Before becoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham wrote in The Times on 8th July: ‘we must rebuild Britain’s hard power to face a darker world.’ This begs the question: how much darker is the world becoming, and how should the United Kingdom (UK) react?

The eroding international order

For over four years, Russian missiles and drones have rained down on Ukrainian cities, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties each month – the Kremlin’s latest atrocity in its 12 year campaign against its neighbour. The United States (US) attacked Iran on 28th February 2026, with minimal effort made to create a legal basis. Both Russia and the US are permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the highest body of the international order, with a unique responsibility for the maintenance of international security and its regulation.

The early 21st century has seen the return of overt territorial revisionism by major powers, with members of the UN Security Council violating the UN Charter and vetoing any UN sanction. The 2014 and 2022 Russian invasions of Ukraine are the most extreme contemporary examples, but the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the 1999 NATO operation against Serbia remain hotly contested on the same UN Charter sovereign immunity clause. The American seizure of Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, under US domestic law is an explicit rejection of the same tenets, as are threats to annex Greenland.

In 2025, America imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, calling the ICC judgements ‘...abuse of power infring[ing] upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies…’ The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is stretching the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to legitimise the construction of artificial islands to extend its territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). In 2013, the International Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague ruled against the Chinese claims, but Beijing ignored the ruling.

Economic statecraft and strategic leverage

The globalisation of economic interdependence might encourage the view that international economic ties reduce the effectiveness of military coercion. However, after decades of ‘offshoring’, states are now increasingly exploiting asymmetric economic linkages and supply chain chokepoints for strategic leverage. The PRC exploits other states’ dependence on rare earth metals, the Group of Ten (G10) has exploited its monopoly control over the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) banking system to impose sanctions on Iran (2012) and Russia (2022), and the US has imposed punitive tariffs as coercive tools on allies as well as adversaries.

Russia has been excluded from the Group of Seven (G7) since its initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. The PRC competes against the UN’s International Monetary Fund (IMF), with the Asian International Infrastructure Bank offering competitive infrastructure loans to states without many of the IMF’s regulatory stipulations, but with the infrastructure as collateral. The World Trade Organisation exists to manage exactly these types of disputes, but it is now largely defunct and facing 21st century mercantilism, with powerful states increasingly reverting to aggressive tariff regimes and trade barriers.

The implications of deepening geopolitical competition

Evidently, the international order is under strain – both from those who have long sought to undermine it and, increasingly, those who should be its greatest champions. ‘International order’ is simply a description of the relationships between states. Although the post-Cold War international system was backed by the US as a single hegemonic power, it was largely benign, based on norms or rules often set by international institutions.

A rules-based international order is only effective as long as its advocates enforce those rules. When major powers are seen to be breaking their own rules, the rules become enfeebled. The major powers are undermining the credibility of the UN Security Council and by extension the entire concept of a rules-based international order; if the great powers can act with impunity because of their strength, that is a power-based order. Where would that leave powers such as the UK, which have traditionally seen the upholding of such an order as in their national interest?

The 2021 Integrated Review asserted:

...UK policy has been focused on preserving the post-Cold War ‘rules-based international system’ which has greatly benefitted the UK and other nations. Today…the international order is…characterised by intensifying competition between states...A defence of the status quo is no longer sufficient…

In turn, the 2025 Strategic Defence Review suggested:

The challenge to the free world has intensified through so-called ‘great power’ competition and a collapse of the post-Second World War consensus. The certainties of the international order we have accepted for so long are now being questioned – and not only by authoritarians.

British policy appears to recognise the ‘new reality’, but Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) departmental objectives remain essentially unchanged between 2020 and 2025. The UK could commit to supporting the existing rules-based order, or it could invest in shaping a future order – effectively a balance between short-term and longer-term risk. Both options come with costs. However, the country appears to be planning for neither.

Capability gaps: Allocating resources

Preparing for less international governance will require enhancement to the British Armed Forces and diplomatic capabilities. Even allowing for a ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) first’ focus, there is no flurry of new military acquisition. Conventional military capabilities have continued to atrophy since 2010. The nuclear deterrent comprises submarines already extended past their design lives. The Integrated Review’s announcement increasing the maximum stockpile of nuclear warheads does not change the deterrence criteria or in itself increase the UK’s military capability.

The costs of provision of sufficient military force to protect scattered British commercial interests in a more anarchic international security environment would be considerable. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) included a risible 0.01% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in ‘new’ money to be spent on defence, which led to John Healey resigning as Secretary of State for Defence, stating ‘...[the DIP] falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time.’ Following Healey’s transition to His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury as part of the Burnham administration, it remains uncertain how the UK can maintain its reputation as a dependable partner among NATO allies who face the growing Russian menace and who have committed to devoting 5% of GDP to defence.

Britain has long relied on so-called ‘soft power’ to help sustain its influence worldwide; indeed, the Integrated Review lauded Britain as a ‘soft power superpower,’ citing the BBC and the British Council as key enablers. However, both are now at risk of death by a thousand cuts. Since 2021, the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) – i.e., foreign aid – budget has been reduced by 30%. Cuts to the British Council shut down their offices in 27 states. A 21% reduction to BBC World Service funding led to closure of radio services in Chinese, Russian, and Hindi, and to digital-only for Arabic and Persian, although funding was increased in 2026 to about 80% of the 2021 figure.

While the ability to deliver strategic results through ‘soft power’ in a ‘hard power’ world can be debated, the narrative battle against adversaries in ‘middle ground’ countries will be important, and these steps undermine those efforts.

