Extra defence spending is being lost on MoD’s overdraft, warns former RAF chief
The former chief of the RAF has warned that rising defense spending in the UK is being “eaten up by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) overdraft” and the UK’s military footprint is shrinking at a critical moment.
Retired Air Chief Edward Stringer’s intervention comes just days after Sir Keir Starmer pledged to send UK troops to Ukraine as part of a coalition keen to defend any peace deal from Russian aggression.
But it represents the third warning in less than a week from a former member of the UK’s senior military echelon that the UK’s commitments to Ukraine and elsewhere are not matched by its armed forces and manpower resources.
In his report for Policy Exchange, Air Marshall Stringer warned that the UK is getting far less ‘bang for its money’ than its rivals – so the frontline continues to shrink even though the headline budget has been increased to 3 per cent of GDP, with a target of 3.5 per cent.
The report, titled There Are Gaps in Defense, states that the British Army currently has only 14 howitzers in total; The Royal Navy has been unable to launch more than one attack submarine for some time; and the RAF had to send training unit pilots to sea to secure certification of the carrier-based F35 Force.
Noting that no single formation in the British army was currently sustainable in combat as a dominant entity in full Order of Battle, Air Marshal Stringer wrote: “Our national defense has proven to be a flimsy front. The tide has passed and we can now see that the UK army is not wearing any chests.”
This comes as a debate is scheduled to take place in the House of Commons next week on the beleaguered Ajax heavy army project; The government is likely to come under pressure to abandon the project following continued failures after nearly £6bn was spent on its development.
Meanwhile, another Policy Shift report earlier in the week by another retired air chief, Lord Stirrup, outlined how Britain had become too reliant on nuclear weapons for deterrence and warned that this did not scare Vladimir Putin.
The former chief of defense staff has warned that Britain is hampered by an “outdated nuclear doctrine” and must accept that deterrence relies on “a range of capabilities, not just nuclear weapons”.
It comes after Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as NATO’s deputy supreme allied commander in Europe from 2011 to 2014, said allied forces would need at least 50,000 troops to deter an attack from Russia in Ukraine, while the military currently has fewer than 75,000 personnel.
Former defense secretary Gavin Williamson, meanwhile, warned that the number of tokens would not be enough and said the UK would need a number equivalent to the 40,000-plus “Rhine armies” deployed in West Germany after the Second World War as a Cold War deterrent.
With Donald Trump looking to withdraw from European defense and even threatening NATO ally Denmark over Greenland, Air Marshal Stringer warned that Britain was becoming too dependent on America rather than its own sovereign capabilities.
He said: “During the era of the American police-run ‘Rules-Based International Order,’ we increasingly relied on borrowing from Americans while making cuts to our vital capabilities. Occasional optics of tactical perfection concealed the increasingly hollow nature of our capacity for sovereignty.”
“But now the US is sending strong signals that it is putting ‘America first’ and that the rest of NATO will have to look after its own defence. This fundamentally challenges the model we have fallen into semi-accidentally: our national defense has turned out to be a flimsy front. The tide has passed and we can now see that the UK military is not wearing any shorts.”
Warning of a huge gap between what politicians claim on defense spending and the reality of the UK’s relative military weakness, he went on: “The Say-Do gap between the image of ourselves we have come to believe – and the reality of the hard power we can project in practice, is stark. The first necessary step is to recognize that, and recognize that the methods that got us into this mess have to be discarded ruthlessly.”
“The document argues that the government has been lax in resetting the narrative of a decline in our defense capabilities, but in reality neither spending nor frontline capabilities have kept pace with this rhetoric. Target dates in the 2030s are too late and such reassurance neither gives our allies the confidence to influence our enemies.”
“Government procurement agencies have not absorbed the Government’s message about the seriousness of the times we are in and the threats we now face, and while problematic programs such as Ajax absorb billions of dollars for non-functioning equipment, ‘business as usual’ continues and promises to be better in the 2030s.”
A Ministry of Defense spokesman said: “This government is delivering the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War, with a £5bn increase this year, reaching 2.6 per cent of GDP by 2027, a level not seen since 2010. This will see over £270bn invested in defense across parliament, meaning there will be no return to the armed forces that have been hollowed out and underfunded in the past.
“The government is also supporting the UK’s preparedness and resilience by signing more than 1,000 major contracts since the election, building at least six state-of-the-art munitions and energy factories in parliament, and rapidly implementing recommendations in the Strategic Defense Review.”
