Episode 12 : Repurposing the British Army with Nick Moran

Western Armies are trying to do too many things with too few resources. That's not a controversial statement, in fact it's the opening line of a paper that's been turning heads in defence circles since it landed in April 2026.

In this episode, we sit down with Nick Moran, a 20-year British Army veteran who served in the Special Mission Unit community, with NATO, and alongside the Royal Gurkha Rifles, to dig into his RealClearDefense piece, "Repurposing the British Army." Nick argues that what's needed isn't a minor adjustment. It's a fundamental reframing of how the British Army thinks about itself.

We get into the case for anchoring British force design to the Nordic region, why geography has to come before capability, and what Norway has to do with UK national security. We talk about the three master effects of land power: Hold, Turn, andStrike, and whether the British Army has quietly lost the art ofdefence after two decades of counterinsurgency. We also tackle the hardest question of all: how do you generate mass in war when you're running a professional army in peace?

Nick also pulls no punches on conscription, the vague "three years to be ready" warning, and what the lessons of Ukraine actually mean for how Britain should be building its force today.