Ian Proud
UK defence is reportedly short of £28bn with the budget envelope that it has.
An important job for any General is to make the case for larger military budgets. Britain is no different in that regard, not least in light of the government's commitment to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035. Yet, it seems, in Britain today, that money there is none, while our army shrinks and we can't build new military kit for toffee.
This week, fresh off the back of the Munich Security conference in which he urged NATO's European allies to 'spend more, deliver more, and coordinate more', Prime Minister Keir Starmer mulled setting a higher level of ambition for defence spending; rumour spread that he was considering an increase to 3% in defence spending by the end of the current parliament, meaning by 2029.Unfortunately, the following day, there came a rebuttal, on the back of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeve's alleged refusal to sanction further increases in spending. Downing street back-tracked, claiming they had been misunderstood on the suggestion of an accelerated spending increase, and that the UK would hit the 3% target by2034, five years later.
Britain is strapped for cash. Earlier in January, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Richard Knighton, admitted that the UK was not ready for a full scale conflict [read, with Russia] "of the kind we might face", in part, because the Ministry of Defence faced a massive funding shortfall. Specifically, UK defence is reportedly short of £28bn with the budget envelope that it has.
And this shortfall almost entirely sits within defence procurement. A proposed Defence Investment plan, to link spending to priorities under the UK Strategic Defence Review has been delayed, provoking criticism from the Parliament Defence and Public Accounts Committees of " sending damaging signals to adversaries". The last full equipment plan, setting out procurement and support spending was published in 2022, almost four years ago. Since then, the UK Ministry of Defence has continued to obfuscate and delay.
That led the Public Accounts Committee to report in 2024 that there was " no credible UK Government plan to deliver defence capabilities". They said, "the MoD has not had the discipline to balance its budget by making the difficult choices about which equipment programmes it can and cannot afford." The UK defence procurement gravy machine is littered with a trainload of zombie projects that are woefully over budget and behind schedule. Indeed, the report stated that the plan had forecasts for some 1800 - you heard that right, eighteen hundred - equipment projects that the MoD has chosen to fund.
The budget allocated in 2022/3 already accounted for 49% of the UK's total defence budget for 10 years, but was still £16.7 billion short of what was needed. Only two of the forty six projects in the Government Major Project Portfolio were reviewed as being highly likely to be delivered to time, budget and quality. Red faced at being called out for their woeful incompetence, the MoD hasn't published its plans ever since.
Looking at the various prestige programmes inevitably reveals a litany of failure and ineptitude. The new Type 26 Frigate programme has faced repeated delays and cover overruns, with the eight vessels not expected to see operations until between 2028 (i.e. two years from now) and 2035.
Much of the waste lies in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, responsible for the build of the Dreadnought class SSBNs, the Astute class SSNs and the proposed US-UK-Australian AUKUS SSNs, to replace the Astute attack subs, the last of which is still under construction. The UK finds itself in the remarkable position of starting a programme to replace an existing SSN class that is still being built. Former director of nuclear policy at the UK Ministry of Defence, Rear Admiral Philip Mathia, has said the UK is no longer capable of running its nuclear submarine programme, following years of mismanagement.
The Challenger 3 tank, which is actually not a new tank, but a modernisation of the existing Challenger 2 with a new turret, has yet to enter the production phase and won't enter service until the 2030s; the plan initially envisaged all 148 tanks being delivered by the end of 2020s. The £5,5bn Ajax armoured vehicle programme, which the UK commissioned from General Dynamics in the US in 2014, has encountered consistent problems, and was described in a critical 2023 review of the programme as a highly visible symbol of the MoD's poor procurement record. Use of the Ajax for training purposes was recently paused "indefinitely" after 35 service personnel reported injuries associated with vibration and noise, with the person leading the programme removed from their role.
I could go on and on. But the key point is that the Ministry of Defence appears so woeful at procurement, that those in charge of procurement probably couldn't run a fruit and veg stall at the local market, let alone manage complex new weapons programmes.
What does this mean for the UK's military standing worldwide ? Our Army is now twenty times smaller than Russia's. There have only been 3 recorded years since 1800 when the British Army was smaller than it is today. It was a close call in 1822 and 1823 with 72,000 troops then, compared to just over 73,000 today. But the difference being that two hundred years ago, the UK population was more than four times smaller than now. In April of last year, the Chief of the Defence Staff reported that the military was shrinking by 300 personnel per month.
The Royal Navy is apparently at its smallest size since 1650, the year after the end of the English Civil War. It now comprises a maximum 63 commissioned surface vessels and 9 deployable submarines, though many vessels are in long-term refit. This makes the Royal Navy, at maximum strength, almost 7 time smaller than the Russian Navy.
Desperate to show Britain's continued military relevance, Prime Minister Starmer announced in Munich that the UK would deploy its Carrier Strike Group to the Arctic, in support of a US-led mission in 2026. Although the Carrier Strike Group we deployed to the Asia Pacific in 2025 comprised only 3 (yes, three) surface vessels. Then, on 17 February, the Chief of the RAF, Air Chief Marshall Harv Smyth, said that our fleet of F-35s would struggle in the Arctic cold. He was clearly doing that to put more pressure on the government to find extra money. However, tipping another £28bn into defence procurement black hole with no published plan for how it will be used is symbolic of how the British military continues to spiral into irrelevance.
The sad truth is that if we don't find the money, our lacklustre defence projects will simply be delayed further, adding insult to injury. And if we do find the money, we may well nudge closer to hitting the 3% of GDP defence spending target by 2029. But we still won't have any more troops. If you watched this in the popular Eighties political satire, Yes Minister, you might laugh. I, however, find it a joke in an altogether different way.