The future of British strategic influence

As a major power with the world’s fifth largest economic output, a minimum nuclear deterrent, and atrophied – albeit regenerating – armed forces, the UK has benefitted from disproportionate influence, mostly due to its privileged position within the rules-based international order, including its permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Germany and Japan have, for the moment, larger populations and larger economies, but no permanent UN Security Council seat. As the existing order continues to deteriorate, the benefits that Britain has derived are at risk. Evidently, the country needs to rethink its approach.

Despite security policy recognising the context of continuous competition – the Prime Minister’s ‘darker world’ – the UK has not made attendant enhancements to its conventional military and cultural strengths to help shape the operating environment. Defence strategy now relies on capabilities hollowed out by decades of political neglect. The policy trajectory leans towards seeking to shape the future order while maximising the opportunities that the existing order offers, but without making the necessary fiscal commitment to influence the future order or the political investment in the existing order.

Britain is between a rock and a hard place. Reinforcing both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power will be necessary for it to act to sustain the elements of the existing order it wants to, and to influence the evolution of the future international order. HM Government faces real, and hard, choices.

Dr Andrew Corbett is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies Education at King’s College London. He served as a submariner in the Royal Navy spanning the end of the Cold War, which included commanding two Trident submarines.

This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) migration to post-quantum cryptography is now on a timetable. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has set three milestones: by 2028, organisations should have a migration plan covering their full estate; by 2031, their highest-priority services should be migrated; and by 2035, migration should be complete. The next two years therefore put discovery and planning at the centre of the national effort.

The strategic choice underneath that timetable is unusually clear. The NCSC will not support Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for government or military applications, and describes Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) as the best mitigation against the quantum threat to cryptography. Its latest quantum-networking guidance goes further: a QKD implementation alone is insufficient evidence that data in transit is secure under the Cyber Assessment Framework.

That distinction should become an acquisition discipline. Choosing an algorithm answers a cryptographic question. Assuring a deployed system requires evidence about authentication, key lifecycle, control software, timing, relays, fallback behaviour, operator interfaces, and the way that these elements fail together. The NCSC roadmap understandably concentrates on discovery, planning, and migration. A programme-level artefact that assembles those wider claims into one end-to-end assurance case would make migration more governable without changing the underlying cryptographic policy.

The NCSC’s own migration guidance points to the same systems problem. It describes algorithm standards as building blocks from which protocols, products, and services still have to be constructed, and identifies difficult areas such as industrial-control protocols and the Web Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), where migration cannot be reduced to swapping one cryptographic primitive – the ‘building block’ of cryptographic programs – for another. Here is precisely where an assurance case adds value: it makes the surrounding dependencies and failure behaviour visible before an approved algorithm is mistaken for an approved system.

Why QKD still matters to Britain

The UK has good reason to retain the ability to judge technologies it has chosen not to deploy for governmental and military use. The 2023 National Quantum Strategy committed £2.5 billion of public funding from 2024 over ten years and set an ambition for Britain to become a leading quantum-enabled economy. Using the example of quantum sensing, it has been argued that the UK should prioritise in areas where it already leads. The strategic principle applies here as well: leadership includes the ability to evaluate claims made by domestic suppliers, allies, and competitors alike.

British networks will encounter those claims. BT and Toshiba operate a quantum-secured metropolitan network in London, while the European Union is building the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI) – a terrestrial and satellite quantum-communications infrastructure that uses QKD and now includes dedicated testing and evaluation work aimed at certification. British forces, departments, and companies may therefore encounter products or allied systems described as quantum-secured even while the NCSC maintains a different procurement position for government and defence.

The ‘quantum-secured’ label itself is becoming less useful as architectures diversify. A vendor may use it for QKD, PQC, or a hybrid design that combines quantum and classical mechanisms. As these systems can have very different trust assumptions and failure modes, procurement therefore needs to translate the label into a specific claim: what is protected, against what threat, under what operating conditions, and with what dependencies inside the assurance boundary.

The physics provides a strong but bounded claim. In an ideal QKD protocol, interception disturbs quantum states in ways that the endpoints can detect, while the implemented system still depends on devices, calibration, classical authentication, key management, and control mechanisms. The United States (US) National Security Agency lists the consequences plainly: QKD does not authenticate the transmission source, requires special-purpose equipment, may rely on trusted relays, presents significant implementation assurance challenges, and carries denial-of-service risk.

Those limitations expose two linked attack surfaces. The first is classical and operational: authentication services and credentials, key-management software, trusted relay facilities, network orchestration, operator consoles, and the systems that decide what happens when a link degrades. The second lies in the quantum implementation: detector behaviour, source imperfections, calibration, timing side channels, and optical injection. Experimental work by the US National Security Agency has demonstrated attacks on commercial QKD equipment, including detector-blinding and timing attacks.

A security claim fails if either surface falls outside the evidence. A commander could therefore be told, accurately, that the quantum link is secure, while the conversation as a whole remains vulnerable elsewhere in the system. The US Department of War’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Quantum-Augmented Network programme illustrates why the boundary matters: it explicitly integrates quantum and classical communications infrastructure, placing the seam between them within the engineering problem.

The same logic applies to the PQC route that the UK has chosen. A cryptographic inventory can identify which algorithms and protocols are present, but it cannot establish whether key management is compromised, whether a transitional hybrid connection falls back into an unexpected mode, whether an operator is warned when protection changes, or whether an implementation behaves safely under denial. Algorithm approval and system assurance are therefore separate evidence problems, even when the algorithm choice is sound.

Goals before 2028

Britain can turn this distinction into a practical acquisition artefact. Before a system is described operationally as quantum-secured, and as departments assemble evidence for PQC migration, programmes should produce a quantum communications assurance case with four parts.

