The challenge to fund Britain's 10-year defence plan
“The front line, if you like, is here,” said Keir Starmer today, who insisted that Britain’s defence spending priorities for the next decade, laid out in a long-awaited document, will allow the UK to deliver “peace through strength”.
The PM has, however, refused to commit to a date for reaching the government’s 3 per cent defence spending target. Instead, speaking today from Glasgow to mark the publication of the 130-page Strategic Defence Review (SDR), he told reporters: “We will raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, and set the ambition to hit 3% in the next Parliament, subject to economic and fiscal conditions.”
Today’s report - which focuses heavily on the “immediate and pressing” threat posed by Russia - includes plans to build 12 new attack submarines, spend £15 billion on the nuclear warhead programme and invest £6 billion on munitions to replenish UK stockpiles. All of which, insists Starmer, will move Britain’s armed forces to “war-fighting readiness”.
The PM was equally keen to stress that acting on today’s report will enable the UK to “accelerate innovation at a wartime pace”.
The review - which acknowledges that drones, cyber and AI are dramatically changing the nature of warfare - has set out a new approach to how the army will fight. An “autonomy drive” will aim to reduce troop casualties, for instance, by focussing on deploying drones to allow soldiers to remain further from the front line until a later stage of battle.
Such reforms feel especially relevant in light of the bold new example of drone warfare conducted by Ukraine. Yesterday, Kyiv conducted a major attack against multiple air bases in Russia, destroying 40 Russian warplanes, in what some pro-Kremlin bloggers have even gone so far as to describe as “Russia’s Pearl Harbour”.
The Ukrainian operation - which used small drones smuggled into Russia then hidden in mobile sheds and launched off the back of trucks into Russian airfields - was a clear demonstration of how new technology has transformed the battlefield.
At the same time, the mission - thought to be a culmination of one and a half years of planning - is also a demonstration of traditional special forces guile.
On the subject of traditional forces, one of the biggest challenges for the UK military will be addressing the recruitment and retention crisis. The RAF, navy and army have failed to hit their hiring targets every year for a decade and UK Defence Secretary John Healey admitted recently that he cannot increase the size of the armed forces until the next parliament — from 2029 onwards. The SDR has recommended spending £1.5 billion to improve the poor state of housing for the country’s armed forces as a first step to tackle this.
The government is expected to accept the report’s recommendations in full. But funding them will be a challenge.
Starmer brought forward his announcement to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, originally intended for today, to coincide with his trip to the White House. But his caveat this morning that the subsequent hike to 3% of GDP, is “subject to economic and fiscal conditions,” shows it is not guaranteed. Without it, the affordability of the review’s long-term recommendations is already in question, because the SDR’s authors say several of the more ambitious initiatives - such as the acceleration of submarine production - were contingent on the 3 per cent target being hit.
Even funding the smaller 2.5 per cent pledge is no small ask. We’ve already seen Starmer cut the overseas aid budget and make painful social welfare cuts in a bid to balance the books.
Since then, he has backtracked on winter fuel payment cuts and is thought to be considering scrapping the two-child limit for benefits in a bid to stave off a backbench rebellion.
Against this backdrop, Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, warned today that, when it comes to meeting Britain’s defence spending pledges, “bluntly, it really does seem to me that the only choice that’s available is some really quite chunky tax increases”.
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