Former commander: 'Questionable' whether British Armed forces can defend UK

Britain's armed forces have been so weakened by cuts it is "questionable" whether they are still capable of defending the country, the former top UK commander at Nato has warned.

General Sir Richard Shirreff - a former deputy supreme allied commander - said he doubted whether Britain could meet its obligation under the Nato treaty to maintain sufficient forces to defend itself.

In a interview with BBC World News's Hardtalk, Sir Richard warned that it would have a "massive credibility impact" on Britain's position in the alliance if defence spending were now to drop below the Nato target of 2% of GDP.His comments come amid growing disquiet among some Conservative MPs and senior military figures at David Cameron's refusal to commit to maintaining the 2% target into the next parliament.

"I think it is questionable whether Britain could meet its commitment under article 3 of the Nato treaty, which says that Britain/nations should be able to defend themselves," Sir Richard said."I think the horse is out of the stable here. For example, I think if you have an island nation like Britain without a maritime patrol aircraft capability to protect and guard our seas you have to question our ability to defend ourselves."

Sir Richard warned that a failure to meet the 2% target would go down particularly badly as Mr Cameron had trumpeted an agreement for all alliance members to move towards it at last year's Nato summit in Newport.

"For Britain to step back now, having made such a song and dance about other nations raising their defence budgets to 2%, for Britain to now dip below 2%, has a massive credibility impact on Britain's position in Nato and people frankly will just lose... patience with Britain," he said.

Sir Richard also said Nato would be unable to repel a Russian attack on the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia amid fears the three alliance members could be the next target of President Vladimir Putin after his incursions into Ukraine."In order for Nato to ensure that Putin did not try it on in the Baltic states, Nato would have to have, and be able to maintain, a reasonable presence permanently in the Baltic states," he said.

"Nato has got a Baltic air police mission in the Baltic states and I know since the Nato summit ... there are regular rotations of troops training in the Baltic states."But on top of that, Nato needs not only to be able to maintain a reasonable presence there, Nato needs to have very strong capable reserves and capable of being there in double quick time, together with control of the sea and control of the air."Now, unless Nato's got that and unless Nato can demonstrably show that it's got a strong defence and a strong conventional defence, Mr Putin may just be tempted to try it on and we need to avoid that at every eventuality."