More than £1bn earmarked for battlefield tech
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will spend more than £1bn to develop technology to speed up decisions on the battlefield. The funding will be one of the results of the government's long-awaited strategic defence review which is due to be published in full on Monday.The government has committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% GDP from April 2027 with an ambition to increase that to 3% in the next parliament.In February, the prime minister said cuts to the foreign aid budget would be used to fund the military boost.
Announcing the results of the review, the MoD said a new Digital Targeting Web would better connect soldiers on the ground with key information provided by satellites, aircraft and drones helping them target enemy threats faster.Defence Secretary John Healey said the technology announced in the review - which will harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) and software - also highlights lessons being learnt from the war in Ukraine.Ukraine is already using AI and software to speed up the process of identifying, and then hitting, Russian military targets.The review had been commissioned by the newly formed Labour government shortly after last year's election with Healey describing it as the "first of its kind". The government said the findings would be published in the first half of 2025, but did not give an exact date.Healey made the announcement on a visit to the MoD's cyber headquarters in Corsham, Wiltshire. The headquarters is where the UK military co-ordinates their cyber activities to both prevent and to carry out cyber-attacks.Defence officials said over the last two years the UK's military had faced more than 90,000 cyber-attacks by potential adversaries. Attacks have been on the rise, as has their level of sophistication, they added. Staff at Corsham said they had recently helped identify and block malware sent to UK military personnel who recently returned from working abroad. They said the source of the malware was from a "known Russian actor".Both Russia and China have been linked to the increase in cyber-attacks. Defence officials have confirmed that the UK military has also been conducting its own offensive cyber-attacks.Healey said it showed the nature of warfare was changing. "The keyboard is now a weapon of war and we are responding to that," he said.He said the UK needed to be the fastest-innovating military within the Nato alliance.As part of the strategic defence review, the UK's military cyber operations will be overseen by a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command. The MoD said the Command would also take the lead in electronic warfare, from co-ordinating efforts to intercept any adversaries communications, to jamming drones.Healey said the extra investment being made was possible because of the government's "historic commitment" to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. However, the Nato Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, is calling on allies to increase defence spending by more than 3.5% of GDP.
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