Wargame Day: Is the UK ready for a real Russian attack?

Summary

Sky News Daily: "Wargame Day: Is the UK Ready for a Real Russian Attack?"

Episode Date: October 6, 2025
Host: Sky News Daily (Niall Paterson)
Guests: Deborah Haynes (Defence Editor & Co-creator of War Game), Keir Giles (Russia Expert & War Game Russian Team), Dr. Rob Johnson (Director, Oxford’s Changing Character of War Centre; War Game Co-creator)

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Episode Overview

In this special episode, the Sky News Daily revisits its acclaimed "War Game" podcast series—an intense, role-play simulation that imagined a near-future conflict scenario in which Russia launches missile strikes, including at the heart of London’s Oxford Circus. With October 6th—the "attack day" in the fictional scenario—arriving in the real world, host Niall Paterson is joined by key creators and participants to reflect on what the exercise revealed about the UK's preparedness for war, the reality of Russian threats, lessons about alliances such as NATO, and chilling insights into both military and political mindsets on both sides.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Concept of the War Game

(03:02 - 04:39)

• Deborah Haynes describes the inception of the War Game:
  • Created to make the “niche” topics of national defence and resilience accessible and mainstream.
  • Brought together senior ex-politicians, military chiefs, and Russia experts in a credible, unscripted simulation:

    “They have no idea what is coming their way and they have to respond as they see fit.” (04:12, Deborah Haynes)

• The participants, including former ministers and top officials, role-played as a real government War Cabinet and Kremlin adversaries.

2. Russian Methods & Plausibility

(04:47 - 05:35)

• Keir Giles on the realism of the scenario:
  • The war game scenario was deemed plausible by actual experts who advise governments and NATO.
  • The specific behaviors and aggression simulated are consistent with those observed from Russia in real scenarios:

    “… All of them thought this was entirely plausible and entirely in accordance with how they might expect Russia to behave.” (05:27, Keir Giles)

3. Sub-threshold, "Gray Zone" Warfare and Escalation

(06:01 - 07:42)

• Deborah Haynes discusses real-life parallels:
  • Modern Russian tactics include sabotage, drone attacks, arson—seen increasingly in the UK and across Europe.
  • These are “subthreshold, gray zone attacks” meant to disrupt and create chaos before or during conventional war.
  • The game forced consideration of NATO’s Article 5 and the real delay or hesitancy in its invocation.

4. Contrasting British and Russian Mindsets

(07:42 - 08:55)

• Keir Giles reflects on different atmospheres:
  • Russian team: calm, methodical, saw the operation as a way to neutralize the UK and demonstrate NATO’s weakness.
  • British team: surprised, heavily focusing on legalities and process, less on retaliatory or pragmatic response.

  • “…When it took the British side, the blue side, by surprise, there was a certain amount of flap and a great deal of discussion which, to the red side, was more or less irrelevant…” (08:13, Keir Giles)

5. State of UK Readiness and Defence Capacity

(09:04 - 10:56)

• Deborah Haynes:
  • UK is not currently ready; recent Defence Review plans to rebuild capability, but little sign of urgency in action.
  • National Security Strategy now explicitly says the UK must actively prepare for a direct attack, but communication and public preparedness lag behind.
  • The narrow space between inaction and nuclear escalation, absent conventional deterrence or reliable allied support:

    “…the leap from doing nothing to launching a nuclear attack…suddenly becomes very narrow…” (10:43, Deborah Haynes)

6. Debating "Extreme Hypotheticals"

(10:56 - 11:47)

• Host questions whether this is all just extreme speculation.
• Keir Giles:
  • Dismisses outdated assumptions about what constitutes a threat.
  • Describes how Russia now carries out attacks from afar—missiles launched from thousands of kilometres away.
  • Russia may attack not necessarily its nearest neighbors, but the ones offering greatest strategic impact.

7. NATO Underinvestment & Ignoring the Threat

(11:47 - 12:22)

• Deborah Haynes:
  • One purpose of the simulation: make tangible what “hollowed out” armed forces look like in practice.
  • If the public isn’t informed about the military cuts and realities, they can’t make informed democratic choices.

8. Is Conflict with Russia Inevitable?

(12:22 - 13:23)

• Keir Giles:
  • European leaders’ reluctance to admit ongoing conflict means Russia can act with impunity.
  • Enumerates real-world Russian hostile acts (cyber, sabotage, etc.) already causing death and disruption.
  • No effective Western response, so Russia is incentivized to escalate.

