Britain’s ability to fight a future war against Russia is being damaged by a procurement “vacuum” created by delays in Whitehall over a crucial blueprint setting out the UK’s military spending, senior defence figures have told The i Paper.
The Government is under increasing pressure to deliver its long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) – which has promised to overhaul Britain’s military capabilities with about £300bn of investment over a decade – after criticism that the Iran war has exposed deep UK military frailties.
However, wrangling between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Treasury over a reported £28bn funding gap means the DIP blueprint, originally expected last October, is now not expected to be delivered until June at the earliest.
Defence firms, leading politicians and military figures say the delays risk leaving the UK short of the weapons and manpower needed to defend against a heightened threat from Russia.
General Sir Richard Barrons – former director of operations for UK armed forces and co-author of last year’s landmark Strategic Defence Review – said he is “frankly alarmed” at the Government’s slow progress in bolstering Britain’s Armed Forces.
Barrons told The i Paper the delays create a “damaging” sense “of there being a lot of time to put matters right”.
He said: “It indicates that the Government thinks they can get round to fixing defence in the medium to long term.
“I think this is completely at odds with the character of the world we live in and the fact that the clock is actually owned by our potential opponents, with Russia very much to the fore.”
Leaders of Britain’s £36bn defence sector said delays are forcing companies looking to supply Britain with the sort of cutting-edge technology needed for a future war to consider relocating abroad, while empty order books are forcing others to postpone production plans.
ADS Group, the industry body which represents some 1,700 UK defence and aerospace companies from giants such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce to start-ups, warned of a “knock-on effect” for the ability of Britain’s armed forces to confront any attempt by Vladimir Putin to attack Nato.
Defence Secretary John Healey insisted the Government is working to ‘put right’ procurement (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty)Kevin Craven, chief executive of ADS Group, said: “It feels like a vacuum. The decision making is not quick enough and it’s a really difficult environment for people to make business decisions. I’m hearing it from companies of all sizes.
“The longer-term consequences will be a diminution of our industrial capability to support defence. I keep hearing the words from members that ‘it’s the worst we’ve ever seen’ in terms of order books and the state of play in terms of [investment] clarity.”
He added: “Roughly half of the defence budget is spent on equipment and services supporting our armed forces. If you slow that down, inevitably it must have a knock-on effect on the ability of the military to mobilise quickly if they were to get into a conflict.”
Former Conservative defence secretary Penny Mordaunt told The i Paper: “We won’t be ready or capable unless we act now. Other nations are cracking on. We are not. As a consequence, our resilience is going backwards.”
UK weapons firms considering US moves
Defence Secretary John Healey on Friday insisted the Government was working to “put right” previous procurement programmes under the Conservatives, which were “unsuited to the threats we face”.
Healey added: “We will publish the investment plan as soon as we can.” Earlier this week, it emerged that another key piece of legislation, the Defence Readiness Bill, which will lay out how British industry and infrastructure would be placed on a war footing in the event of a conflict, has also been shelved until next year.
The concerns about the effect of the DIP delay were echoed by Make UK – Defence, a second industry body.
Andrew Kinniburgh, the organisation’s director-general, said smaller defence companies, including many in areas such as AI and drones, were considering moving to the US or Europe due to the delays, adding: “There are plenty of businesses struggling.”
It comes as UK-based firm Skycutter, which makes state-of-the-art drones, said this week that it may leave the UK after securing a $200m (£149m) contract with the US military – and accused the Government of moving “too slowly”.
The criticism is being made amid growing evidence that while other European countries, including Germany, Finland, Poland and France, are forging ahead with rearmament schemes and programmes to bolster numbers in their armed forces, Britain is at serious risk of being left behind.
Military chiefs and governments across Europe have repeatedly warned that the continent needs to be ready to fight a conventional war with Russia by about 2030.
The UK Government has set a target for defence spending to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP by next April. This means that while Britain will have the second largest military budget in Europe in cash terms, it will remain considerably behind countries including Poland (4.5 per cent) and Germany (3.5 per cent by 2029) as a share of national wealth.
An analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in February found that Russia’s defence spending – equivalent to $462bn (£343bn) last year – now outstrips all of Europe’s defence budgets combined ($457bn or £340bn).
In January, Sir Richard Knighton, the Chief of the Defence Staff, acknowledged Britain’s lack of war readiness, saying the UK was “not as ready as we need to be for the kind of full-scale conflict we might face”.
The result is an urgent sense among military figures of a need to rapidly bolster the UK’s armed forces with equipment – ranging from industrial-scale production of munitions and drones to sixth-generation fighter jets and air defence missiles- and the logistical support needed to sustain a drawn-out conflict.
Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, a former British army officer, said: “With the potential for a major conflict involving the UK closer than it’s been in decades, there needs to be a sea-change in how we approach defence.
“The nine-month delay to the defence investment plan is undoubtedly hampering our preparations for any potential future conflict. Our Armed Forces desperately need to modernise in order to meet the evolving nature of conflict.”
Funding dilemmas
Ministers have insisted that the Government is moving at pace to adapt to the changing face of warfare, signing some 1,200 defence contracts since it was elected in July 2024 – with the vast majority of those deals going to UK companies.
The MoD on Friday announced a “multimillion-pound” contract with start-up firm Cambridge Aerospace for its Skyhammer drone interceptor missiles to be used by UK forces and Gulf allies, with the first deliveries due next month.
An MoD spokesperson said: “The Government is providing a generational increase in defence spending, investing over £270bn this Parliament, ensuring no return to the hollowed out Armed Forces of the past.
“We have signed more than 1,200 defence contracts since July 2024, with 96 per cent of that spend going to British-based businesses, and have spent more than £31 billion with UK industry last year.”Experts warn that the Government increasingly faces a stark political choice if it wishes to fully fund its defence aspirations, which include increasing defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP in the next Parliament.
Sash Tusa, an Army veteran and a defence expert at advisory firm Agency Partner, said that even when the DIP is delivered, it is unclear whether the Government will be able to pay for it.
He said: “There is a much broader thing going on here which is that there is not the political consensus within this government to spend on defence at the expense of other political objectives, whether those are a balanced budget, social, or health programmes.”
Questions are also being asked about the extent to which the UK needs to boost numbers in its 180,000-strong armed forces, as well as equipment, in order to successfully confront or deter Russia, which has 1.3 million active duty personnel and has sustained estimated losses of 1.2 million casualties in Ukraine since February 2022.
Several defence sources said the situation of the UK and its European allies was being made more unstable by Donald Trump’s increasingly outspoken attacks on Nato and the risk that Washington will seek to punish European allies for a perceived lack of support over the Iran war by slashing resources, or even contemplate quitting the alliance altogether.
France has announced plans to increase recruitment by 50,000 by 2034, and Finland’s blueprint for war expects it to field 280,000 troops – some 100,000 more than the UK’s current roll call, despite the Scandinavian country having a population of just 5.5 million.
One Western defence source said: “The question is one of mass. The UK has some extremely advanced capabilities but there are serious questions about whether they can be sustained in a hot war against an adversary like Russia.
“Moscow has shown in Ukraine a tolerance for casualty rates that few European countries are currently prepared to accept. At some point, the British Army and those of its allies will need to be able to fight a long war. At present, that is simply not the case.”
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