Tuesday briefing: Is Britain's move to ‘war-fighting' readiness enough to ensure its security?

The Guardian

2 days ago

Good morning. The government's strategic defence review was launched on Monday and billed as a blueprint to modernise the military so that, in the words of Keir Starmer, the UK is 'safer and stronger, a battle-ready, armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities'.
Reviews like this one come along every decade or so – but the context now appears more urgent than at any time since the end of the cold war. In the place of the old consensus that the UK simply needed to be ready for (deeply questionable) deployments to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan is a view that the threats now are much closer to home, and much closer to existential. 'UK armed forces have begun the necessary process of change in response to this new reality,' the review said. 'But progress has not been fast or radical enough.'
Even within its carefully conceived terms of reference – which insisted on maintaining a role in the Indo-Pacific region and the Middle East, and did not allow for proposals to increase overall spending beyond what Starmer has already set out – the review amounts to a severe critique of the state of the armed forces.
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The review published yesterday is the first since 2010; John Healey, the defence secretary, says it is a departure from past iterations because it is externally led. When the review was launched, the government said it would 'consider the threats Britain faces, the capabilities needed to meet them, the state of UK armed forces and the resources available'.
Led by Lord Robertson – a former defence secretary and Nato secretary general who conducted Labour's last defence review in 1998 – it has consulted 150 external experts, received 8,000 submissions to a call for evidence, and runs to 48,000 words.
What is the current state of Britain's armed forces?
Most judges of the UK's military readiness paint a dire picture of the armed forces as not being fit for purpose, and the review's call for a 'truly transformational' approach implicitly adopts the same view.
In a report on the lessons from the Ukraine war published last year, the House of Lords' international relations and defence committee said that the armed forces 'lack the mass, resilience and internal coherence necessary to maintain a deterrent effect and sustain prolonged conflict'. Philip Stephens of the Financial Times wrote that (£) those conclusions 'are viewed within Whitehall as wholly uncontroversial'.
There are plenty of numbers pointing to that conclusion. In 2010, the regular army was 110,000; now it is short of its target of 73,000, the smallest since the Napoleonic wars. Across all the armed forces, the number is down from 192,000 in 2010 to 136,000 today.
Even before the war in Ukraine, ammunition stockpiles were in decline, and in 2023, Gen Sir Richard Barrons – who has been working alongside former US presidential adviser Fiona Hill on Robertson's review team – said the UK would probably use up its existing supplies in a 'busy afternoon' . RAF aircraft numbers fell from 724 in 2016 to 564 in 2023, a reduction of 22%. And the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers that have had serious mechanical problems, without enough sailors to crew the ships needed to protect and supply them – or enough fighter jets to fill them.
What does the defence review say is necessary?
The review suggests that a military 'optimised for conflicts primarily fought against non-state actors' needs to be drastically rethought to contend with the prospect of 'state-on-state war' through ''whole-of-society' preparations'. It presents Russia as an 'immediate and pressing' danger to the UK, and China as a 'sophisticated and persistent challenge', while Iran and North Korea are termed 'regional disruptors'.
To be ready to meet those challenges, the review lists 62 recommendations; the government has accepted every one in principle. The most eyecatching measures were trailed beforehand, from £6bn in spending on six 'always on' munitions factories to a new cyber command unit coordinating offensive digital operations.
There will be a £15bn investment in modernising the production of nuclear weapons, and a pledge to build 'up to' 12 new attack submarines. And through the force multiplying effects of artificial intelligence and a £2bn investment in drones, the review promises a 'ten times more lethal British Army'. Ben Quinn has a more detailed breakdown.
More conventionally, Healey had reportedly hoped to increase the size of the army by a few thousand. But he appears to have lost that fight with the Treasury, at least for now. And of the £350bn the UK is expected to spend on defence over this parliament, only £10bn is thought to be new spending committed through the strategic defence review.
When will the new capacity come online?
Part of the explanation of the disconnect between major announcements and new spending is the length of time that much of what is proposed will take to be enacted.
The new submarines will not launch until the late 2030s. There is no timeline on the new munitions factories, while Healey said there would be no increase in the number of troops until after the next election. And on the fundamental question of how much the UK will spend on defence, Keir Starmer has promised 2.5% of GDP by 2027-28 but described 3% as an 'ambition' to be pursued at some point during the next parliament – that is, by 2034, if it materialises at all.
As one source familiar with the budget process quoted by the Economist puts it: 'Basically, all their investment is for an era when Putin will be dead.'
The UK's 2.5% pledge may soon start to look behind the pace against its European allies: defence ministers meeting in Brussels this week are expected to agree a 3.5% target, with the main question whether that should be scheduled for the early 2030s or later in the decade, the Economist reports. The review says that a rapid move to 2.5% and subsequent lift to 3% should make what is proposed affordable in the end – but warns that 'it may be necessary to go faster'.
So is the plan enough to ensure the UK's security?
The government pointed out that this is the first defence review since the end of the cold war that has not resulted in cuts. And it is important to note that, while the armed forces are undoubtedly weaker than they once were, the UK retains the world's sixth-largest defence budget.
That puts it behind the US, Russia, China, India and South Korea – but the government is likely to observe that its alliance with other European countries means that it will have considerably greater impact. (The review describes a 'Nato first' outlook, and says: 'We will never, in the future, expect to fight a major, 'peer' military power alone.')
Even if the threat from Vladimir Putin is far greater than might have been understood a decade ago, Russia's war in Ukraine has so depleted its resources that it is thought to be years away from being able to consider such a conflict. In this analysis, Dan Sabbagh writes that 'Britain is not under direct military threat and is not likely to be any time soon'.
But there is still a sense of a military that is fundamentally overstretched. In 2023, David Richards, the former chief of the defence staff, said in the House of Lords: 'This country must stop deluding itself that it can have a global role. We are a medium-sized country with a faltering economy.
'The UK must focus ruthlessly on the Euro-Atlantic theatre, not state that this is our priority but then spread our efforts so thinly that we are strong nowhere.' In contrast, Robertson, Hill and Barrons describe 'the connection between Euro-Atlantic security and that of other regions such as the Middle East and Indo-Pacific'.
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What is the broader economic context?
Others suggest that the plans should be subjected to a much more fundamental critique. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted yesterday that if the UK plans to spend an additional £10-15bn on defence while spending more on other priorities like health and pensions, 'the only choice that is available … is some really quite chunky tax increases'.
Meanwhile, claims that military spending can boost the economy may look questionable when compared with the impact that the same money might have if spent on green energy or healthcare, among other priorities. (This Greenpeace analysis makes that case.)
Unsurprisingly, others, like the Stop the War Coalition, the Green party and some within Labour, question whether a boost to defence spending can possibly be the right priority at a time when public services are generally agreed to be creaking.
They also note that cutting the international aid budget to serve the military may have unintended consequences. Ellie Chowns, the Greens' defence spokesperson in the House of Commons, said yesterday: 'Security is not just based on arms expenditure and threats, but on real leadership that uses diplomacy and development too.'
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Keir Starmer needs you: Britain readies for war
Former Guardian security editor Richard Norton-Taylor talks through the strategic defence review and Britain's new plans to be ready for war
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