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General Sir David Richards speech at Chatham House; ENGLAND: London: Chatham House: 2009 Annual Defence Lecture:INTGeneral Sir David Richards (Chief of the General Staff) (new Head of the British Army) speech SOT- May I start by thanking Paul Cornish and Chatham House for inviting me togive this prestigious address. I have only been in role for 2 and a half weeksso whether I am qualified I am not certain – but it is a great pleasure to behere. When I joined the Army early in 1971 I did not anticipate being CGS andbeing in a position to do such things. Neither, incidentally, did my friends!I make no apologies for the fact that this speech is a development of others Ihave made on the same subject. I sense we are slowly winning the argumentand getting there but key elements bear repetition. Before I get into the meat,let me give you the headlines:The character of war in my judgement is fundamentally changing:· Globalisation is increasing the likelihood of conflict with non-state andfailed state actors, and reducing the likelihood of state on statewarfare.· State on state conflict will not disappear – but its character willchange, becoming more asymmetrical, complex and mosaic.· Our armed forces and other national security instruments acrossgovernment must get better at tackling the challenges of this newsecurity environment.This includes re-engineering non-military means to be relevant andeffective security tools and:Ensuring our armed forces are relevant to emerging securitychallenges and the increasingly sophisticated adversaries we willface.· To succeed, we must examine rigorously what capabilities we needand where we must rebalance our investment in Defence – andrebalance we must, not from one service to another but from one typeof conflict to another, for we simply can’t afford to retain a full suite ofcapability for all eventualities.· I also want to speak about Afghanistan, for the out...