British army gears up for painful challenge 'Economic necessity has been the mother of invention as far as the army is concerned,' says General Sir Peter Wall Sitting in his austere office in the Ministry of Defence building on Whitehall, General Sir Peter Wall reflects on a momentous - but painful - week for the British army. "If you had said to me when I took over as head of the army two years ago that this was the situation I was going to have to deal with, I'd have said "Crikey that's going to be a bit challenging,"" he admits. Yet while Gen Wall, chief of the General Staff, acknowledges the huge focus this week on cuts to his forces, he believes he has also unveiled an exciting blueprint for the army of the future. "Economic necessity has been the mother of invention as far as the army is concerned," he tells the FT in a reference to the huge budgetary cuts that have driven reform of Britain's land forces. It has not been easy getting here. But we're ending up with a really good army to be in, one that is the best in its class. The government's announcements this week have certainly been alarming. Regular soldiers will be cut by 20 per cent to 82,000 by the end of the decade, the lowest level since the Napoleonic wars. Seventeen leading units are to go, including historic battalions such as the Green Howards. To bolster its ranks, the army must increasingly rely on part-time reserves, often derided as "weekend warriors." The 61-year old CGS understands the disquiet. "One or two regiments will feel disaffected and feel the dice could have rolled differently," he says. But he ridicules the suggestion that generals are quitting in disgust. I'm confident that I've got the senior leadership of the army down to divisional and brigade level behind me on this. We've certainly given everyone the opportunity to protest. At first sight, Gen Wall might not seem the ideal man to implement "Army 2020," its biggest structural overhaul in half a century. A robust-looking sports fan, his experience has mainly been on operations. In Iraq, he commanded security in Basra at the head of 1st (UK) Armoured Division. More recently, he ran the UK effort in Iraq and Afghanistan as MoD director of operations. The Cambridge graduate and Royal Engineer has a "bluff manner," say colleagues, albeit with a "common touch." He is well liked by the rank and file, though relations with the other service chiefs have never been warm, some MoD officials say. As CGS, his moment of reckoning came last July when David Cameron decided the army had to be slashed to plug a huge hole in the MoD budget. Gen Wall was dismayed. It was very stressful at first, it came as a shock. It is not straightforward to do something like this when you are in the middle of an overseas campaign. But it's been very cathartic to be left alone to get on with working out a plan. The CGS's core argument is that after the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the UK is unlikely to undertake a similar campaign any time soon. "The zeitgeist in the post-Afghanistan environment is that we don't want to do one of those again in a hurry," he says. I understand that. In fact, from the army's point of view, we could do with a bit of a break. The army's focus is, therefore, to move from enduring campaigns to preparing for a range of contingencies. It will do more to train foreign armies to better manage their national security. It will do more at home to support civil authorities if there are breakdowns in, say, infrastructure. And it will maintain its core ability to conduct a heavy intervention abroad if needed. "We are creating an adaptable force with a broader repertoire of tasks," he says. Still, he has worries. First, there are the redundancies that the cuts imply. "One of the issues that needs the most careful handling is that we can expect between 8 and 10 per cent of the army to be made compulsorily redundant," he says. This will create a welter of unhappiness. Second, Gen Wall wants the government to commit this autumn to spending significantly on new barracks and facilities to house the 20,000 troops returning to the UK from Germany. It will be much easier for the army the earlier this gets done. Third, the army needs more equipment. Philip Hammond, defence secretary, has identified £8bn of uncommitted cash which the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force can bid for. "Our share of that uncommitted money will define our fortunes," he says. We need a fair proportion of it. Above all, he must persuade business to make a bigger commitment to the reserves, now that they are to play a bigger role on the front-line. In the US there is a deep sense of corporate social responsibility towards the reserves, and a stigma about companies that aren't supportive. We're going to need some of that attitude here. All this means that the drive to implement the army's new plan starts now. As he scans the photographs on his wall of 20 former chiefs, he is in no doubt of the challenge. It's as big as anything my predecessors have had to do. I've got enough time left in this job to get the bearing on it.