Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE

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780 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 5 Aug

Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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TRIGGERnometry · Britain Isn't Ready For A Real War - Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE · 5 Aug 2026 podcast

Now, not necessarily saying that that is a metric, but I think it just gives people an idea of what the contraction has been and the disinvestment.

And it's not one individual government.

It's been all of them over the last 20 or so years have disinvested

We invested in what we call urgent operational requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan, but counterinsurgency is a very different type of warfare.

In the olden days, like our allies, like the Americans and others, the Australians, we could do it all, but we just focused on counterinsurgency.

And I think morale in the British military also dipped.

Now, I talk about my life up until 2012, where pretty much every year I was doing some sort of operational tour somewhere.

And some people thought, you know, crikey, that's hard yards.

And, you know, certainly my family and my wife were completely hacked off with it.

But actually, as a professional, whatever guys it is, as a professional soldier doing your thing every day, what keeps you sharp and keeps you going?

Now, after 2012, when we sort of downscaled in Iraq and Afghanistan, young men and girls in the British military were not going on operational tours.

So they weren't getting that excitement.

And I think morale dipped.

And when morale dips and you're not being funding, you then reach a place

It is only really since 24th of February 2022, when Putin invaded Ukraine, that suddenly countries like in Europe and Britain in particular realised, crikey, we don't have a credible conventional deterrence, so started to reinvest in it.

um but when you drop so low it takes a heck of a long time to get back there so very long answer to your question at the moment the british military and the british army and same within royal navy and air force are trying to recover from 20 years of disinvestment and low morale to get back to where we should be and i think you what we're learning in ukraine and what the ukraine military is showing us you can get there and you can get there quickly

but it takes funding.

And I suppose the final thing I'll say on this, morale, we recruiting for the British military has, until quite recently, been dire.

And there are a whole lot of reasons for this.

But unless you can recruit the right people at the right time, you are going to suffer.

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