9. Purpose and Value of War Games

(13:41 - 15:03)

• Dr. Rob Johnson explains:
  • Professional war games reveal real gaps in capacity (“we didn’t have a war book…”).
  • The UK lost its national-level crisis instructions circa 2004; only now attempting to rebuild them, but ill-equipped for a “Kyiv-style attack.”

  • “If we came under a Kyiv style attack, we would be struggling a little bit. We're not as efficient as we should be.” (14:44, Rob Johnson)

10. Geopolitical Relevance of the Scenario

(15:03 - 16:38)

• Rob Johnson:
  • Recent events mirror “gray zone” aggression simulated in the war game.
  • While NATO deterrence is strong on paper, “Russia is mobilized for war. The UK isn't.”
  • The threat is real; government recognizes it, but resources and response remain insufficient.

11. Government Understanding vs. Action

(16:38 - 18:39)

• Deborah Haynes:
  • High-level recognition and analysis exist, but Ministry of Defence inertia is a barrier.
  • Funding shortfalls and lack of urgency mean UK is falling behind partners.
  • While “signals are flashing red,” action isn’t matching the rhetoric.

  • “…when we've got a strategic defense review with a timeline of a decade…those dates don't match.” (18:32, Deborah Haynes)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We wanted to really test…does the UK have the ability to defend? What about being part of the NATO alliance? Article five, is it…automatically triggered? And it's not a shield.”
  (06:33, Deborah Haynes)

• “When it took the British side...by surprise, there was a certain amount of flap and a great deal of discussion which, to the red side, was more or less irrelevant.”
  (08:13, Keir Giles)

• “We are not ready, and that's no secret. You've had MPs reports and ministers also acknowledge that we are not ready right now to fight high intensity warfare for a sustained period of time.”
  (09:06, Deborah Haynes)

• “The only thing…stopping us saying that we're in a state of war with Russia is the timidity of European leaders not admitting...Russia has been waging war on us in every possible domain…”
  (12:29, Keir Giles)

• “If we came under a Kyiv style attack, we would be struggling a little bit. We're not as efficient as we should be.”
  (14:44, Rob Johnson)

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• 03:02 – Deborah Haynes explains the War Game’s origins
• 04:47 – Keir Giles describes the realism of the scenario
• 06:01 – Haynes outlines "gray zone" aggression as early warning signs
• 07:42 – Host & Giles on British legality obsessions vs. Russian calculation
• 09:04 – UK’s lack of readiness acknowledged
• 10:56 – Giles addresses “extreme hypothetical” criticisms
• 13:41 – Rob Johnson reflects on the purpose of war games
• 15:19 – Relevance of scenario in light of current geopolitics
• 16:51 – Haynes and Johnson: government understands but fails to act
• 18:32 – Haynes warns strategic review timelines miss the urgency

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Tone & Character

• Approachable yet serious; the guests speak with calm authority, clearly concerned about genuine threats but conscious of the need to inform and not sensationalize.
• A blend of expert technical insight, candid warnings, and genuine emotional reactions (“hairs on the back of my neck...”, “quite chilling…”).

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Summary Takeaways

• The War Game is a rigorous, realistic simulation with lessons that are alarmingly close to current reality.
• The UK’s defenses, crisis planning, and public awareness are lagging behind both the evolving Russian threat and the preparedness of European allies.
• Failure to address these shortcomings, both structurally and politically, risks leaving the country dangerously exposed—not just to outright war, but to the destabilizing effects of gray-zone warfare already being experienced.
• A sense of urgency is needed—more than just in language—from both government and the public, to prepare for complex threats in an unstable geopolitical era.

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Transcript

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Coming up, the day Russian missiles came to London, we revisit our sister podcast, the War Game, which imagined a conflict between the UK and Vladimir Putin. October 6th was the day he struck Oxford Circus. So, in real life, just how close to war are we?

[Rob Johnson]

Hey, it's Sophie and Wilf from Sky News.

[Deborah Haynes]

Too many headlines, too little time.

[Keir Giles]

We get it. And that's why we're bringing you cheat sheet.

[Deborah Haynes]

10 minutes every weekday morning.

[Keir Giles]

All the big stories, from politics to pop culture, minus the noise, no doom.

[Deborah Haynes]

Scrolling, no spin, just the stories that matter from two people who live and breathe the news. Cheat Sheet with bridge and frost from Sky News.

[Rob Johnson]

Follow Cheat Sheet wherever you get your podcasts.

