Defence starts at home - priorities for the Defence Review
As expected, the Labour victory in the UK General Election has brought the prompt announcement of another Strategic Defence Review - this one badged as a "root and branch" review, as opposed to 2023's 'refresh'. Led by Lord Robertson (a former Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General), the review will be delivered "at pace" (which means it will report during the first half of 2025) and deliver a "new era for defence". With storm clouds gathering, the new UK Government really needs to get this one right.
Show us the money
In April, the previous Conservative Government finally put a timetable against the oft-stated aspiration to raise UK defence spending to 2.5%. The new Labour Government has so far declined to do so. In the short term, this won't affect anything as the Conservative plan increased spending gradually to hit 2.5% in 2030, and the relatively modest increases this year and next were primarily directed at the Nuclear Enterprise and supporting Ukraine, both of which Labour has committed to. Labour does therefore inherit the problem there is no extra money now for conventional forces, and the Equipment Plan remains severely underfunded, leaving the new Government to own the inevitable procurement cuts or delays unless there are some significant changes to defence funding or posture.
Defence starts at home
The Defence Review provides an opportunity for a realistic assessment of Britain's place in the world, and to reset priorities such that they align with the the budget available and the threat environment as it stands now. That means giving our Armed Forces one overarching priority, taking precedence over all else - deterring Russian aggression in Europe and the North Atlantic. It is time for the UK to accept something that has been true for many years - we cannot maintain adequate homeland defence and meet our commitments to NATO, whilst also maintaining the fantasy that we can project meaningful power around the world. The days of Britain as a global military power are long gone.
The paradox - rising spending and armed forces cuts
UK defence spending is rising, but looking from the outside what is most apparent is cuts to all three services by most meaningful metrics. The new Government inherits armed forces that don't look like they are preparing for a "pre-war world".
The British Army is currently part-way through its latest ten year transformation plan, Future Force 2020 Joint Force 2025 Integrated Force 2030, and will see its full-time strength cut to 73,000 by next year. Meanwhile the programme to deliver the Ajax family of vehicles is running 5 years late, the long-serving CVR(T) vehicles have been retired with their reconnaissance role temporarily covered by Warrior vehicles that had their own troubled upgrade programme cancelled and are scheduled to leave service next year, the MORPHEUS Next Generation Tactical Communications system has been cancelled having “fallen short of what we expected”, and the UK is left vulnerable by a chronic lack of ground-based air defence. Even the Boxer programme is rumoured to be facing delays due to supply chain issues, so the Warriors are likely to be kept busy for a while yet.
Following the retirement of the Tornado and the plan to remove most Tranche 1 Typhoons from service next year, the Royal Air Force will be left with just 144 combat aircraft - a smaller fleet than either France or Germany. The belated plan to replace the UK's fleet of seven E-3D Sentry AEW aircraft with five E-7 Wedgetails has been cut to just three - insufficient to guarantee continuous coverage. And controversially, the much-loved C-130J Hercules aircraft have been removed from service, with their missions to be (mostly) adopted by the larger A400M.
Last year, just as the then Defence Secretary was boasting of a "New Golden Age of British Shipbuilding", the MOD quietly slipped out the news that a further two Type 23 frigates (Argyll and Westminster) would be scrapped, taking the Royal Navy's surface fleet down to just nine frigates and six destroyers. With the replacement Type 26 deliveries now running some five years behind the schedule planned when the programme received main gate approval, it has proven too costly and time consuming to refit and extend the lives of the elderly Type 23s, and the Navy also has a recruitment crisis that means it would struggle to crew them anyway. In turn, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is suffering an even worse personnel shortage meaning it would struggle to support a larger fleet, and the Navantia-led team to build the next generation Fleet Solid Support Ships that are essential to provide at-sea replenishment of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers is facing a crisis in the form of financial difficulties at key team member Harland & Wolff.
Personnel issues affect other areas of defence apart from the Navy and RFA. The UK Infrastructure & Projects Authority annual report into major projects released last year listed personnel resources and/or skills shortages negatively affecting 16 out of 41 major defence projects.
Yet UK defence spending IS rising in real terms. The problem is that the additional funding is currently being swallowed by support to Ukraine and the 'nuclear enterprise', the spending boost to the latter proving essential to ensure that the Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarine programme is delivered to schedule and the Continuous at Sea deterrent is maintained.
The 'Ten Year Rule' no longer applies
For decades, UK defence planning has assumed that the next big war is 10 years away, and by the mid-2030s the UK Armed Forces should be in better shape. Unfortunately that is too late. With Russia transitioned to a war economy footing and building capacity while building alliances with Iran and North Korea, and the expansionist and aggressive Putin foreign policy is unlikely to wait for the UK and its allies to prepare ourselves. We need to take steps NOW to be ready to fight a war in Europe in 3-5 years - because the best way to avoid such a war is to deter it by convincing the enemy that you are ready and committed, and that the cost to them of prosecuting such a war will be too great.
When you look at the UK's plans, and forecast equipment and personnel availability in 3-5 years, we look neither ready nor committed. What is needed, apart from more money, is a willingness to take some difficult decisions in order to demonstrably increase the UK warfighting capability in that time-frame, because doing so will send a message both to our enemies and our allies that we are taking the threat seriously and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to fight if all else fails.
What does that mean for the next Defence Review and Command Paper?
The Defence Review should set two clear priorities:
- The primary focus of the UK's Armed Forces should be defence of the UK and meeting our NATO commitments.
- Equipment, recruitment and procurement plans must result in increased warfighting mass and capability within 3 years.
