BFBS Sitrep – Details, episodes & analysis

The Defence Secretary has said “we will do our part” as the government prepares us for a “difficult” budget, fuelling speculation that some big defence projects, like new planes or ships, could be axed.

Sitrep’s Professor Michael Clarke explains why the Chancellor won’t be making any such announcements, but that that everything is up for consideration, and how difficult choices will have to be made early next year.

Also on Sitrep why the Armed Forces are pushing big into e-sports.  We talk to the Army team manager from international Call of Duty tournament Code Bowl.

And the recently retired Surgeon General, Major General Tim Hodgetts, talks to us about soldiering, saving lives and how writing war poems helped him with both. 

Major General Tim Hodgetts served 41 years as an Army doctor, rising to become Surgeon General.

He’s lived through gunfire and explosions while trying to save lives, from Germany via Northern Ireland, to Afghanistan. 

Throughout much of that time he also wrote poems as a way to help him process those experiences, but now he’s published some of them in an anthology, “Frontlines and Lifelines”

Major General Hodgetts talks to Kate Gerbeau about his poems, the events that inspired them, and his contributions to revolutionising military medicine.

The Allied Reaction Force is the new “tip of the spear” for NATO’s military power. It’s  described as a strategic, high-readiness, force-generated, multi-domain and multinational capability.

The ARF replaces the NATO Response Force and Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), as part of a radical update of military structures and plans since the invasion of Ukraine.

The idea is to pack more military punch more quickly, and significantly the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) has been delegated authority to deploy the ARF without having to wait for NATO’s decision-making committees to give approval.

General Sir James Everard, a former Deputy SACEUR, explains why the ARF matters, how it will work, and the UK’s part in this new force that sits at the very top of NATO’s plans to be able to mobilise up to 300,000 troops if needed.

It’s spring but there’s no sign yet of the ‘spring offensives’ promised by both sides in Ukraine. They are quietly preparing though.

Professor Michael Clarke explains the big movements of Russia’s best troops, and some psychological warfare by Kyiv.

A senior officer tells fellow servicewomen they must report sex attacks to police. We ask why some are still not coming forward despite an overhaul of investigations.

And three years on from Brexit, Britain holds talks about new defence ties with the EU. Is it just about repairing a broken friendship or could it benefit the UK’s Armed Forces? 

Chris Hunter is a decorated high-threat bomb disposal operator. He had been in Iraq, on operation Telic, for just four days when he was shot in an ambush.

Two decades later he lives in the country that nearly claimed his life and works for a charity clearing explosives left by the Islamic State terror group.

He tells Kate Gerbeau how he now has friends who may have tried to kill him years ago, what life is like in Iraq 20 years after the invasion, and what motivates him to stay for as long as he can.

Exactly 20 years ago more than 40,000 British troops were deployed on Operation Telic, to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist.

The legacy of that invasion is complicated, and Sitrep explains how it’s shaped the British Armed Forces of today.

General Lord Dannatt, former Chief of General Staff, tells us how it made us more risk-averse, but developed leadership skills that remain in today’s servicemen and women.

Plus decorated bomb disposal operator Chris Hunter tells us why he’s now living in the country where he was shot, and is still working to make it a safer place.

The Chancellor has promised another 11 billion pounds for Defence over the next five years, but after soaring inflation and big donations to Ukraine how much extra is left over?

Professor of Defence Studies Michael explains what it means for the spending power of Defence, and what it might mean for the future of British Forces as a new masterplan for their size and shape is drawn up.

We also take a closer look at the next generation of Royal Navy attack submarines, which will take up more than a quarter of the new cash.

Just days after the Ministry of Defence launched its own TikTok channel the Chinese owned app has been banned from government devices. A former army intelligence officer explains the risks.

75 years since NATO was created to defend Europe, Sitrep asks what’s needed to do that job properly today.

From organising hundreds of thousands of troops, to digging ditches and ensuring bridges can carry tanks, the challenges are explained by Professor Michael Clarke and Oana Lungescu, a former senior advisor to the NATO Secretary General.

Part of the jigsaw is the new Alliance Reaction Force. It’s commander, Lieutenant General Lorenzo D’Addario tells Sitrep how the ARF plans to pack more punch more quickly.

And former Royal Navy Commander chooses his ‘moment that made me’, when an engineering mistake flooded his ship and threatened to sink it.

Two Royal Navy minehunters, given to Ukraine last year, are still in UK waters because they can’t get into the Black Sea while the war continues.

But Ukraine’s Navy is using them to prepare for when they can start clearing the hundreds of explosives lying on the sea-bed. Sitrep’s Simon Newton has been watching some of that work on Exercise Sea Breeze in Scottish waters.

Mark Rutte has been appointed as the next NATO Secretary General, so we ask a former alliance insider what the job involves and what the new leader will bring to the role.

And another veteran shares the moment that made them. Professor Neil Greenberg tells Sitrep how hearing a radio interview by chance led him from young medical student to a world respected authority on military mental health via many Royal Navy ships and submarines.

Sitrep analyses the main party manifestos for the general election in which defence has had its highest profile in decades.

AI and data collection are promised to bring a revolution to military capability.  But they could also make it harder to work with partners and allies by creating a new “language barrier”, so how do we avoid that?

And the 2am phone call ordering a Brigadier to take his men to an unexpected war within days.  Julian Thompson, who led 3 Commando Brigade, in the Falklands shares his story in the first of our new interview series “The Moment That Made Me”.