What will defence spending boost mean for British military?

It is exciting when a government department receives a huge sum of money, particularly when the Prime Minister calls it the “biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War”.

As Sir Keir Starmer spoke in the Commons on Tuesday of “Russian tanks rolling into European cities again”, the threat prompting this injection of money was obvious.

But as many defence sources have made clear since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, this money was urgently needed some time ago.

Challenger 2 tanks given to Ukraine should have been replenished in 2023. Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, the former head of the British Army, warned at the time that donating battle tanks left our own military “temporarily weaker” – yet no replacements were sourced.

It is exactly this kind of equipment that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) should spend this money on – along with kit that can be obtained quickly and relatively cheaply, such as loitering munitions, also known as suicide drones, and first person view drones, where a remote pilot has a video point-of-view from the drone.

If Sir Keir was serious when he spoke of his willingness to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, then the Government must not make the mistake of spending the extra £13.4 billion a year from 2027 on long-term projects that take money away from where it is needed now.

This means it cannot invest the cash in equipment like new state-of-the art submarines and other projects that take 15 years to come to fruition. Instead, it means listening to military chiefs and buying high-tech weapons that could beat Putin in a war tomorrow.

In the event of a Nato deployment to Ukraine, the focus would be land-based, so it is likely the British Army and RAF will do best out of these funds, as any new kit will go to help troops on the ground and their backup in the skies.

However, a proportion of the money must be spent on areas that are less exciting but equally important.

These include covering pay rises for personnel, thought to cost around £1 billion, as well as investment in services accommodation, if the MoD wants to stop families leaving the military because of poor housing conditions.

Other areas could include tarmacking RAF runways and buying “enablers”, lorries which transfer service personnel, weapons and equipment onto trains and ships.

The MoD is adamant that exactly what the money will be spent on will be revealed in the strategic defence review, due to be published this spring.

Briefing journalists on Tuesday, defence sources suggested that some of the money would need to be used on the more mundane aspects of supporting the military.

“We have to deal with the challenges we have in defence across the board,” the source said, adding that the MoD had to “grapple” with 14 years of the Armed Forces having been “hollowed out and underfunded”.

James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, told The Telegraph: “Some of the money will have to be spent on unglamorous things, the kind of jobs that don’t get done when spending is lower than it should be and you are still trying to do a lot and corners get cut.”

However, he stressed it was “an absolute necessity to restock our munitions piles”. “They are too low,” he said. “We need a Nato-approved war-fighting capability which is enough to last for 60 days in the war.”

Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “There is a danger that a decent proportion of this new money gets sucked into reprofiling the Equipment Plan so we don’t have to make more cuts.”

Last year, the MoD announced it would cut six major programmes to save money, including the Army’s Watchkeeper drone programme and a quarter of the UK’s CH-47 Chinook helicopter fleet.

“They could place orders for munitions procurement but that requires lines to be up and running,” Mr Savill said.

“There may be some projects they could speed up. They could double the Army’s combat output for example by rapidly procuring drones, sensors, and electronic warfare equipment.”

He added: “If you know the problem is weapons stockpiles and we don’t have enough, perhaps they will accelerate some of the complex weapons stuff, such as the Spear 3 cruise missile for the F-35s and get them into production earlier.”

Some will question Sir Keir’s motive, given he boosted defence spending ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday.

Others will ask: does it matter? What is important is that the MoD will have more money to invest in the military to prevent it from being further depleted.