[Deborah Haynes]

In the War game. It's now 4 in the morning on Monday 6th October, 2025. Our cabinet ministers and officials have just been scrambled from their beds and into waiting cars, taken to an emergency meeting in Whitehall. They hear this on the radio. Explosions have been reported across the uk. Details are only just coming into us, but the emergency services say they're responding to incidents in multiple locations, including London, the southeast of England.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Sky News Daily, where we're revisiting another of our podcast series, the War Game. Now, it's a rather different beast to the Daily here. We try in 15 to 20 minutes to tell you all you need to know about one of the bigger stories in the news. As for the War Game, well, it imagined a conflict between the UK and Russia. Over the course of five hour long episodes, it brought together senior politicians, military top brass, Russia experts and more to take on the roles of a British War cabinet and those in the Kremlin who started the conflict.

[Rob Johnson]

This is clearly an enormous show of force.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

It is definitely out of the ordinary.

[Deborah Haynes]

The Russians are signaling that there may.

[Rob Johnson]

Be, let's call it what it is.

[Deborah Haynes]

There may be an attack.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

I think we just have to be cautious of the word attack.

[Keir Giles]

What do we do next? You want to just take a breath before you decide exactly what the next move is.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

For every action, there will be a reaction without giving too much away. For those who haven't yet listened, October 6th was the day in the War game that that ballistic missiles struck the uk. So we thought we'd get the War Game host, our defence editor, Deborah Haynes, and a couple of the other participants back together to discuss what we learned from the exercise and how close to reality war with Russia actually is.

[Keir Giles]

So to confirm, Admiral, we are not expecting that the United Kingdom is able to defend realistically against our missiles. Is that correct?

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Now that was Kier Giles, a leading expert on Russia and the Russian military, playing the role of the Russian premier. Good to have you with us, Kier. And Deborah Haynes is, of course, our defence editor and the podcast host and co creator. Good to see you too. I mean, Deborah, you first just explain the concept of the war game.

[Deborah Haynes]

The idea came to me to run a war game because I was trying to think of a way to take what is actually quite a niche subject when it comes at the moment in terms of national defence, national resilience, and make it more mainstream. And so the idea was to simulate an armed attack on the UK by Russia and bring in, to make it as credible as possible, former military chiefs, former security officials, former politicians as well, crucially, to form a cabinet, a COBRA committee. And then also we brought in experts on Russia like here, and other brilliant experts who know Russia's ways of war, to become our Kremlin and to be able to not just launch the attacks on the uk, but explain why Russia is doing that.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

So it's sort of a bit like a role playing game, except the people that you brought in, you know, Ben Wallace, Jim Murphy, Amber Rudd, Jackstraw, I mean, they've all been in governments, yes.

[Deborah Haynes]

Play their part, but it's completely unscripted in terms of what the British side are doing. They have no idea what is coming their way and they have to respond as they see fit. So it was to bring in these people that had very real jobs in the past to role play those jobs as part of a game, but they didn't know what was coming their way here.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Your role in all of this was. Well, it was pivotal, wasn't it? Explain what your job was and the scenario that played out in the war game.

[Keir Giles]

Well, I'm a professional explainer of Russia. I do it for a living. I tell people what Russia does, why they're doing it and often what they're going to do next. So Deborah came to me looking for other people like me, people who can think through how Russia would act under certain circumstances. And of course, people who've done this before, people who take part in this kind of war game, this kind of role play, but usually behind closed doors, it's for national governments, it's for NATO, it's trying to work out through scenarios what to do about Russia and how Russia is going to respond. And the really striking thing about this was that whoever we showed this scenario to, the scenario that had been come up for the podcast, and how Russia might act on the red side, the Russia side All of them thought this was entirely plausible and entirely in accordance with how they might expect Russia to behave.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

So, Deborah, along comes October 6th and we have strikes on GCHQ military installations, Oxford Street. As Keir said, this was a situation which was certainly believable. But in terms of where the UK found itself in this scenario, at arm's length from the United States, not yet supported by NATO, how realistic was that?

[Deborah Haynes]

We played the game back in April, so October was far in the future. And it is quite chilling how even in the buildup to us playing the game, there were in, in the real world, similar events happening. So sabotage, you're seeing arson attacks, these mysterious drone sightings, and that's become much more evident in the last couple of weeks. And Russian warplanes entering NATO airspace. You know, again, this is. These are all kind of acts, aggressive acts by Russia that's testing NATO. All these kind of people sort of say sub threshold gray zone attacks are part of the toolbox in a war scenario that can be used to disrupt, to disorientate, to create chaos before or during a conventional attack. And so obviously on the 6th of October in our war game, and it is quite weird waking up today on the 6th of October in real life, very relieved that there weren't missiles raining down on the uk. But in our in seriousness, the point of the game was to show what the capability could be, what the threat might look like. And does the UK have a plan for that? Does the UK have the ability to defend that? What about being part of the NATO alliance? Article five, is that going to be. Is it automatically triggered? And it's not a shield. You have to be attacked for Article 5 to be invoked and for Article 5 to be invoked collectively. So we wanted to really test that as well.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Kieran, I'll be absolutely honest, I lost count of the number of times the hairs on the back of my neck went up listening to the series. But one of the things that struck me the most was the amount of discussion that took place on the British end of the war game about the legality of what was going on and the absence of those discussions on the Russian end.

