tanks and stuff that isn’t necessarily [what’s needed].”  (06:42)

Replace exquisite platforms with cheap mass

His central procurement argument is that multi-decade platform programmes cannot keep pace with a threat environment being reshaped by cheap, AI-enabled drones and civilian technology.

“If you’re planning a capability 10 to 15 years out, it will be overtaken by civilian tech. And the ability to then retrofit that civilian tech into the hardware that you’re buying becomes exceptionally difficult.”  (12:47)

Drawing directly on Ukraine, he argues the UK must shift toward large numbers of cheap, software-defined systems rather than relying on small numbers of exquisite ones it cannot replace fast enough in a war of attrition:

“We need to get out of the model of buying high-end sophisticated systems that we can’t reproduce at the speed or rate required to sustain a conflict against a major power… That is usually cheap hardware with sophisticated software.”  (13:08)

He is careful to say this is not an argument against high-end capability altogether; fifth- and sixth-generation systems still matter for decisive moments, but must be treated as a scarce, high-value layer surrounded by expendable mass:

“There is a requirement for fifth and sixth generation systems. They can provide decisive capability in the midst of a conflict. But we’ve got to recognise we can’t reproduce them fast enough to sustain a war against a major power… You surround them with hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, of very simple hardware with very sophisticated software.”  (13:48–14:29)

To make the case to the military chiefs before he left uniform, Carns used comparisons such as a sniper trained for one shot at 800 metres versus a teenager trained to strike a target 37 kilometres away with a drone; sinking a ship 1,000 nautical miles offshore with ten untrained people and roughly £1 million of drones; and matching a share of an F-35’s capability, at longer range and lower risk, « for the price of the wheel of the F-35. » (02:27–03:46)

The current money is an add-on, not a transformation

Carns says he pushed for a minimum of £4 billion for uncrewed systems, doctrine and force change. What the Ministry of Defence has announced instead — around £5 billion over four years, roughly £1.25 billion a year against an approximately £30 billion annual equipment budget — falls well short in his view:

“5 billion over four years is what, 1.25 billion a year, on a 30 billion pound a year equipment budget. That’s not a revolution, that’s the lace on the edge of your wedding dress.”  (33:10)

Note: Carns separately describes the equipment budget as « 13 billion a year » and says « 15 billion of that goes into nuclear deterrent » in the same exchange. The figures as spoken are inconsistent, likely a slip in live conversation, so the precise numbers should be treated with that caveat rather than taken as exact.

His deeper complaint is that new capability is being layered on top of legacy inventory rather than replacing it:

“We’re still keeping all the old kit… Tell me the kit we’re giving up in the defence investment plan, and I’ll tell you what kit: we’re giving up hardly any, because we’re keeping everything and then adding on drones on the edge. It needs to be a transformation.”  (32:54–33:10)

Build a separate force, not a bolt-on

As Armed Forces Minister, Carns pushed to establish the Uncrewed Centre of Excellence in Swindon, which he describes as the largest indoor uncrewed-systems training facility in the world, to house drone governance (including the Military Aviation Authority), a new Uncrewed Task Force, and space for industry testing and trials. The Task Force was intended to reach company strength by the end of this year and regiment strength by the end of next, with a reserve element designed to pull in digital and drone talent from outside the normal recruiting pipeline.

He argues this needs to be a distinct organisation with its own training, governance, budget and personnel, not an attachment to existing infantry or commando units, because absorbing drone warfare into legacy formations would mean changing training, tactics, doctrine and concepts all at once, which he considers impractical:

“Trying to make three rifles or four, two commando, a drone force is exceptionally difficult, because all of your training, all your training tactics and procedures, all your doctrines and concepts need changed… it’s really difficult to do that because some of them you still need to keep, but you can’t necessarily do both at the same time.”  (31:22)

Rebalance the industrial base and rethink logistics

The government’s plan to build six new armament factories in the UK is, in Carns’s view, a step in the right direction but wrongly weighted. He would split the investment differently — four armament factories and two major drone factories — warning that mass artillery production is itself increasingly vulnerable:

“I’d much rather have four armaments factories and two major drone factories, because what we’ll end up doing is producing tons of artillery only to find that it’s increasingly outgunned by drones, and therefore you can’t fire the gun, because as soon as you do it gets struck by a drone, as the Ukrainians are finding now.”  (34:14)

He also argues the shift to drones is not just a front-line procurement choice; it reshapes the entire logistics tail. Using a rough lethality comparison — one drone equating to roughly 22 artillery rounds in effect — he points out that sustaining an equivalent volume of shellfire instead would require well over a hundred heavy trucks a day to the front line, plus the rail and shipping capacity behind them:

“The whole system needs to change, not just the drone on the front line. It actually changes your whole equipment supply and logistical pipeline, and then your supply chain.”  (33:42)

Defence spending should buy resilience, not just kit

Carns frames the UK’s pledged rise to 5% of GDP — 3% by 2030, 3.5% by 2035, plus 1.5% on wider national security — as an opportunity to fund resilience broadly rather than hardware alone: industrial capacity, supply chain resilience, energy security and diversification, and the social fabric that lets the country absorb sustained pressure.

“We get obsessed with numbers of ships, numbers of soldiers, numbers of planes, bombs, bullets and battleships. The reality is the strength of any nation is its national resilience… it’s the countries that have the ability to sustain the fight over a period of time that tend to win.”  (19:29–20:14)

He links this to the depth of the reserve behind the roughly 70,000-strong regular army, arguing that attritional conflict erodes the best-trained troops first, and that resilience — the capacity to regenerate and sustain — is what ultimately determines outcomes rather than the headline size of the front line.

Where he sees Britain most exposed today

Beyond hardware, Carns names sustained cyber intrusion, industrial espionage, and above all information operations as underappreciated threats — citing Russia’s roughly £1.5 billion annual propaganda budget and its ability to inflame social and constitutional divisions (he raises Scottish independence sentiment and Northern Ireland as fault lines) far more cheaply than conventional rearmament. On Ukraine, he cautions against writing off Russia’s capacity to keep grinding forward despite roughly 35,000 monthly casualties, and expects that if Russia becomes boxed in on the battlefield it may probe elsewhere — the Arctic, the Baltic, or an uninhabited island — to test NATO’s Article 5 resolve and force a negotiated end on its own terms.

Bottom line

Carns’s position is that the UK’s stated funding increase is necessary but, on current plans, not sufficient. He wants a defence budget explicitly weighted toward cheap, software-defined mass alongside a smaller high-end layer; a standalone uncrewed force built from scratch rather than retrofitted onto existing units; an industrial and logistics base resized around that mix rather than legacy platforms; and a broader resilience agenda — industrial, social and informational — funded alongside traditional hardware.

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