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The £17 Billion Question
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British defence spent this week debating budget increases and demanding transparency, while a £92 million crisis proving mismanagement goes ignored.

Building Pressure

On February 18, former Defence Secretary Sir Ben Wallace, former Chief of the General Staff Lord Dannatt, former National Security Advisor Lord Darroch, and former Director-General of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove were among the signatories to an Open Letter to the Prime Minister with a simple message: double defence spending to 5% of GDP.

Their "Defence on the Brink" letter warned of a "1936 moment" - Britain lacks "mass, readiness and resilience for credible deterrence," they wrote.

"Britain talks tough on deterrence, yet our actions fall dangerously short. We are deluding ourselves if we believe Russia is unaware."

The Government Response

The UK is considering accelerating its 3% GDP target to 2029 - requiring £17.3 billion extra annually. PM Sir Keir Starmer told the Munich Security Conference: "We must spend more, faster."

But: No Defence Investment Plan published. No procurement priorities. The Treasury is cautious.

The letter signatories want 5%, not 3%, but most importantly: transparency on how money gets managed.

The £92 Million Example

This week, Royal Fleet Auxiliary sailors voted 9-to-1 for strike action. Management "could not demonstrate minimum wage compliance" for seafarers working 12-hour days.

Half the RFA fleet lacks crews. Ships are laid up.

RFA's total annual wage bill? £92 million. That's 0.5% of the extra £17.3 billion discussed.

The Question

If Britain cannot manage £92 million to crew ships making the Royal Navy blue-water capable, why believe it can deploy £17 billion effectively?

The letter demands transparency on how money gets spent. The RFA crisis shows why: money disappearing without delivering capability.

Defence UK Assessment

We welcome voices demanding more spending and transparency. The "1936 moment" warning deserves urgent attention.

But Britain cannot manage £92 million while discussing £17 annual billion increases.

Before credible spending conversations, government must:
- Publish the Defence Investment Plan
- Resolve workforce crises before they cripple capabilities
- Show funding translates to readiness, not absorption

The threat is real. Gaps are real. Increased spending is needed.

But so is management dysfunction. Until government handles £92 million properly, £17 billion promises ring hollow.

Can Treasury and MoD explain why £92m for RFA crews cannot be properly managed, while £17bn increases are considered?

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  1. ​"Why is £500M Easy but £27M Too Hard?"

    Defence UK has a question:​  

    ​                 Why can Britain commit £500 million for Ukraine air defence within 24 hours, but can't sustain a £27 million autonomous vessel programme until completion for the Navy?

This week's announcements tell two stories.

Story One: Commitment to Capability

Over £500 million in urgent air defence support for Ukraine, including 1,000 UK-manufactured missiles, and British troops in Norway doubling to 2,000. while NATO unveils the biggest unmanned fleet ever trialled in the Baltic. 

These measures protect Ukrainian airspace, which remains critical, bolster British missile production, which delivers sovereign benefits, and reinforces Norway in direct response to increased Russian military activity in the High North.
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Story Two: Capability Cancellation

Project Lily, a £27 million uncrewed survey vessel, was quietly terminated. No replacement. Just "considering alternative internal options". The financial scale clearly isn't the issue, £27 million is a rounding error in defence terms and roughly what the MoD spends every 3-4 hours, but the issue is strategic confidence.

Can industry trust Britain to sustain programmes beyond the announcement phase and invest in sovereign autonomous capability, when procurement direction is this inconsistent? 

The timing is also terrible. While NATO scales the world's largest unmanned maritime fleet in the Baltic - reaching 50 platforms before last summer's NATO Summit - Britain terminates its modest USV programme. As allies accelerate autonomous capability integration, we're "considering alternatives" - what's going on?

Defence UK's position: We welcome the Ukraine package and Arctic reinforcement, both are strategically sound. But emerging capability programmes need the same commitment. Otherwise, we're relegating Britain to being an operator of others' technology, not a sovereign capability developer.
The MoD doesn't need to answer every requirement with exquisite in-house solutions. But cancelling a modest autonomous programme while NATO scales similar capabilities sends a dysfunctional message to the world.

Strong commitments deserve strong delivery - across the board.


Hard question:

​Is British defence procurement structurally incapable of sustaining innovation programmes? Why are we so ready to announce programmes that make us look innovative in the moment, but completely unable to see them through to real capability?
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 The future looks ominous, as worrying as any time since the 1930s perhaps. NATO is at risk but Europe in general and the UK in particular are not ready for a post-NATO world. We depend to a dangerous degree
 on the US, not just for our nuclear deterrent but also for their support in the event of a conventional war with Russia. The conventional war that our European allies are right now preparing for and we are pretending can't ever happen. If we engaged with Russia
 in the kind of missile exchange that occurred between Israel and Iran we would lose very quickly. Not only do we not have an air defence system as good as Israel's, we don't even have one as useless as Iran's. And we don't have much to fire back at Russia
 either. It is easy for the opposition to criticise but the Government really is between a rock and a hard place. Military weakness has left us with no good options..