Firstly, the security claim and the trust boundary should be stated. Documents should say which property the cryptography provides; where authentication comes from; who manages keys through their lifecycle; which relay nodes or infrastructure components are trusted; and whether timing, calibration, control software, and operator displays sit inside the assessed boundary.

Secondly, classical and quantum dependencies should be named and tested together. QKD systems should demonstrate robust quantum-resistant authentication alongside the quantum channel, using mechanisms consistent with NCSC guidance or appropriately managed pre-placed symmetric keys. PQC systems should identify the protocol, implementation, and key-management dependencies around standardised algorithms. In both cases, the evidence should continue from the cryptographic primitive through to the system built around it.

Thirdly, denial and downgrade behaviour should be specified before deployment. If a quantum channel is interrupted, or a transitional connection cannot negotiate its intended protection, the system should have a pre-approved response: halt, fail over to a defined mode, or continue under an explicitly accepted risk. The operator display should show which state is active and who accepted the residual risk.

Finally, the whole system should be adversarially evaluated. Link-level measurements such as key rate, quantum bit-error rate, photon loss, or entanglement fidelity establish technical performance where they are relevant. Security evaluation should also attack authentication, key management, control software, trusted nodes, timing and calibration paths, detectors and optical interfaces, fallback logic, and the consoles that report system state.

These requirements preserve research and migration while adding an evidence gate for operational security claims. Security credit follows only when both the classical and quantum dependencies are inside one evidence package and have been tested as a system. The approach also matches the NCSC’s own judgement that a QKD label cannot serve as a substitute for evidence of data-in-transit security.

The UK has an advantage in setting that standard. It possesses a clear national cryptographic position, a large quantum research and industrial base, and a national strategy that explicitly seeks leadership in quantum standards. Indeed, it has recently been argued that domestic or tightly allied control of next-generation technologies including quantum computing is a fundamental British interest. Assurance is one way to exercise that control while allowing allies to retain different technological choices.

A British assurance standard could travel across procurement, allied interoperability, and vendor evaluation, even where the underlying architectures differ. The 2028 milestone should therefore produce more than a complete map of algorithms and migration plans: it should also establish what evidence a system must present before anyone can label it quantum-secured.

The UK has already made the difficult choice about cryptography. The next task is to make the security claim auditable.

Burak Oktenli is an independent researcher based in Washington, DC, focusing on authority, assurance, and governance in autonomous and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled systems. He holds an MBA and is completing a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence at Georgetown University.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

Russian activity in the High North demonstrates why data matters. Sub-threshold ‘grey zone’ actions extend to matters as seemingly innocent as fishing and research, with Russian vessels operating near military training areas, energy installations, and undersea infrastructure while retaining the protections of civilian activity. Unusual tracks, gaps in automatic identification system transmissions, or non-standard surveillance equipment may indicate intelligence collection, coercive signalling, or nothing hostile at all. The uncertainty is itself strategically useful.

The United Kingdom (UK) therefore faces a problem of discrimination as much as detection. It is not enough simply to know that a vessel passed over a cable or that a sonar has found an object. Decision-makers must determine whether something has genuinely changed; how confident they are in that assessment; and whether the evidence justifies inspection, attribution, or a military response.

Survey turns data into evidence

Gen. Sir Gwyn Jenkins, First Sea Lord, has presented the ‘Hybrid Navy’ as a force in which crewed and uncrewed systems increase the Royal Navy’s mass, reach, and survivability. Atlantic Bastion, its North Atlantic expression, envisages a layered network of vehicles and sensors detecting hostile sub-surface activity. This is a sensible response to a distributed threat: a frigate cannot guard every cable, pipeline, or offshore installation.

The difficult step comes after collection: recognising a new object, anchor scar, disturbed sediment, or exposed cable. This requires a correctly positioned baseline collected to a hydrographic standard. Repeat data must be sufficiently comparable to distinguish real change from errors in navigation, sensor geometry, sound velocity, tides, seabed mobility, or processing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can flag anomalies, but it cannot make poorly controlled surveys comparable or explain uncertainty to an operational commander.

Hydrography is therefore a crucial component of the Hybrid Navy’s decision architecture, not just a supporting service. A nation able to detect, document, and communicate seabed interference reduces the advantage an adversary gains from ambiguity. Surveying does not eliminate plausible deniability, but it narrows the space in which deniable action can operate.

Capacity without surrendering judgement

In Britain, the maritime industry is assembling the platforms, navigation, sensors, autonomy, and processing needed for this task. The proposed acquisition of Exail by Thales offers a conspicuous example of the consolidation of this undersea survey stack. Project CABOT’s proposed ‘Contractor Owned, Contractor Operated, Naval Oversight’ model could similarly bring commercial vessels, autonomous systems, and experienced operators into Atlantic Bastion more quickly than the Royal Navy could generate them alone.

Contracting, however, must not hollow out the state’s intelligent-customer function. Naval oversight cannot mean simply receiving a processed contact report. His Majesty’s (HM) Government should retain the competence to set survey standards, audit algorithms, assess uncertainty, protect data, and recognise when a commercial task has become an inherently military one. This is especially important as the UK’s marine-geospatial skills pipeline remains fragile. Indeed, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has warned that shortages and inadequate educational provision constrain the protection of undersea infrastructure.

A specialist seabed reserve

The required expertise for undersea surveying already exists, but much of it sits outside defence: in the UK Hydrographic Office, universities, ports, offshore energy companies, equipment manufacturers, and survey contractors. A Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR)-style hydrographic reserve could connect that civilian community to naval operations.

