UK defence spending debate gets real...
With 3%/GDP now in play inside the Tory party, where should the UK focus its requirements?
With Grant Shapps’ call for the UK to spend 3% of GDP on defence – though at an unspecified date – political momentum is building for a sustained uplift to the MOD’s budget.
The three unanswered questions in British defence policy circles remain, however: by how much, why and how to spend it?
Astonishingly, two years on from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and with the prospect of a Trump administration taking US troops out of the NATO command structure, the UK has made no clear strategic determination of its future role in NATO and no uplift to Defence spending.
It is the only NATO country without a National Defence Plan. And the 2023 Defence Command Paper proudly made no changes to force structure and commissioned no new platforms, because “we stand by what we wrote in 2021”.
In this edition of Conflict & Democracy I outline the parameters for the strategic determination the UK needs to make – either during Labour’s proposed SDSR in 2025 or before that. I’ll leave the comments open on this one, and use Twitter/X to stimulate some debate around it.
Question 1: Why do we need a Defence spending uplift?
So far the UK debate on Defence spending has been framed around “black holes” and “capability gaps”. The reappearance of a >£17bn black hole in the Ten Year Equipment Plan – where planned capabilities are not budgeted for – isn’t just a fiscal problem: it creates a deterrence gap.
If a country talks tough on the global stage and doesn’t back that up with economic deterrence, then the credibility of its military deterrence crumbles. Alongside that, there are clear gaps in UK military capability.
For example, the long-promised “modernised warfighting division” cannot happen until Ajax is delivered, Warrior replaced, the tedious competition for a 155mm howitzer solution brought to completion, and all 148 Challenger tanks upgraded. And of the 138 F-35B combat aircraft the UK says it wants, it has only been prepared to order 72.
The list is long – but at present we’re thinking about this problem like they were in the early 1930s: as “deficiencies” to be remedied rather than components of a clear and prioritised deterrence plan.
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