[Keir Giles]

Well, yes, when we listened back to the final podcast, we, meaning the Russian team, what also struck us was the very different atmosphere in our room to the British responding to this. You may have heard us being very calm, methodical, measured. We had a plan. Whereas, perhaps unsurprisingly, when it took the British side, the blue side, by surprise, there was a certain amount of flap and a great deal of Discussion which, to the red side, was more or less irrelevant to what we were trying, trying to do. Because looking at this whole scenario, what the Russia players saw was an opportunity to neutralize the UK as an adversary and potentially also neutralize NATO as well. So there is an interest for Russia in trying to make sure that the UK shuts up and in demonstrating that NATO is not actually going to help the rest of Europe. And those are the twin opportunities that we were working towards throughout the course of this scenario.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Deborah, obviously, I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't listened just yet, but what did we Learn about the UK's state of readiness for an attack such as this?

[Deborah Haynes]

Hard to give a clear answer without giving too much away. But I mean that we're not ready, and that's no secret. You've had MPs reports and ministers also acknowledge that we are not ready right now to fight high intensity warfare for a sustained period of time. We actually recorded the war game before the Defence Review came out. But before the release of the War Game, you had the government's defence review setting out plans to rebuild its ability to fight war against a peer competitor at scale. And yet there is no sense of urgency. In the language there's urgency, but in the action it's still inertia. And then you also had the National Security Strategy, which came out as well as the podcast was being released, and it says for the first time in a long time that the UK needs to be actively prepared for a direct attack on the home front, which is very stark language coming from the government. And yet there isn't the same communication happening with the public about what that means in terms of readiness. And the game really does reveal how, when you don't have the conventional capacity to deter, and if there is hesitancy on behalf of your strongest allies, in particular the United States, then the leap from doing nothing to launching a nuclear attack to try to deter or to save your country from further attack suddenly becomes very narrow kirt for those who.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Say that this is a bunch of hypotheticals that exist at the extreme end of a range of possibilities. I mean, how would you reply to that?

[Keir Giles]

There's a lingering perception in this country that in order to be a problem, enemy aircraft, be they Russian or whoever, actually have to be directly overhead. But that's a very outdated perception. They're launching missiles at Ukraine from thousands of kilometers away, and if we think thousands of kilometres from targets in the uk, that's way up in the Arctic. Russia is looking for ways that it can do damage to NATO and to the European alliance overall. And that doesn't necessarily mean attacking the countries that are nearest to it, because if it can find a political return on investment that justifies the amount of resources and effort and risk that we're going to challenging a major NATO partner, then it might just do that.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

So Deborah, the War Game demonstrates that drum that Donald Trump has been banging for many a year now, that we and other NATO allies have simply ignored the threat for far too long and have under invested in our military.

[Deborah Haynes]

That was one of a key purpose of the game was just to illustrate what the reality of that looks like. If people in a democracy aren't informed about specific areas, for example defence and what hollowed out armed forces actually means, then how can they possibly make an informed choice? The combined economies of NATO.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

So are we then kier in your mind edging towards, perhaps even slipping towards an inevitable conflict with Russia?

[Keir Giles]

We've known for some time that the only thing that is stopping us saying that we're in a state of war with Russia is the timidity of European leaders not admitting that Russia has been waging war on us in every possible domain for years. The patterns of cyber attacks and arson and sabotage and murder and the electronic warfare that's being waged across Northern Europe, they're all aspects of how Russia is normalizing a situation where it's able to carry out hostile acts that do cause significant disruption and do cause fatalities across Europe without it being recognized publicly. That these are tantamount to acts of war and they need a response. We see this playing out at the moment with the complete failure it seems to put in place defences against drones shutting down airports across Scandinavia, across Germany, plenty of examples from the past where this has happened, but no response from the West. So why on earth would Russia not continue to do it?

