On 16 July, not yet two weeks into his term of office, prime minister Keir Starmer announced a “root and branch” review of the United Kingdom’s armed forces. With major war now returned to the European continent, the Strategic Defence Review’s (SDR) terms of reference emphasises “NATO first”: as the United States’ military refocuses on China, the need to “defend Europe with less America” is the key subtext.

Against this background, the review team must grapple with two key questions: in light of the war in Ukraine, what should the UK now expect of its military? And how can it be that a country that has long spent more on defence than any other NATO ally (bar the US) still ends up with armed forces “unprepared for conflict of any scale” which cannot “defend the British homelands properly”?

The future of Britain’s forces

The SDR’s terms of reference label the UK’s nuclear deterrent as sacrosanct. Aside from this, however, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed everything, including the size and shape of the armed forces Britain requires. This issue was last addressed in the days of Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain”, with its accompanying discussion of a “tilt to the Indo-Pacific.” But Johnson’s rhetoric was always grandiloquent folly. Now, the reemergence of a real military threat to Europe – and to the UK – for the first time since 1989 demands a complete rethink of the nation’s defence capabilities.

George Robertson, the NATO secretary general from 1999 to 2003, will lead the review. He also spearheaded a similar, widely praised SDR in 1998, at the start of Tony Blair’s government. But this time he will need to take into account lessons about modern warfare born from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine – for example, large, expensive platforms such as ships, combat aircraft, and tanks have not fared well. The West’s inability to muster adequate air and missile defence resources to help the Ukrainians protect their cities and infrastructure has also been cruelly exposed, as has its lack of war stocks, munitions, and the industrial capacity to regenerate them. The capability to strike deep and accurately behind enemy lines with artillery or missiles has been at a premium. Drone and electronic warfare has come of age as a key determinant of battlefield success. And the difficulty of evicting dug-in Russian forces has re-emphasised the importance of forward defence.

All these developments will require major redirection of investment to the latest technologies, and significant reshaping of the UK armed forces. For example, as Russia plans new deployments of long-range missiles, and its navy dusts off plans to target the UK, new investment is required to strengthen the UK’s “negligible” defences against potential aerial attacks on the homeland. The government’s promised increase in the defence budget from 2.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent of GDP will hardly scratch the surface of all the new requirements, which must mostly be paid for by disposing of less relevant defence capabilities. Among the prime candidates are Britain’s two new aircraft carriers, which were conceived when the focus was on expeditionary operations conducted outside the NATO area. But they have now been exposed as prohibitively expensive to crew and equip with aircraft, as well as horribly vulnerable in a modern war in Europe.

To complicate the review team’s task, many of its conclusions will be contingent on decisions made by other governments, as the US looks to refocus its military on the Pacific. But whether this transition will be a smooth shift and gradual hand-off under President Kamala Harris, or a precipitous abandonment of Ukraine – and perhaps Europe – by President Donald Trump, remains to be seen. European states have seemed so far incapable of contingency planning for the latter eventuality, or indeed any concerted strategy to strengthen European defences. They are mostly increasing their defence budgets, but instead of spending the increments on jointly-agreed priorities and collaborative procurement programmes, each country is charting its own path – and often at cross-purposes, as the rival French and German air defence projects demonstrate.

But Europe’s geostrategic situation is not all doom and gloom: the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO has strengthened its northern flank, and Poland is rapidly transforming into a major military power. So the traditional British tendency to believe that only its army would constitute a serious opponent to a Russian push into north and central  Europe needs reassessing. With the war in Ukraine proving that forward defence is crucial, the SDR team should question whether Britain really needs to contribute more than a fully-found, fully-enabled armoured brigade in Estonia – provided, that is, that the full force is deployed on the ground. As Germany and Canada have concluded in the other Baltic states – where their forces are increasing from battalion to brigade strength – deterrence, reassurance, and effective forward defence all require in-place forces, and not just promises of reinforcement at times of crisis. Britain’s land contribution to NATO should be smaller but more lethal, and in the right place.

Money, and its management

Much depends on the outcome of November’s US election, and how rapidly the incoming president might reduce US forces in Europe. But in the meantime, the SDR team must address the second key issue: the ministry of defence’s (MoD) chronic inability to control its finances. As the National Audit Office recently noted, its latest annual report on the MoD’s forward investment programme (capital expenditure on equipment) found the ministry’s plans unaffordable – with an unprecedentedly large gap between the MoD’s aspirations, and any likely level of future funding. As parliament’s Public Accounts Committee concluded in 2021, the MoD’s defence equipment systems are “broken and repeatedly wasting billions of taxpayers’ money.” The recent disaster with Ajax armoured fighting vehicles suggests that little has changed, while revelations that none of the UK’s Astute class hunter-killer submarines are available for operation due to a lack of dry docks almost defy belief.

Here, George Robertson’s experience should be useful. When his SDR reengineered the MoD in 1998, he took decisions on major procurements away from the single services, and entrusted them to one ‘purple’ (ie, tri-service and civilian) ‘customer’ organisation at the centre of the MoD, which could take a less partisan view of a project’s value and progress. That reform was later undone, with the single services put back in control of their ‘own’ procurement programmes. The subsequent litany of procurement failures will no doubt prompt Robertson to question whether he had it right the first time.

The UK’s new defence secretary, John Healey, evidently understands the problem. In the run-up to the general election, he devoted a major speech to the MoD’s structural issues, calling for a stronger central grip on the big investment decisions through the creation of a new military strategic headquarters. This might help create a more stable, more realistic, and multi-year investment programme. He also proposed appointing a fully-fledged National Armament Director (NAD), which in the defence hierarchies of other European countries is typically a role that can confront military top brass where necessary. Robertson’s team should take an urgent look at the conspicuously more successful French procurement system – here, the NAD holds ministerial rank, and is supported by the high-status and expert Corps of Armament Engineers.

As the investment focus shifts to developing and incorporating new technologies, the review should also look at making British funds go further through collaboration with Europe. The government has, after all, advocated a new “security pact” with the European Union. Unhelpfully, the union’s current focus is on boosting defence research and technology cooperation through subsidies from the EU budget – for which Britain is of course ineligible. Yet in the civilian sphere the EU’s Horizon programme, which Britain has just rejoined, is open to some regional partners on a fee-paying basis. A similar arrangement on the defence side would make sense, and the UK should pitch for this. 

The SDR begins amid predictable cries of “More money for defence!”. But finding the promised extra 0.2 per cent of GDP will be tough in Britain’s current fiscal situation. So the SDR will need to prioritise rigorously as it determines how the armed forces should be reshaped for the new strategic environment – and aim to ensure that the long years of governments “wasting billions of taxpayers’ money”  finally come to an end.