Major war could destroy army in six months - minister

"In a war of scale - not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine - our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended, as part of a broader multinational coalition, in six months to a year," he added. In a speech on reserves at the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank, external in London, Carns, the minister for veterans and people, said: "That doesn't mean to say we need a bigger army, but it does mean we must be able to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis. The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process. Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks and challenges that we require, and we cannot seamlessly integrate the very best experts into the heart of our armed forces.”