The historical reference needs care. Established in 1903, the RNVR trained civilians for naval service before merging with the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) in 1958. The useful principle is not the recreation of a separate ‘Wavy Navy’, but the deliberate recruitment of civilian expertise for defined naval tasks. In practice, this could be a specialist branch or capability within today’s RNR, consistent with defence’s wider ambition to integrate reservists, regulars, and civilian skills.

This branch could include hydrographic surveyors, geodesists, oceanographers, acoustic data specialists, marine robotics experts, and geospatial analysts. Membership should recognise verified professional competence, while naval rank and authority should reflect military responsibility rather than mirror civilian seniority. A small permanent force would maintain the training pipeline, security clearances, mobilisation roster, and links to operational commands.

Training would combine naval orientation and operational planning with secure information handling, defence data standards, and repeated exercises using representative autonomous survey data. Reservists would need to practise as teams under the naval chain of command rather than exist as a directory of experts assembled after an incident. Employer agreements, liability, availability, and conflicts of interest would have to be settled before a crisis.

In routine service, this proposed reserve could assure nationally important seabed baselines, test change-detection workflows, and scrutinise contractor outputs. During an incident, it could provide rapid survey planning, processing, and uncertainty assessment. In crisis or mobilisation, it could reinforce shore-based intelligence cells and advise commanders on what data can and cannot prove. Not every contributor would require the same service liability; volunteer and sponsored reservists could form a uniformed core supported by pre-cleared civilian specialists. Inherently military decisions would remain under uniformed command.

Societies such as the Hydrographic Society UK and Ireland could help to convene industry and academia, map competence, and develop common exercises. However, these should not command the reserve or become a recruiting agency; their value would lie in providing a neutral professional bridge to a community that defence does not routinely reach.

Conclusion

The Royal Navy already has hydrographic and meteorological specialists, and a reserve as described in this article must augment rather than displace them. Its purpose would be to give the Hybrid Navy sovereign surge capacity and an enduring ability to challenge the outputs of machines and contractors.

Uncrewed vehicles can prolong underwater presence, and commercial partners can provide scale. Reliable AI can accelerate analysis. However, these cannot independently decide whether two datasets are genuinely comparable, which anomaly matters, or what action the evidence justifies. In the sub-threshold contest over the undersea domain, data supplies the evidence, but it is people who turn the evidence into operations.

Liam Flood is a hydrographic survey professional working for Kongsberg Discovery and Honorary Secretary of the Hydrographic Society UK and Ireland. He writes here in a personal capacity.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

For the first time in a generation, the United Kingdom’s (UK) political class agrees that the British Armed Forces need to grow. What it has not agreed upon is how to pay for that growth, or how to keep the public paying for it over a decade rather than a single spending review. The debate so far has been almost entirely about levers: borrowing, taxation, and spending cuts. It has barely been about consent.

That is a mistake. Every past British rearmament that survived, from the shadow factories of the 1930s to the Cold War buildup of the 1980s, paired money with a deliberate effort to keep the country onside. Where that effort was skipped, the funding proved fragile.

The scale now under discussion is not small. A credible warfighting posture is not what has been discussed by any of the major political parties – although it has by defence think tanks. Meeting the UK’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) commitment and basic self-defence needs would require an army of around 100,000-110,000 regulars, a Royal Navy of 24-26 escorts and nine or ten attack submarines, and a Royal Air Force (RAF) of 12-14 fast-jet squadrons.

This would take core defence spending to roughly 4.3%-4.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the mid-2030s, or around £115-£130 billion per year in 2026 prices. That figure sits well above the 3.5% NATO core pledge that Britain has already signed up to for 2035; itself a lower target that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) costs at roughly £40 billion a year in additional spending.

John Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, resigned as Secretary of State for Defence in June 2026 specifically because His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury would not fund even that smaller ambition. The dispute preceded a change of government; Andy Burnham, Prime Minister, has since adopted a fiscal framework requiring day-to-day spending to be matched by revenue within three years, with debt falling as a share of GDP by 2029-2030.

This is not a comfortable fiscal moment to make the case for more spending. Public sector net debt stood at 94.9% of GDP in mid-2026, close to levels last seen in the early 1960s, and the OBR’s ‘Fiscal Risks and Sustainability’ report from July 2026 found that in almost all of its modelled scenarios, debt moves onto an unsustainable path from the 2040s onward. Simply stabilising debt at its current level would require a permanent fiscal tightening equivalent to the entire education budget. Any credible funding plan for rearmament has to work within that constraint – not pretend that it does not exist.

The public will pay, but only one way

Polling suggests the difficulty is not the principle of spending more on defence, but the mechanism chosen to fund it. YouGov tested 12 ways of raising the money in mid-2026; only three commanded net public support. A rise in the additional rate of income tax scored 30 points of net support: the strongest of any option tested, at 56% in favour against 26% opposed. Raising the higher rate of income tax and trimming out-of-work benefits both scored narrow positive margins.

Everything else tested – cutting the National Health Service (NHS), the schools budget, the state pension, or disability spending – scored deeply negatively, and increased borrowing specifically for defence was opposed by 52% of respondents. The lesson here is blunt: the public will pay, but only if the burden visibly falls on the wealthiest, and only if the protected services stay protected.

No single lever closes a funding gap of this size, so a workable package has to draw on several streams at once. An additional and higher rate income tax rise could raise £8-£12 billion per year. A targeted wealth tax on households worth more than £100 million would affect only around 1,000 households, having been modelled at roughly £10 billion in 2026.