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Okay, well let's get a couple of reflections from the other co creator of the War Game, the man who came up with this scenario that played out, Dr. Rob Johnson, Director of the Changing Character of War Centre at Oxford University and formerly of the Ministry of Defence. Rob, what exactly, exactly is the purpose of an exercise like this?

[Rob Johnson]

I think the thing to say about why these things are important is that we can find faults and we can fix them. If you look at the range of analytics that we use in professional war games, the stuff that we do for government, the military, for commerce, in that analytics you can find where there were gaps, things that we missed, items we did not have, and the crucial one in this war Game was we didn't have what they call a war book. This is the document that we held at national level and then also at local government level that we had until 2004 that could give a set of instructions so that everyone knew what to do in a crisis. I think if you look at it today, I know they're rebuilding one at the moment in the government, but today, I'm afraid if we came under a Kyiv style attack, we would be struggling a little bit. We're not as efficient as we should be. And this war game is designed to bring to the public attention and to get government thinking about what we need to do in the case of emergency. And I think what people have said to me who work in government felt that it was. It was realistic, it was plausible, if unlikely. And I know it's initiated behind the scenes, although they won't permit me to take part in it. But I know behind the scenes they're taking this podcast really seriously. And apparently I'm told that action's being.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Taken just in terms though, of the content of the war game on this occasion. How much of what happened on the fictitious October 6th is of relevance to where we find ourselves geopolitically, defensively, as of this moment?

[Rob Johnson]

Well, there are some things that are definitely realistic and happening right now. I mean, we begin the podcast with a number of events which are pretty much replicating what's going on now with attempted assassination, you know, and other forms of sort of interference below the threshold of war, as they call it, or sometimes they call it the gray zone. Do we? That's absolutely plausible. And I think that Russia does constitute an existential threat to the United Kingdom. This isn't any longer a story from the Cold War, a Tom Glancy novel. This is. This is the real thing. I think there are some things that people say, well, what about nuclear weapons? The UK in reality would deter this kind of attack because the retaliation by the NATO alliance would be so overwhelming that Russia would never attempt it. Okay, that's fair. But Russia is mobilized for war. The UK isn't. It's now seasoned, has plenty of experience, which we really have from the last 30 years of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. Well, I think, on balance, I think the threat is very real. The government is taking that threat very seriously, I'm pleased to say. The only problem is we're not really spending enough money. I'm not moving fast enough to deal with a lot of threats we face.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Thanks, Rob. Deborah, just a final thought from you then. Rob was just saying that there are people in government, people who are government adjacent as well, that have listened and have agreed with much of yours and care's analysis. So what on earth are they doing about it?

[Deborah Haynes]

There's definitely an exceptional understanding of the problem.

However, and there's lots of very brilliant minds who absolutely understand, know what needs to be done. But unfortunately, the Ministry of Defence, it's lost its way for such a long time now that even though the signals are flashing red in terms of the alarm bells and the need to change.

It, still and again, it does boil down a lot to funding. And you've got to face the reality that the government has made its choices about how it wants to spend money immediately. And yes, it's talking about increased defence spending, but for the next couple of years there is no new money. And when there is no new money, then there is no significant rush to change. And while there's lots of exquisite examining of the problem and planning about what needs to happen, we are the uk, it seems, falling behind our European partners, who do seem to be working much faster at trying to rebuild and prepare for what many military chiefs and political leaders are saying could be a real chance of large scale war, larger scale than we're seeing. Even in Ukraine, people talk about 2027, 2028. It's not something long off in the distant future. And when we've got a strategic defense review with a timeline of a decade, which is what the UK has, then it's clear that those dates don't match.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

My thanks to Deborah, Keir and Rob and of course to you for listening. No doubt you'll be keen to catch up with the war game if you haven't already. It's still available, should be just a search away on your podcast app. And if you're new to the Daily and like what you've heard, a follow means that every day around 5pm you'll get all you need to know about one of the biggest stories in the news. Just last week we covered the Chancellor's speech to the Labour conference, the Government's attempts to take the fight to reform uk, the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, and much, much more. The Daily is back again tomorrow.

[Deborah Haynes]

Hello, Nish Kumar here and Coco Khan.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

And we're dropping in from pod Save the uk.

[Deborah Haynes]

We're your weekly fix of political news from a staunchly progressive perspective and we.

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

Cover a variety of topics from infighting in the Labour Party to infighting in your party to infighting in the Conservative Party.

[Deborah Haynes]

And don't forget the woke sandwiches. We're here for every made up culture war. What is your woke sandwich filling of choice by the way?

[Host (Sky News Daily)]

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[Deborah Haynes]

Listen to Pod Safer UK every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.