Plans to move Britain’s industries and critical infrastructure to a war footing have been delayed, prompting growing questions over whether the UK still retains the ability to defend itself.
The UK’s Defence Readiness Bill, which would lay out measures to prepare key industries and infrastructure in the event of a conflict, has been delayed until the middle of next year.
The bill was expected to be introduced at the start of this year. However, sources told The Times that more preparation was needed and the bill was not expected in the King’s Speech in May.
One senior defence industry source said the bill was “another example of delay that is dragging industry and the growing global picture of the UK as a toothless lion”.
It follows repeated stalling over the release of the Defence Investment Plan, which will lay out a pathway for funding the Armed Forces in the coming decade.
The delays are kneecapping efforts to get UK war ready – and raise further concerns about gaps across defence.
Homeland air defence
The UK’s air defence system has long been flagged as a potential gap in its security. Britain’s top military war gamers replicated Russia’s attacks on Ukraine on the first night of the 2022 invasion and the outcome was “not a pretty picture”, officials revealed last year.
There are a number of capabilities which could be used to protect British skies, like fighter jets, the Sky Sabre system and Type 45 destroyer ships, and the UK is part of Nato’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence system designed to protect the skies of all alliance members.
But there have been calls to develop a British version of Israel’s Iron Dome, which centralises and integrates a range of air defence systems, nicknamed the “Lion Dome”.
Blythe Crawford, a former RAF Air Commodore who recently left his post as head of the UK’s Air and Space Warfare Centre, said that air and missile defence “is a gap” for the UK. This is partly because of the type of capabilities the UK has; flashy missiles are too expensive to fire at low cost drones it could be threatened.
“We’ve seen how countries that have high-end, exquisite air defence capabilities, like those countries in the Middle East, have been forced to fire $3 million Patriot missiles to take out a $30,000 Shahed. That’s bonkers,” Crawford told The i Paper.
Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system responds to incoming Iranian ballistic missiles as seen from Tel Aviv (Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)However, the former senior official said that Israel’s Iron Dome, while incredibly effective, was extremely expensive, costing hundreds of millions per day to stop Iranian attacks. Instead, he suggested the UK could learn from Ukraine, which has developed “novel” but low-cost solutions, like using mobile phones to detect the acoustics of an incoming attack.
The Government is already taking steps to plug the gap, with “up to” £1bn new funding planned for homeland air and missile defence following the Strategic Defence Review.
It has also launched the Octopus project with Ukraine, in which Ukrainian engineers work with British industry, to create low-cost, quick-to-produce drones. Each Octopus interceptor costs less than 10 per cent of the drone it is designed to destroy, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, and the design is updated every six weeks to stay ahead of Russian tactics.
Capability gaps
Defence insiders desperately want greater resource to invest in a range of capabilities across land, sea and air, with many feeling hamstrung by decades of underfunding – though the Government has announced a significant hike in defence spending from next year.
Gaps in the UK’s maritime capabilities were laid bare last month when it took more than a week to deploy a warship to Cyprus, because the only ship available was undergoing maintenance. Privately, military sources admitted that greater defence funding – and more ships – would have meant they were able to deploy more quickly.
But some of the UK’s expansion programmes have been marred by delays and technical failures.
The Ajax armoured vehicle has been hit by yet more problems despite reassurances by defence officials that it was finally working (Photo: Ben Birchall/Getty)The use of Ajax armoured vehicles – a £6.2n project – has been paused after dozens of personnel had to be hospitalised after using them. It is the third major armoured vehicle programmes to stall after the Boxer armoured troop carrier and the Challenger 3 main battle tank, according to defence analyst Robert Fox – leaving potentially a colossal waste of taxpayer money and a key capability gap.
Programmes such as the Wedgetail airborne early-warning plane – already ditched by the US Air Force – are well behind schedule, Fox said, while the Navy was down to only seven working destroyers and frigates.
There are also fears among industry partners that a £1bn plan for a new AW149 medium-lift utility helicopter is also facing delay or cancellation.
Munitions stockpiles
Defence officials and researchers have warned that the UK does not have a large enough stockpile of munitions to sustain a war, with one study finding that the British Army would run out of ammunition within a week.
Defence Secretary John Healey has admitted that a “nation’s Armed Forces are only as strong as the industry, innovators, and investors that stand behind them”.
Hamish Mundell, an associate fellow at the defence think-tank Rusi, said that the UK’s vulnerabilities “remain in depth rather than headline capability, with persistent challenges around stockpiles, munitions production, and personnel numbers, all of which would constrain the ability to sustain operations beyond an initial phase.”
The Ministry of Defence is working to reform its relationship with the companies that provide its equipment, to speed up and streamline a procurement process regularly accused of being tied up in red tape.
Members of the Special Operations Forces practise their rapid deployment techniques with a Mk.6 CH47 Chinook helicopter ahead of the following day’s UK validation exercise, at RAF Leeming on 30 January 2026 near Catterick, United Kingdom (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)Crawford, who now works at Tiberius Aerospace, said the world was moving into “defence 3.0” – and the procurement of weaponry must keep up. After a traditional focus on large standing armies, which gave way to a focus on high end, precision-strike capabilities over the last few decades, warfare was now about quick, cheap innovation and mass production, as seen in Ukraine.
“Agility is a really, really key part of it. It’s about your ability to innovate faster, scale quicker, and do it cheaper, and that allows you to be ready for any scenario,” he said.
