FROM THE EDITOR

At the risk of causing irreparable damage to my professional standing during the embryonic stages of my tenure as editor of The British Army Review, I will confess to temporarily reminiscing about Sesame Street as I digitally crossed the i’s and dotted the t’s on the pages of the current issue.

Not, I hasten to add, as a consequence of the content curated being in any way infantile – far from it, in fact, as you can discover for yourselves – but because as a logophile I couldn’t help but notice that of the 26 letters in the alphabet, one in particular was doing a lot of the heavy-lifting when it came to articulating what it means and takes to successfully mobilise an army. Despite the diversity of their expertise and experiences, our contributors consistently called upon a common character while analysing and exploring the trends, challenges and opportunities associated with mobilisation. Reposition, realign, re-boot, reassess and resilience, to name just a few, all feature repeatedly in this journal’s articles. So, please forgive me for taking a televisual trip down memory lane and mixing my order of battle with Oscar the Grouch, but this edition was very much ‘brought to you by the letter R’.

The reformatory language used to manifest Operation Mobilise chimes, coincidentally, with the evolution of this publication, which – I hope it has not gone unnoticed – returns to the fray with a refreshed appearance and renewed commitment from the CHACR to help the Army to develop and nurture the conceptual component of fighting power. The transformation challenge facing the Army is, of course, far greater than the redesign and compilation of a journal but The British Army Review serves to assist the Service as it considers the readjustments needed to meet tomorrow’s threats. To that end, I invite all those seeking to promote professional debate on any aspect of current or past military experience that has contemporary relevance to contribute to future editions. As expressed far more eloquently elsewhere in the new-look Review by Major General (Retired) Dr Andrew Sharpe, those in the Army can ill-afford to be Sesame Street-style puppets and rely on others to pull the necessary strings of change, so email your articles and ideas to editorBAR@chacr.org.uk

As the Chief of the General Staff suggests in his foreword, an Army that puts as much emphasis on its conceptual fitness programme as it does on its physical fitness programme is likely to get a head-start on its less thoughtful and thinking opponents. This edition of The British Army Review, with, we hope, new life and energy breathed into this venerable and respected publication, should act as a support to General Sanders’ main effort, and as a source of interesting and apposite articles to stimulate wider thought and cerebral engagement. We hope that you find it both interesting and professionally useful. – Andrew Simms