Disciplined growth caps on unprotected departmental budgets and one-off ‘defence bonds’ – i.e., war bonds – to front-load capital investment in shipyards and munitions plants could supply the rest of the required funding. Indeed, defence bonds are already under serious discussion in Whitehall, championed by Andy Haldane, an adviser to Burnham, and raised by the Liberal Democrats in Parliament 25 times in 2026 thus far. Individually, none of these levers are sufficient. Together, and sequenced across three phases running to the mid-2030s, they are.

The harder half of the problem

Getting the sums to add up on paper is the easy part. The harder part is making the package survive contact with an electorate that Focaldata finds is one of the most polarised on this issue of any it has tested, even before such a scale of ambition is on the table. A government that raises taxes for defence without first securing durable consent is setting up exactly the reversal risk that should worry it most.

This is where the debate needs to change: public consent should be treated as a costed line item, not left to the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) press office. Four measures deserve a place on the balance sheet.

First is a funded recruitment-legitimacy programme. Muslims, for example, make up only around 0.5% of the UK’s regular forces against roughly 6.5% of the population, and government-linked reporting found only around 30 recruits from over 2,000 applications by British-born Muslims completed training between 2016 and 2018. Faster security vetting, guaranteed provision for religious observance, and recruitment campaigns fronted by serving minority personnel would help to ease a personnel shortage and demonstrate that armed forces expansion is a national project, not a sectional one.

The second measure is an honest public information campaign grounded in the OBR’s own findings rather than governmental spin, fronted by credible non-partisan messengers such as serving personnel and veterans rather than ministers. Richard Hughes, Chairman of the OBR, has already told a public briefing that ‘the UK cannot afford the array of promises that are displayed to the public if you leave those unchanged, based on a reasonable assumption about growth rates in the economy and in tax revenues’. That argument deserves a wider audience than a select committee hearing.

Third is a British equivalent of Sweden’s household preparedness brochure ‘In case of crisis or war’, sent most recently to 5.2 million homes in 2024. This would convert abstract anxiety into practical agency for a cost of low tens of millions of pounds.

The fourth measure, most durable of all, is a statutory cross-party funding lock, modelled on the aid-spending law. That would raise the political cost of any future government trying to unwind the settlement.

Conclusion

The UK has repeatedly announced ambitious defence spending increases without sustaining the follow-through needed to fund them beyond a single spending review. The Defence Investment Plan allocated £15 billion over four years largely through departmental reprioritisation – a proof of concept for one funding lever at moderate scale, not a template that scales on its own. Scaling that mechanism, alongside the tax measures above and a properly funded consent effort, is achievable.

What is not achievable is a rearmament programme funded by stealth, sustained by hope, and abandoned at the next election. The persuasion budget is a rounding error against the military programme it protects. It may also be the difference between a rearmament that lasts and one that does not.

Nicolas Groffman is a lawyer and defence consultant. He studied Chinese at the University of Cambridge; founded Harligan Ltd., a cross-border advisory firm; and is General Counsel of Fitzroy Exports.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The wider European defence development and production landscape faces widely acknowledged challenges related to scale and fragmentation. The most effective means of overcoming these challenges is multilateral collaboration, but this is hard to push through with so many decision-making centres involved.

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) two largest European defence spenders, and building on their long history of close collaboration, the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany can not only deepen their own relationship but also act as continental leaders, bringing in other countries and overcoming over-duplication. The follow-through on the Trinity House Agreement represents a timely opportunity for London and Berlin to overcome existing barriers and requirement differences to identify how and where they can catalyse shared defence industrial objectives.

A shared threat assessment

Unlike some European NATO countries further from the alliance’s borders, Britain and Germany currently have a largely similar understanding of the threats faced on the eastern flank. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has since been accompanied by a continent-wide campaign of sub-threshold warfare, which shows no signs of slowing. The two countries also face the rising threat of the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and increased Russian and Chinese coordination, creating the possibility of a multifront conflict. Given the impact this is having on the global military posture of the United States (US), the need for a multifront mindset continues to grow.

Historically, both Berlin and London have had deep ties to Washington: the UK with its ‘special relationship’ and Germany as the host of the majority of US forces in Europe. Both are also deeply intertwined with the American defence industrial base which, should a multifront crisis erupt, Washington will mobilise towards meeting the demands of war in the Western Pacific.

This is already being seen with changes that the US has forced in the prioritisation of weapons order deliveries, delaying European countries’ orders as a result of the conflict against Iran. The UK and Germany have the potential to fill this gap in order for European NATO to ensure it has the necessary productive capacity to show the Kremlin that it could sustain a continental peer conflict. To do this, however, requires both countries to overcome outstanding barriers and, where they exist, compromise on existing requirement divergences.

Differing senses of urgency

It is clear that Berlin has now developed a greater sense of urgency than London. If Britain does not follow suit, it risks being left behind. Projected German defence spending is now set to consume one third of the federal budget by 2027. Germany is even changing its debt rules it has stood by so steadfastly for years to allow for more investment in defence. In comparison, under the 2026 Defence Investment Plan (DIP), the UK plans to spend £79.1 billion in 2029-2030, while Germany plans to spend around €184 billion (£157 billion) in 2030.

Additionally the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) provides a timeline to 2035. Many of the capability investments outlined in the two documents will come well into the 2030s. However, numerous estimates – apparently including NATO’s own – assume that the Kremlin will be able to mount a serious challenge by 2029-2030. A similar sluggish attitude has been taken in the UK towards increased defence spending: the DIP was delayed by almost a year, having initially been planned for release in the autumn of 2025. The plan is also not comprehensive: it leaves a £5 billion shortfall.

