Britain is losing its hybrid war with Russia and is unprepared for conflict, warns top former US aide

Britain has failed in its efforts to wage a hybrid war with Russia and is unprepared for a wider global conflict, a senior former government aide and senior analysts have warned.

While the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz see the world reeling from high oil, petroleum, food and fertilizer prices, and conflict continues in Ukraine, basic planning to protect the UK is not happening.

Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council director for European and Russian affairs in Donald Trump’s first administration, describes the UK’s contingencies in dealing with current and future disruptions as “not fit for purpose”.

Dr Hill, who co-authored the UK’s 2025 Strategic Defense Review, will give a speech at the Imperial War Museum this week aimed at galvanizing Britain’s response to threats to its infrastructure.

In a harsh interview with Independent, He warned: “In the UK our systems are not designed to deal with major disruption. It is up to leadership to come up with a plan because what exists now is not fit for purpose.”

“We have seen the effects of blockages and transport disruptions in the Gulf. The NHS cannot cope with mass deaths and we need to create food supplies and systems to cope with import disruptions.”

“We have no archive of digitized maps and no analogue systems we can use if digital systems fail. This is an urgent national debate that needs to happen now.”

Rector of Durham University, Dr. Hill says there is no single minister responsible for national resilience in times of crisis, and there is no sign the government is taking action.

His intervention came after former NATO secretary-general Lord Robertson, co-author of the Strategic Defense Review (SDR), accused the government of “corrosive indifference” over the failure to implement the review’s 62 recommendations.

Their criticism largely focused on the political impasse facing the government; it was a balance between spending on areas such as welfare and the need to expand military capabilities.

Britain’s security officials have increasingly warned that the country has been in a modern-day war for months. “We are now operating in an area between peace and war,” Blaise Metreweli, head of MI6, said last year.

The real threat was Russia, he said, as did the commanders of the British army, navy and air force.

But Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war is not limited to military targets; Supply lines, power grids, cyber attacks, and even food are all vulnerable.

“There are so many soft targets in the UK it is impossible to count them,” Hill says, highlighting that the country does not have an effective system to track even small drones that could be weaponized to “fly through the windows of the tallest buildings.”

The UK is seen as largely vulnerable to long-range missile attacks (or drones) and vulnerable to attacks on military and civilian submarine communications cables, gas pipelines and electricity links to Europe.

Over the past two years there has been a 30 per cent increase in Russian surveillance of some of the UK’s most sensitive undersea strategic communications and supply lines.

Royal United Services Institute senior research fellow in naval power, Dr. “The preparatory moment for sabotage takes years and that is what we are seeing,” warns Sidarth Kaushal.

The Royal Navy and its NATO allies recently revealed the work of the Russian Akula attack submarine and two undersea spy boats probing British cables and other critical infrastructure.

These operations have been ongoing for decades under the leadership of Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, known as GUGI, and NATO has no equivalent maritime espionage system.

Other vulnerabilities in the UK include the danger of the country’s gas supplies from Norway being cut off in times of war. Both Dr Hill and Dr Kaushal point to attacks on the Langeled and Vesterled pipelines, which supply 60-80 per cent of the country’s gas.

They warned that the country has little capacity to cope when the dangers posed by tens of thousands of cyber attacks on the UK’s critical infrastructure every day are taken into account.

The SDR, published last June, said the UK should: “Build national resilience to threats above and below the threshold of armed attack through a concerted, collective effort involving industry, the financial sector, civil society, academia, education and communities, among others.”

Dr Hill warns that although some private companies have built resilience into their systems, there is no national, much less mandatory, program to survive a disaster or the kind of attack Norway, Sweden and Finland are preparing.

He said Britain should devolve power to local government to improve its capacity to deal with disasters that could otherwise leave the country in trouble. Ukraine has been a model for the ability to respond to a major invasion.

The mayor of each city is responsible for coordinating emergency services. Each state governor is responsible for the broader management and resourcing of civilian survival in the face of Russia’s relentless attacks and works closely with the military.

Mayor Ihor Terekov demonstrated in Kharkiv Independent It’s a secret bunker where all civilian emergency responders, from energy to fire services, work with military officials who operate early warning systems so that a response can be prepared while drones and missiles are in the air before they even land.

There is no such system in England.

Stephen Arundell, Vice-President of the Emergency Planning Society, a professional body of experts in the field, adds: “When you factor in global external events and the plausible risk of kinetic war on the European mainland – if Russia decides to go all in – this becomes significantly challenging for the UK.”

“Because frankly we don’t invest in resilient issues because we’ve had such a long and sustained period of peace.”

The UK defense review called for a “whole of society” response to hybrid and future threats and attacks facing the UK. Sir Keir Starmer endorsed the idea and called for further work in this area.

But experts all agree that the UK remains far behind its European allies and that politicians have failed to spend more on training and equipping local authorities and civil defense units, while also avoiding legislation that would force the private sector to strengthen its own defences.

In response to the issues raised, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement: “We have the resources we need to protect the UK from attack, whether from our own soil or from abroad. The UK is ready to defend itself 24/7 and as a founding member of NATO, we benefit from the alliance’s collective defense capabilities, including integrated air and missile defense systems.”

“This government has made air and missile defense a priority after years of underfunding. That’s why last June, following the Strategic Defense Review, we announced up to £1 billion in new funding to strengthen our defenses and keep the UK safe. This investment also increases the UK’s contribution to NATO, enabling us to play our part in protecting our allies and ourselves.”