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In Memoriam

Field Marshal The Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, Patron of Defence UK
(d. 18 Sept 2025)

The Rt Hon The Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, Patron of Defence UK
(d. 26 Sept 2025)

Lieutenant Commander David Robinson RN, Company Secretary of Defence UK.
(d. 18 Oct 2025)
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PARTY BEFORE COUNTRY - THE REPEATING RHYMES OF HISTORY

In 1933 with the UK’s economy still in the throes of the Great Depression, and alarmed voices being raised about the threat from German re-armament in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles, students at the Oxford Union, followed by those at Manchester and Glasgow Universities, passed motions saying that they would not fight for King and Country.  Those motions echoed a general anti-war feeling throughout the country, which was carried forward into government by the pacifistic policies of both the Liberal and Labour parties.  The Labour leader George Lansbury was for disbanding the army, dismissing the air force and daring the world to do its worst.  At the Labour party conference, in October of that year, delegates voted in favour of total disarmament and a general strike in the event of war to cripple the economy and bring down the Conservative dominated National Coalition Government.  Also, in that month the Fulham East by-election turned a 15,000 Conservative majority into one of 5,000 for Labour, where the victorious candidate, John Wilmot, had campaigned on the twin issues of disarmament and pacifism.

The subsequent general election, in 1935, resulted in another Conservative led coalition at which time the government did in fact decide to increase defence spending and belatedly attempt to match the rapidly increasing German military might.  The following year the then Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, addressed a group of 13 Conservative MP’s and 5 Lords, who were questioning why the government had left it so long before starting to re-arm and why the process was taking so long.  He told them that with the result of the Fulham East by-election in mind and considering the general pacific feeling within the country, he feared that if he had announced a general re-armament when the need for such had become apparent there was a good chance that they, the Conservatives, would have lost the following general election.  In his memoirs, Winston Churchill later noted that Baldwin’s appalling frankness was a statement without parallel in our Parliamentary history of putting Party before Country.  Baldwin went on to say that because of a dearth of military orders through the 1920’s and into the 30’s the factories had closed and the work force dissipated, thus re-armament had to start from scratch with the rebuilding of those factories and training of the work force.

Fast forward 90 years and here we are again!  The country’s economy is again in dire straits. This time largely due to run-away welfare spending that the government seems unable, or unwilling, to control.  The industrial capacity that would have allowed a rapid re-armament has largely disappeared, again in part through a lack of military orders during the years of the peace dividend, but also because of commercial forces encouraging manufacturing to move abroad.  As in the 1930’s we are faced with two dictators holding territorial ambitions, Mussolini and Hitler then, Putin and Xi Jinping now.  Echoing that period we are again trying to appease them by largely turning a blind eye to their small land grabs and offering large tracts of other people’s countries in the forlorn hope that it will satisfy their territorial avarice.  As in the 1930’s when the principle of collective security enshrined in the League of Nation’s memorandums fell apart, the rules based order and international law, which has been the bedrock of the present United Nations Charter is proving impotent in the face of aggressive state actors who ignore such niceties, even though they have signed up to them.

In order to meet the rising threats many voices are again calling for the rebuilding of the UK’s much depleted armed forces and the government’s recently published Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has laid out what is required for that to happen.  The government therefore is fully aware of the problem but their SDR is so heavily caveated with comments of when fiscal conditions allow, and that it will take 10 years to complete the program that one academic has commented it might as well have gone straight to the shredder instead of the printer!  Money is tight and for the ambitions of the SDR to be realised a massive rise in defence spending is required; a requirement that, despite statements to the contrary and much rhetoric, does not look like happening any time soon.

The most basic fiscal rule of all is that when your income and borrowing are maxed out but you are continuing to slide into debt, if you want to arrest that fall you have to stop spending.  The biggest spenders, by a large margin, are the social programmes and the government establishment.  Common sense dictates that they are the ones to be cut back but many of the governing party’s back benchers are acutely aware that their small constituency majorities are vulnerable and this coupled with their natural socialist and, for some, pacifist tendencies has led them to rebel against a plan to cut back on social spending at the expense of funds for defence.  Their cry is Welfare not Warfare!

The often repeated statement that, Defence of the Realm is the First Responsibility of Government, sounds very hollow when reality indicates that ‘Staying in Government’ appears to be their most important consideration.  In their quest to stay in power, the government have, to the detriment of the Defence of the Realm, caved in to their back benchers and they are now guilty of putting Party before Country!
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In his book, The Life of Reason (1905), the Spanish-American Philosopher George Santayana stated that ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.
Take note - We have been here before!

Fred Dupuy
Chairman of Defence UK.
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COMMENTARY: On Tactical Nuclear Weapons

 
 
The subject has made front page news – “British fighter jets to carry nuclear bombs”. The RAF is to acquire a fleet of F-35A strike fighters that can carry the American B61 nuclear bomb. Furthermore, a columnist has come up with the old argument about having tactical nuclear weapons to use in the event of being over-run by superior enemy ground forces, in other words using tactical nuclear weapons as a substitute for adequate conventional forces. Yes, we need tactical nuclear weapons, but not these weapons and not for that reason. 
 