These urgency differences are not insurmountable, nor a reason against closer cooperation, but they are a hindrance. Unless Britain is willing to deliver more of a frontloaded increase in defence investment, it will miss out on near-term collaboration opportunities with European NATO’s largest defence spender. This divergent sense of urgency will also undermine both countries’ ability to bring together allies behind them. If this can be overcome, and it is ‘simply’ a matter of political choice and public diplomacy in Westminster, there are abundant opportunities for deeper collaboration.

Accelerating procurement

It is not enough to build an efficient multilateral rearmament effort; rearmament efforts need to deliver capability faster. ‘Peacetime’ timelines of multiple years from development to operational status and prolonged construction times for equipment needs to be reduced. This will necessitate a move towards investing more in lower-cost programmes and ‘80% solutions’ that can be delivered more quickly. Both the UK and Germany have experience in developing such capabilities – for example, the Raven air defence system for Ukraine.

Focusing on the bigger picture is also key to cutting through technical deliberations, preventing partners from getting lost in smaller – although important – technical and political debates over workshare and capability requirements, as seen in the delays and eventual cancellation of the French-German-Spanish next-generation fighter component of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).

A deeper British-German relationship is critical to prevent recurring technical and political debates. More effective bilateral processes have already been established, but much remains to be done regarding unnecessarily complex regulatory systems that reduce speed through duplication, a lack of testing, and increased bureaucracy. Both countries need to work together to mitigate these issues and prioritise speed. Ultimately, overcoming potential technical and workshare disagreements will require top-down compromise from politicians in both countries.

Deep precision strike

British-German defence capability collaboration has already made headway into concrete capabilities such as Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), armoured mobility such as the Boxer, and increasingly on deep precision strike. Conversations between British and German teams have built the human and communications infrastructure to work towards milestones such as developing a 2,000+ kilometre range for deep precision strike. Looking forward, the UK will lead on producing a new long-range missile based on mature technologies, entering service around 2030, and invest in Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) technology, which Germany is taking the lead on.

Despite these strong foundations and positive steps, there are still potential barriers to the delivery of these systems, as they cannot necessarily be delivered at speed (noting the 2030 delivery estimate), nor are they immediately interoperable – requiring integration with launch platforms for example. These complex systems require survivability, manoeuvre at speed, and stealth – all of which have long lead times, pushing back delivery beyond 2030.

Deep precision strike is an expensive business; one European countries have long been reluctant to fund and over-reliant upon the US for. One of the keys to reinforcing the work underway will be to unlock more funding, either in-country or through joint funding mechanisms. When Security Action For Europe (SAFE) negotiations reopen again, reasonable access terms for Britain would go a long way in unlocking further funding for shared deep precision strike programmes.

Additional capability areas

Nuclear capabilities and the space domain represent further areas for potential British-German collaboration, specifically where dependency on the US is currently excessive. Consider space capabilities as a case in point: with both the PRC and Russia taking steps to challenge the space domain, the UK and Germany should adapt, integrating space into their strategic thinking as previously done with drones and cyber warfare.

Likewise, as Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) increasingly becomes the backbone of all military domains, closing space-based ISR gaps is critical to European NATO’s ability to operate at scale in the event that US forces and enablers are focused elsewhere. Discussions are happening with Germany on joining ODIN’S EYE, a missile early warning system funded through the European Union’s (EU) European Defence Fund.

Like deep precision strike, one of the biggest barriers to space-based capabilities is cost. Duplicating the suite of American capabilities that European NATO relies on would be prohibitively expensive, but building in a targeted selection of multilateral space-based capabilities would bolster overall alliance space posture and act as a hedge against American distraction. Germany has committed €35 billion (£30 billion) over several years but Britain is lagging behind: the DIP only committed £3.2 billion over the next four years.

Conclusion

There is a great deal of alignment between London and Berlin on national security conversations, both domestically and bilaterally. Yet, despite these similar threat assessments and the shared acknowledgement of the worsening Euro-Atlantic security environment, a divergence has emerged.

Germany clearly now has a far greater sense of urgency, as demonstrated by its fiscal and political actions. The Trinity House Agreement outlines where both countries intend to work closer together and plenty of good work has already been started, but much remains to be done. Current and future efforts would be aided greatly if the UK were to develop the same sense of urgency. Through both wider and deeper cooperation on capabilities, Britain and Germany can lead European NATO in preparing deterrence before the point of potential crisis comes.

Ellie Drake is Operations Officer at the Council on Geostrategy.

William Freer is Research Fellow (National Security) at the Council on Geostrategy.

This article is the result of a half-day conference held on 15th July 2026 in partnership with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) UK and Ireland. This was the third in a series of events in 2026 that the Council on Geostrategy is organising with KAS to encourage closer defence cooperation between Britain and Germany.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The contemporary geostrategic environment has never been more volatile and uncertain. The international system is under sustained pressure from the self-interested actions of the states possessing the world’s three largest nuclear arsenals, and the maritime domain – the indispensable global commons – is more important than ever.

Against this backdrop, and the increased risk of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) conflict with Russia, how can the Royal Navy exercise sea control in the North Atlantic at the moment where its size reaches a historical nadir? By any metric, it requires a huge increase in the number of platforms capable of delivering military effect at, under, and above the sea. However, the prospect of any significant increase in the sum (or share) of British taxpayers’ money allocated to conventional maritime forces seems slim.

The cost of building large, complex warships in Europe is now in the region of £2-£2.5 billion per hull, and the cost of maritime strike aircraft and specialised naval helicopters are now approaching £100 million per airframe (e.g., the F-35B Lighting II Joint Combat Aircraft and next-generation Merlin AW101). The imperative to break the vicious cycle of ever fewer numbers of ever more expensive platforms has never been clearer.

