The British military deployed 9,000 personnel in ceremonial and supporting duties on Saturday’s coronation, nearly 5% of all the UK armed forces, in the largest display of official pageantry for more than 70 years.
But the carefully choreographed effort, eight months in the planning, comes at a time when recruitment is falling and the image projected by the army on parade is, some observers say, far removed from the needs of the modern military.
Iain Overton, the director of Action on Armed Violence, specialising in military research, asked whether the “anachronistic militarism of bearskins and banners” made sense as armies become “increasingly reliant on drones” and other new technologies.
The size of the deployment as part of Operation Golden Orb for the coronation significantly exceeded other recent military operations, including the emergency evacuations from Sudan and Afghanistan.
Slightly more than 1,000 personnel were involved in the recent week-long emergency airlift from Sudan, when 2,197 Britons and others were rescued in more than 20 flights. A similar number were part of the Operation Pitting evacuation from Kabul in August 2021.
On Saturday in central London, 4,000 military personnel were involved in the 30-minute procession that led King Charles back to Buckingham Palace in his state coach, including plume-wearing members of the horse-mounted Household Cavalry.
Nineteen military bands were among those on display, and according to the Ministry of Defence’s carefully produced 106-page commentary, one figure, Garrison Sgt Maj Vern Stokes, played an important role in keeping them organised.
The MoD said Stokes had “designed a method of uniting all 19 processional bands across the length of the processional route (over a mile), ensuring they can strike up at the same time and maintain the constant beat”.
A former paratrooper told the Guardian he believed the high-profile role of the military in the coronation would have a positive impact, arguing that images such as those of 5,000 soldiers arriving into Waterloo station on the day of the event would help break down barriers between the public and the military.
Overton, however, questioned whether “the comforts of the parade ground may impede innovation and even hinder recruitment”. Recruitment was down 23% last year to 11,570 as applications to all three services fell, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Few Britons are likely to want to see the army repeat the costly engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the 15-month-long war in Ukraine has demonstrated a need to provide up-to-date military support and training to allied nations under attack from authoritarian aggressors.
A particular feature of the Ukrainian conflict has been the heavy use of drones, requiring a marriage between traditional military skills and high technology, a point emphasised by the British army’s current recruitment advert, featuring a young female solider using a tiny robot drone.
But Overton asked whether if it was realistic to have “ancient traditions at the core of our military” while simultaneously asking it to be innovative. “What young programmer looks at that spectacle of marching bands and thinks this speaks to them?” he said.
Traditionally, the British army has not deployed modern weapons at coronations and other ceremonials, arguing that public displays of nuclear missiles or tanks are for authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China.
But it had been intended for the RAF to fly Typhoon fighters, plus new Rivet Joint and Poseidon surveillance planes, in a special flypast while the king was on the palace balcony.
That was thwarted by the most traditional of British difficulties, the poor weather, forcing the aerial display to be cut down to helicopters plus the Red Arrows display team.
“The full flypast would have been very modern,” said Ben Barry, a former army brigadier and military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But I think it would have been very difficult to fly drones in close formation with piloted aircraft, for air traffic control safety reasons,” he added.