In practical terms, the following steps should be taken as a matter of urgency:
1. Implement the recommendations of the Haythornthwaite review
Any plan to increase mass and capability is doomed to fail if the recruitment and retention crisis in the Armed Forces isn't tackled. Pay, conditions, accommodation and training all need to be improved to make a career in the Armed Forces attractive again, and to stem the loss of experienced personnel.
2. Reverse cuts to the Army
The British Army should be restored to 82,000 regular personnel. The cuts are estimated to save £3.9bn over 10 years - an average of £390m per year.
3. Cancel the early retirement of Tranche 1 Typhoons
The UK's combat aircraft fleet has been cut by more than half over the last 20 years, and is now smaller than that of France, Germany or Italy. If called upon to fight a war in the next few years, the only way to increase the strength of the Royal Air Force is cancel plans to cut it further now. The lead-time to manufacture modern combat aircraft is such that new Typhoons cannot be delivered in time should we need them, and the current plans for the F-35B will take until 2033 for the fleet to reach 74 aircraft. The capabilities of the Tranche 1 aircraft are limited to the air-to-air role (without upgrade) and the MOD has estimated the cost of retaining them as "in excess of £300m", but the value of having an additional 26 aircraft capable of providing Quick Reaction Alert and interception of Russian bombers and cruise missiles approaching from the High North makes £300m look like a bargain to me.
4. Restore the E-7 Wedgetail AEW procurement to five airframes
The aforementioned cuts to the combat aircraft fleet place a premium on situational awareness and the ability to place aircraft in the right place at the right time, and that requires the airborne early warning and control capability that the Wedgetail provides. Yet the programme has been cut to three airframes, despite the fact that the MOD still purchased five of the radar systems. Three is not sufficient to guarantee continuous coverage if one of the aircraft suffers a unplanned technical issue, even if combat losses are avoided. The cut resulted in a modest 12% cost saving (£2.15bn to £1.89bn) for a significant 40% reduction in capability.
5. "Soft-mothball" the QEC aircraft carriers
Heresy? Consider the facts:
- Deliveries of the UK's F-35Bs is proceeding at a glacial pace, and the problems with the Military Flight Training pipeline supplying pilots is well publicised, so we can't currently equip a carrier with an operationally useful number of UK aircraft.
- The Fleet Solid Support Ship programme was already "ambitious" in terms of delivering the essential support ships on time, even before Harland & Wolff's recently publicised financial difficulties. If Navantia can't now meet the in-service date then the programme could be scrapped in its current form, potentially without incurring cancellation fees.
- The Royal Navy and Fleet Auxiliary are facing particularly acute recruitment and retention problems, and are struggling to crew all their ships.
- The shrinking surface fleet doesn't have the numbers provide an adequate escort for a lengthy, long-distance carrier deployment (e.g. the Indo-Pacific) while still meeting all of obligations to homeland defence in the North Atlantic and NATO.
- The aircraft carriers contribute little to the number one priority of deterring Russian aggression, and are currently too limited in capability to bother the Chinese.
By "soft-mothball" I mean continue to deploy a single carrier in nearby waters for the purpose of training crews (including flight crews) and hold the other in extended readiness, until such time as the availability of personnel, aircraft, support and escort ships has improved to the levels needed to enable operationally useful long-distance deployments (likely 8-10 years away).
Limiting carrier operations to training in or near home waters, and postponing the £1.6bn Fleet Solid Support Ship programme, will free up budget in the near term to fund the measures to increase defence capability in the priority areas listed above, and relieve some of the pressure on the Royal Navy and RFA.
6. Fix defence procurement
In July 2023 the Defence Committee published a highly-critical report into UK defence procurement. There was very little disagreement with either the conclusions or recommendations of the report - from Government, Industry or the Armed Forces. Earlier this year the previous Government launched a new 'Integrated Procurement Model', again with broad support and agreement from all sectors, seeking to improve and streamline UK defence procurement. This new model prioritises exportability, introduces 'spiral development' by default and seeks to foster the innovation that UK industry is very good at when barriers are removed and urgency allows, as we have seen with various UOR/UCRs for the UK Armed Forces over the years, and also with the recent support to Ukraine which has witnessed new capabilities developed at pace and innovative new uses for existing equipment.
The new Government should build on this new procurement model, but it also needs to tackle the long-standing problem of 'annuality' in defence budgeting. This is where the MOD spends time not just monitoring the total cost of its projects, but also has to juggle in-year spend to fit within its annual budget each year. This drives unhelpful behaviours, such as 'over-programming' where the MOD issues a plan to spend more money during the year than it actually has in the expectation that something will be delayed, and to make sure there is always a home for all of its budget rather than risk losing an under-spend back to the Treasury. This leads to the perverse situation that the MOD is actually depending on programme delays to balance its books each year, and sometimes makes the choice to cut or push back programmes leading to increased costs in the longer term through inflation and also the need to support obsolete equipment in-service for longer.
The Government should look to grant the MOD greater budgetary flexibility, including carrying forward under-spends. This would likely be resisted by the Treasury, but is essential to the drive towards a more efficient and flexible procurement system. This has already been recognised to a limited extent with this kind of flexibility recently granted specifically to the Defence Nuclear Enterprise.
The war in Ukraine continues, and the US Presidential Election later this year also adds another layer of geopolitical uncertainty. The West continues to be subjected to 'sub-threshold' acts of aggression such as damage to sub-sea infrastructure, cyber attacks, GPS jamming in international airspace, and attacks on shipping by Iranian proxies. The new Government needs to take some tough decisions to ensure that defence is prioritised and, importantly, is seen to be so.