In June 2025, the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) revealed the Royal Navy’s answer to this question: a ‘New Hybrid Navy’ in which highly capable crewed submarines, warships, and aircraft are augmented with far larger numbers of remotely operated and autonomous uncrewed systems in every warfighting domain. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) in June 2026 fleshed out the ambition: a fleet of ‘state-of-the-art crewed ships networked with uncrewed surface and undersea craft’, all connected and orchestrated by a secure, high-speed ‘Maritime Fighting Web’. One eye-catching announcement was the unveiling of the plan for ‘at least six’ flexible, lower-cost Common Combat Vessels (CCVs), replacing previous proposals for a small number of highly specialised, very expensive Type 83 destroyers.

In the air domain, programmes were announced for fixed wing (Project VANQUISH) and rotary wing (Project PANTHEON) Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACPs), to work alongside existing Fleet Air Arm crewed aircraft as a ‘Hybrid Air Wing’. Overall, at least £1.5 billion has been profiled over the next four years to unlock this vision, as part of the £5 billion allocated for advanced uncrewed systems across defence in the DIP.

Evolution or revolution?

Executing such a major shift in maritime doctrine while simultaneously introducing untested and fast-moving technology is far from straightforward. The principle ‘crewed where necessary, uncrewed wherever possible, and integrated always’ is laudable, but much harder in its execution than it is in its design.

At its heart, this new way of warfare represents both continuity and rupture. Continuity lies in the problem set: North Atlantic sea control, protection of the United Kingdom’s (UK) nuclear deterrent, seabed infrastructure security, integrated air and missile defence, and protection of NATO’s northern flank. Rupture is the message sent by the cessation on any further work on the Type 83 destroyer – although in reality, Type 83 was never a programme to be cancelled, but merely a proposal that might have delivered the Future Air Dominance System (FADS) requirements.

This move away from ‘a small number of large, expensive ships’ is not just because of cost per hull, but also because of the necessity of increasing single points of presence vastly; to use the language of a ‘system of systems’ approach, functions once stacked on one complex platform – sense, decide, effect – are now to be spread across far more interconnected assets.

Risks and opportunities

History, however, teaches temperance of technological enthusiasm. Battleships ceded primacy to aircraft carriers only after navies (and air forces) developed doctrine and tactics, built aircrew pipelines, perfected aircraft launch and recovery procedures, and built a viable industrial base. Nuclear submarines transformed underwater endurance and reach, but required new safety cultures, shore infrastructure, and specialist crews that took four decades to build. What lessons can be drawn from these transitions?

In each case, the platform was the visible element of a deeper change in command, logistics, infrastructure, and training. Those experimenting and innovating with these transformational technologies were bold, knew the sea and the perils of operating in the middle of a huge ocean, and were not afraid to fail in order to succeed on the next try. That is the culture that will succeed in the 21st century.

However, the siren call of armchair admirals, populist podcasters, and energetic politicians with limited maritime knowledge, extrapolating lessons directly from the Black Sea to the North Atlantic, is already being seen. This is a major category error. Cheap, massed, and precise systems matter, but Britain must protect oceanic trade routes, nuclear-power ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) bastions, and NATO strike groups operating far from friendly ports. Ukraine’s success has been sea denial in an enclosed sea with small expendable craft, not the sea control that the UK requires for a massive ocean. The Hybrid Navy must remain centred on high-end crewed platforms, with uncrewed assets expanding sensing, effect, and presence.

To see true success, defence must change its delivery culture. One recent article laid down nine decision points which, in the delivery of the Hybrid Navy, necessitate ‘conscious trade-offs…each balancing the four forces that pull against each other in every choice: cost, crew, capability, and cadence’. It is difficult to argue with the logic here, as the choices described – of quality versus quantity to at-sea versus alongside maintenance – are at the heart of ensuring success.

This risk can only be mitigated by conducting the Hybrid Navy acquisition process using subject matter experts, not rusticated to delivery teams in a remote location. Now is not the time for generic programme delivery professionals, but the moment for maverick, free-thinking mariners who know the domain and will make the right calls.

Conditions for successful delivery

If the aforementioned risks are appropriately sentenced, and the ‘Defence Lines of Development’ (Training, Equipment, People, Infrastructure, Doctrine and concepts, Organisation, Information, and Logistics; alongside Safety and Security) – as unglamorous but decisive as they are – are considered accordingly, there are therefore two main areas where the conditions for successful delivery need to be set: regulatory permissions, and the culture of feedback.

Today, the safety, regulatory and policy permissions needed to operate Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs) larger than 24 metres routinely in British waters do not yet exist. No uncrewed vessel of this size has received either civilian (MCA) or defence (DMR) operating clearance; neither civilian classification societies nor the Naval Authority and Technical Group have yet approved a USV design. Stories abound of Kafkaesque restrictions and illogical conditions being applied to USVs, which prevents even the most benign of activities at sea, with the siren call of ‘more safety’ missing the very reason as to why these vessels exist.

This culture cannot be solved through tweaking paperwork nor attempting to convince (well-meaning and hard-working) maritime regulators to take more risk. The first condition that must therefore be set is to maximise the freedom that defence already has in legislation to allow the Hybrid Navy to learn by doing, with operators given the freedom to fail safely without worrying about interminable paperwork and shoreside meddling from people incentivised to say ‘no’.

Secondly, a lesson from Ukraine that is relevant to the Hybrid Navy is the power of the feedback loop. Against Russia’s full-scale invasion, defence technology companies equipping the Armed Forces of Ukraine aim for the ‘rule of six’: six hours to get operator feedback to the manufacturer, six days to get any required software update applied in the field, six weeks to get hardware changes deployed back to the front line, and six months to replace any given system completely. By comparison, feedback cycles on most British defence programmes are often measured in months or years. Software and hardware upgrades can take years, if they happen at all.

