Goodbye squaddies, hello hackers

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/defence-and-security-blog/2013/oct/22/army-cyber-hackers

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The British army seems to be in dire straits.

According to a document leaked recently to the Daily Telegraph (the military's favoured conduit as civil servants and ministers at the Ministry of Defence stifle debate over anything remotely contentious) plans to restructure the army are "failing" because cuts to the defence budget are putting off potential new recruits.

The 10-page report, dated 6 August and classified "restricted", referred to "redundancy downsizing, drawdown in Afghanistan and a reported (if unproven) increase in Mental Health issues".

"All these make for a hostile recruiting environment", it said, warning that<br />the army faced "increased risk to its structure and operational capability".

Or, as Britain's new chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Houghton, told the BBC this week, he has taken over at a time of "huge challenges".

Houghton, a Yorkshireman and Oxford University history graduate, is politically astute. He is thoughtful and calm, a good person, it might be said, to head the military as the army faces a very uncertain future as British troops prepare to leave Afghanistan.

Asked about morale, Houghton replied that "it's not about individual happiness". If anything had demonstrated the resilience of the morale of the British armed forces, he added, "it is the last couple of years - and the fact they still continue to perform, and are one of our nation's unique selling points."

Point taken. Soldiers may be held in public esteem, and are rightly praised for their bravery, but this has no bearing on plans to slash the army to 82,000 from 102,000.

The army will continue to suffer while so much of the defence budget is being earmarked for the navy in the shape of two large aircraft carriers and a new fleet of Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

However, Houghton suggested the cuts were not as dramatic as they might seem."You can't compare these 82,000 regulars of the 21st Century with Victorian figures. These are 82,000 regulars, the vast percentage of which are deployable capability, not mess waiters or guards", he said.

More significant were his carefully-chosen words on what role Britain's armed forces would be engaged in future, once they leave Afghanistan, particularly after the Commons vote on Syria that rejected UK military action.

"Well,", said Houghton, "I think the message is that we've got to be quite hard-nosed about defining what the core national interest is when we want to use our armed forces, and the utility of doing so."

That did not rule out military action abroad, but it may well be rather different from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We want to influence, to use our unique access in all sorts of countries to build capacity, to stabilise, and prevent conflict," Houghton explains, "as well as being the 'go-to' organisation for domestic crisis, whether it's fire strikes, foot and mouth, or Olympic security."

That seemed to signal the end of any more significant combat operations involving British soldiers.

Houghton appeared reluctant to be drawn into the potential crisis over recruitment and the MoD's ambitious plan to increase the number of reservists by more than a third to 30,000. Recruitment is falling well behind the army's targets.

"We've got to get out the message that people who join now are joining something that is exciting, will give them all sorts of rewards and has a very, very strong future", said Houghton.

Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, has suggested that one way of attracting recruits is to set up a cyber strike force, a plan he <br />announced ahead of the recent Tory party conference in Manchester.

The armed forces, like GCHQ, is desperately short of computer wizards. So short that the army is now inviting convicted computer hackers to join its cyber combat force.

In a remarkable attempt to turn poachers into gamekeepers, recruitment would be focused on "capability development" rather than "personality traits", Lt Col Michael White told BBC Newsnight on Monday.

But according one former hacker, Mustafa al-Bassam, now a computer science student at King's College London, the revelations by Edward Snowden about the extent of mass surveillance carried out by America's National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ - had dissuaded him from using his cyber skills to protect UK national security.

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