Let’s go back to first principles. Britain has a strategic nuclear deterrent in the shape of four ballistic missiles subs armed with Trident. One submarine is on patrol at any given time and its credibility depends on its location remaining secret. The purpose of the strategic deterrent is to deter a major Russian (or other) nuclear strike on Britain by threatening retaliation in kind. But what would we do if Russia (or anyother rogue state) were to use, or threaten to use, a limited number of small tactical weapons on British targets either in the UK or elsewhere in the world? We do not have an appropriate counter-threat to deter any such aggression. It has been argued that our one ballistic missile submarine on patrol could fire just one missile with just one warhead at a tactical target but that is not sensible for two reasons. 
 
• Firstly, Russia could not be sure if this was the start of a strategic strike and might over-react accordingly.
• Secondly, and more pertinently, firing just one missile would disclose the location of our one submarine and (fatally?) compromise it in its role as a strategic deterrent.  
Our Trident submarines cannot and should not be used to do both strategic and tactical roles. All the nuclear weapons states except the UK have separate weapon systems for the different roles. So should we. 
 
What should or could we have, exactly? France has an Independent Nuclear Deterrent that is genuinely French – the submarines, missiles and warheads of their strategic deterrent and the aircraft, missiles and warheads of their tactical nuclear forces, all French. We should aim to emulate France. Specifically, some French Rafale fighter-jets are armed with the ASMP stand-off missile (range 300-600km) and the missiles are each armed with a single TN-81 warhead (100-300Kt yield). 
 
The simplest solution might be to arm our Typhoon fighters with a nuclear-tipped version of the Storm Shadow. Storm Shadow has a range of 300km. The Trident Alternatives Review 
published by the Coalition Government in 2013 said it might take a quarter-century to develop a warhead suitable for a cruise missile, a claim that was greeted with some disbelief. The government should re-open this discussion, urgently. 
 
The problems with using the F-35A armed with the American B61 bombs are several:
 
• The B61 is a free-fall weapon requiring the aircraft carrying it to get close to or even inside the air defences of the enemy. It has been discussed elsewhere that, in a conventional role, it is not desirable to arm the F-35s with the free-fall Paveway bomb for the same reason, and pressure is being put upon the USA to integrate the Spear-3 (conventional) stand-off missile (range 140km).
• Even though the F-35 is ‘Stealthy’ with low-observability to enemy radars it is not completely invisible nor is it invulnerable. It will become visible to enemy radars as soon as the weapons bay doors are opened. Furthermore, future advances in radars and computers will render the F-35 and other ‘Stealthy’ aircraft progressively less and less stealthy in years to come.
• There are issues with the F-35 generally. According to an answer to an MP’s question, it seems the USA keeps tight hold on the global supply of spare parts for the F-35 and also holds the computer codes that control the aircraft. Even though we have paid good money for these aircraft, we cannot customise or modify them to suit our needs in any way; the USA has to do this for us.  
What other options? One might consider fitting the Royal Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, assuming the US would allow this. It is not beyond the UK to develop our own submarine-launched cruise missile should the US not cooperate. The aforementioned TridentAlternatives Review claimed it would take over 30 years to develop a low-radiation warhead! In British submarines the cruise missiles are fired through the torpedo tubes and stored alongside the crew accommodation, which might expose the crew to radiation from the warhead unless the warhead was specially designed. British submarines do not have vertical launch tubes which might get around this problem. Again, the government should re-open the discussion. 
 
Nuclear-tipped cruise missiles can be fired from the back of a truck, as were the US missiles based at Greenham Common. That is another option. There is also no good reason why the UK could not develop a truck-launched ballistic missile with a conventional warhead. So many other countries have done this, how hard could it be? 
 
Finally: Tactical nuclear weapons should exist solely to neutralise the threat of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. At present we have no appropriate or proportionate counter-threat with which to protect ourselves. To retaliate against Russian tactical weapons with Trident would be a massive over-reaction and a quick path to escalation. A retaliation with conventional weapons only would be an under-reaction and unlikely to deter. What we must NOT do is go back to the bad old days when nuclear weapons were seen as a substitute for adequate conventional forces. This was a frightening unstable game of poker and unlikely so receive much political support in this or any other European country. 
 
Steve Coltman – Defence UK Director
(June 2025)
 

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“Defence UK is an independent pressure group that campaigns for a strong and well-resourced Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, to ensure the security of the United Kingdom, her Sovereign Territories, trade and commerce, and to protect her citizens wherever they may be. We also call for a greater commitment by the UK Government to the nation's defence industries, and to non-military services such as the Merchant Navy, Coastguard, Border Control and Homeland Security that are essential to the Defence of the Realm.”

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