UK Vows ‘Warfighting Readiness’, New Submarines and Nuclear Warheads in Defence Review

The British Prime Minister has launched his Strategic Defence Review at a shipyard in Scotland on Monday, promising cash for new nuclear warheads, new attack submarines, and a building programme for new munitions factories.

The United Kingdom, which presently spends 2.3 per cent of its GDP on defence, will boost that to 2.5 per cent by 2027 and 3 per cent by some time in the 2030s, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday morning. The announcement was criticised from both sides, on one hand for three per cent of national output on defence being woefully low for the claimed threat picture, and from the other for the increase being unfunded and at the expense of government cuts or tax rises

For the Prime Minister’s part, he touted Economic Keynesianism, saying the termination now of the “peace dividend” would mean a “defence dividend” as tax money is funneled into massive military projects that will employ civilians to build weapons.

Of the spending areas announced, Starmer said he was bringing in the “biggest armed forces pay rise in 20 years” and “at least six new munitions factories” would be built to create “thousands of new long-range weapons”. Advocating for “peace through strength”, the Prime Minister said there would be £15 billion to make the next generation of British nuclear warheads indigenously and — potentially echoing President Trump’s Golden Shield — investment “in our air and missile defence to better protect these islands”.

For the navy, Starmer talked up the rollout of new maritime drones to integrate with the conventional force, and of “up to” 12 new AUKUS attack submarines. Yet at a rollout rate of one every 18 months, this is an investment in future defence that presumably won’t fully mature until the 2050s.

The policy is one clearly informed by the experience of the Ukraine war, where increased military-industrial capacity highlighted by the vast quantity of shells and drones being used daily by Kyiv outstripping the Western world’s ability to keep up with fresh supplies, for instance.  The threat envisioned for this defence policy was specified as Russia. Starmer said: “We face war in Europe, new nuclear risks, daily cyber attacks. Growing Russian aggression in our waters, menacing our skies.”

The Prime Minister said “we are moving to warfighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces”, which naturally begs the question what he thought what the purpose of the military was beforehand. Nevertheless, critics were quick to criticise the plan for not going far enough, fast enough.

Former head of the British Army Lord Dannatt said the Starmer review failed in its own stated ambition because announcing to the world that the United Kingdom would not be spending enough to defend itself for years to come is not effective deterrence. He told The Times: “just moving to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 does not cut the mustard. And this rather vague commitment to move to 3 per cent by the end of the next parliament, 2034, it just doesn’t stack up.

“It’s like saying in 1938 to Adolf Hitler, please don’t attack us until 1946, because we’re not going to be ready”.

Reform UK Member of Parliament Richard Tice also criticised the Prime Minister for lack of vision, and for wasting badly needed defense money on giving away the Chagos Islands, a key UK-U.S. base, to Mauritius. He said: “The commitments made in this defence review are completely empty if Labour does not commit to spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence… Let’s not forget — the £50 billion they plan to hand over through the Chagos deal, along with British sovereign territory, will come directly out of the defence budget.

“That money could have been spent on better military equipment, boosting recruitment, and improving conditions for our armed forces.”