Defence is to get an extra £5 billion in the Budget but it is to be spread over the next two and a half years, and mostly to be devoted to two areas in need of immediate funding — ammunition supplies and reserves for Ukraine, and investment in the nuclear submarine programme. This last area has been given a boost by the plans to develop Australia’s nuclear-powered subs based on a British design, and with British input and training.
But that only cranks up in two years’ time, and the first SSN-Aukus Anglo-Australian sub is unlikely to hit the water for another 15 years at least.
The Government has also announced that it aspires to spend up to 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence but not immediately. For defence and its current difficulties it is a story of jam tomorrow, or rather jam after the next general election.
The threat to UK security, stability and resilience has been spelt out in the Integrated Review Refresh 2023’ published yesterday as an update on the Integrated Review of two years ago, boostering Boris Johnson’s view of “Global Britain,” with its “tilt to the Indo-Pacific.” The new report is shorter than the old one. This time the prose is choppier, reflecting the choppier waters of British security today.
Since last February we have the war in Ukraine, to which UK military expertise is more heavily committed than may be generally recognised. We also have the long-term consequences of the Covid global pandemic.
Then there is China, an ever more complex threat across the spectrum of modern confrontation. By this new IR, the UK seems to be setting out on a more nuanced and subtle approach to the questions posed by Beijing than many of its allies, the US included.
The Review is a sober assessment of the state the world is in. But there is little notion of a practical programme for UK for the future, such as a reappraisal of the Army’s role, requirements and funding.
There is little sense in the Budget and the defence announcements, that UK security, in cyber, communications, the food and energy supply chain is under direct threat. Russian belligerence is likely to be around for years. The shadow of war in new forms is looming large across Europe — a reality Whitehall seems reluctant to grasp fully.