Crawford believes industry needs to be decentralised and democratised, nurturing smaller firms and dual-use companies that can plug key gaps in defence. He argues that widening the pool of suppliers would create the best value for the MoD and protect the industrial base from attack, ensuring production was happening at many sites and thus making it harder for potential Russian attacks to wipe it out.
Members of Taifun special operations unit of unmanned systems of the National Guard of Ukraine prepare to launch a reconnaissance drone in Kharkiv Region, Ukraine (Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty)The UK also needs to take advantage of existing, latent manufacturing capacity, like car manufacturers that are losing out to electric cars, which could repurpose their facilities to make defence equipment instead, Crawford said.
But some gaps may not be able to be plugged at home. ADS, a trade association which represents more than 1,500 defence industrial firms, said that critical raw materials and minerals were likely to be a key gap for British suppliers, and “we would need to look at friendly allies for support.”
Reserve forces
There have also been concerns about the readiness of the UK’s reserve forces, which could be called up to bolster troop numbers in the case of conflict.
The volunteer reserve – people with civilian jobs who volunteer to commit a portion of their time to military training, and who can deploy around the world with the regular forces – constitutes 17.5 per cent of all service personnel.
But Mundell said that the government had “yet to build a full plan to arm, equip and train a larger more potent volunteer reserve that would be crucial to Britain’s second wave in a land war”.
“Reserve forces are vital because a nation at peace cannot afford a wartime-sized army; the priority must be the ability to get big quick if required,” he said.
And there is another reservist group about which much less is known; the strategic reserves, ex-service personnel who can be called upon in emergencies.
The MoD does not publish figures on the amount of personnel available to be recalled, though says it does retain records. Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at RUSI, previously said that “we don’t really know what [the Recall Reserves] looks like, where they are, what state they’re in, we don’t know how much of that we can call upon.”
Soldiers take up positions during an attack simulation involving the Norwegian 133 Air Wing Force Protection battalion and the British 51 Squadron RAF Regiment at Evenes Airbase, near Narvik on 11 March 2026, as Nato conducts its Cold Response military exercise (Photo: John MacDougall/ AFP via Getty Images)Admiral Lord West, former head of the British Navy, told The i Paper that mobilising this group would be “extraordinarily difficult”.
The Strategic Defence Review, a blueprint for improving the state of the UK’s Armed Forces, recommended that the MoD step up engagement with those ex-military personnel with an enduring Strategic Reservist liability.
The MoD is acting on this, saying it is “reinvigorating engagement” with Recall Reserves and to develop a “new Strategic Reserve” by 2030, in order to “build surge capacity for concurrent demands including warfighting and home defence.”
It is considering different ways to increase engagement with Strategic Reservists, such as through annual training opportunities, exercises, a communications campaign, and exploring a digitised approach to Reserves management, The i Paper understands.
Critical national infrastructure
British critical national infrastructure, from data to energy, is also vulnerable to attack from hostile states, threatening to bring life in the UK to a standstill.
Daily life in the UK is reliant on satellite systems, which enable maps on mobile phones and in cars to work, tell ambulance services which vehicles can most quickly reach a patient and how they should get there, and facilitate global financial traders by helping to track commodities and monitor markets.
But experts warned that they are vulnerable to cyber attack or sabotage, which could bring daily life to a standstill, halting transport networks from planes to trains, suspending maps and even damaging the power grid.
Ambulances rely on GPS signals from satellites to find patients. (Photo: Getty)The Centre for Strategic and International studies said that sabotage attacks on Europe had soared since the start of the Ukraine war, mostly targeting transport and government assets, critical infrastructure and defence companies.
The UK’s Cyber Security Centre revealed last year that Russian military intelligence had been carrying out a “malicious cyber campaign against both public and private organisations since 2022”.
The Government is working on a Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to bolster the strength of its infrastructure, while the Home Defence Programme, established in August 2024 aims to build the UK’s resilience to risks by aligning military and civil preparedness.
Funding
Underpinning defence is funding – but officials have identified a £28bn black hole in MoD costings, and the UK’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which is due to lay out funding streams for the Armed Forces for the next ten years, has been repeatedly delayed.
It was originally due to be released before Christmas, but the MoD and Treasury are understood to still be wrangling over the details.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said that defence had been in “paralysis” over the delays to the Defence Readiness Bill and investment plan, and that it was holding up key upgrades to capabilities.
“Crucial upgrades like Sea Viper Evolution, needed to defend our fleet from ballistic missiles, remain on hold – pending the long delayed DIP,” he told The i Paper. “Warfare is changing rapidly but Labour are moving far too slowly.”
The Treasury, run by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and Ministry of Defence, headed by Defence Secretary John Healey, are wrangling over the Defence Investment Plan (Photo: Leon Neal / PA Wire)ADS suggested that to maximise funding, UK defence should look at adjacent sectors that could make dual use equipment for both civilian and military purposes.
An ADS spokesperson told The i Paper that “the UK has capability and potential capacity, but can’t put investment in place without a long-term investment plan.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said it was providing the “largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War, investing over £270 billion in defence across this Parliament, ensuring no return to the hollowed out Armed Forces of the past.”
“The Strategic Defence Review sets out our path to increasing warfighting readiness, and the upcoming Defence Investment Plan will set out how we deliver the best kit into the hands of our Armed Forces over the next decade, ensuring they are ready to face future threats,” they said.
“We’re constantly hardening and sharpening our approach to homeland security, making sure the UK can respond to the threats we face.”
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