The Hybrid Navy must adopt the former model, embedding an evergreen feedback loop into the system from the outset, using closed messaging groups, informal channels of communications, and incentivised manufacturers.

Will it work?

The benefits of successfully delivering a Hybrid Navy are numerous and easy to elucidate: distributed UK sensors and persistent uncrewed presence can offset crewed hull availability shortfalls, and increased mass without proportional crew growth eases the frontline people recruitment and retention problems.

In testing the hypothesis, hybrid war games are claimed to have delivered a substantial uplift in combat mass and roughly threefold missile capacity for a North Atlantic contest. There seems little other route by which Britain can sharpen its conventional deterrence and introduce a genuine wartime level of physical presence at sea, but history’s lesson is blunt. Naval revolutions (many of which were the UK’s to trigger) reward those who are bold and confident in their planning, but it is imperative to learn from their failures.

R. Adm. (rtd.) James Parkin CB CBE served in the Royal Navy for 28 years, primarily at sea as a frontline warfare officer. From 2021 to 2025, he worked in Navy Command HQ as Director Develop.

This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) defence capability is approaching breaking point. Successive cuts to defence spending since the end of the Cold War mean that Britain’s strategic ambitions are outpacing capabilities. The Royal Air Force (RAF) has fewer jets than it did a decade ago, the Royal Navy is struggling to keep the nuclear Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) operable, and the British Army is at its smallest size since the Napoleonic Wars.

Gen. Sir Richard Barrons, co-author of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), warned as far back as 2023 that the UK only has enough munitions stockpiled to sustain a high-intensity conflict for about a week. What is more, Prof. John Bew, former Foreign Policy Adviser to 10 Downing Street, has recently warned that Andy Burnham, Prime Minister, could face a major international military crisis within a matter of weeks.

The case for rearmament has never been stronger. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is a step in the right direction, and news that the Burnham administration intends to meet the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) spending target of 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2035 is certainly welcome. Much of this new investment will (quite rightly) be focused on rebuilding Britain’s depleted weapons stockpiles, purchasing new equipment, and investing in future technologies that will be crucial to winning the next conflict. However, while the political rhetoric is positive, it is not aligning with reality.

Innovation nation?

The UK has a long history of being at the forefront of defence innovation. As seen during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, successfully leveraging new technologies such as drones and Artificial Intelligence (AI) often translates into success on the battlefield.

Despite the examples of Ukraine and its historical pedigree, Britain is not sufficiently investing in future defence technology at the scale and pace needed. A report from data analysis firm Beauhurst suggests that while overall investment into British defence companies has increased since the commencement of the Kremlin’s invasion, funding into innovative ‘defence tech’ companies has actually fallen, from 55 deals worth £313 million in 2022 to 41 worth £91 million in 2025 – a drop of 71%.

This is not just a case of investors getting cold feet. Non-dilutive public sector grant funding for defence tech firms has also fallen. While the value of grant funding into defence tech firms doubled in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from £49.2 million in 2022 to £101 million in 2024, funding dried up in 2025, with Beauhurst reporting a 74% drop in year-on-year funding into the sector valued at only £25.9 million. This marked the lowest level of grant funding into British defence tech firms since 2016’s £11.7 million.

Why does this matter? For defence tech businesses, developing a promising product is only the beginning. The real challenge is surviving long enough to turn that technology into a dependable contract. Major defence platform contracts take an average of six years to award, while even modular technology upgrades typically require around three years. For smaller companies with limited reserves and little recurring revenue, this creates a prolonged gap between building a working prototype and generating meaningful commercial income.

Nor does winning a place on a defence programme guarantee timely delivery. A National Audit Office (NAO) review found cumulative delays on Ministry of Defence (MOD) projects were equivalent to more than 21 years in 2021 alone. More recently, only two of the MOD’s 49 major projects were assessed as both on time and within budget. This is a longstanding problem: a review of defence procurement in 2009 found 40% of projects overran cost expectations and 80% were delivered late.

These delays are inconvenient for major contractors, but potentially existential for emerging defence tech firms. Most Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) do not sell directly to the MOD, instead entering the market through supply chains controlled by large prime contractors. This weakens their visibility over future contracts, delays revenue and increases the amount of working capital needed before a product reaches deployment.

This helps to explain why falling equity and grant funding matter so much. Defence tech firms are being asked to finance years of research, testing, regulatory compliance, and procurement uncertainty at the same time that the capital available to span that period is retreating. Without patient funding, otherwise viable companies may abandon military applications, concentrate on civilian customers, or move overseas in search of clearer demand.

Growing dependence on foreign capital

The retreat of capital from British defence tech companies is not without consequences. Beyond the immediate impact on the economic and innovative opportunity cost of businesses not receiving much needed scaling capital, it has also left the UK uniquely reliant on foreign capital to finance the technology which could serve as the guarantor of sovereignty in the years ahead.

Beauhurst data shows that investment into innovative British defence technology companies is becoming increasingly internationalised. In 2015, around two thirds of investment came from UK-based investors. By 2025, that figure had fallen to around one third, with growing participation from Commonwealth and NATO-aligned investors, particularly those based in the United States (US).

This is particularly apparent for some of Britain’s most promising and strategically important defence tech firms. In June 2026, London-based maritime drone manufacturer Kraken Technology Group (KTG) secured £130 million through a major equity deal. This deal transformed KTG into the UK’s latest tech unicorn, but it would not have been possible without foreign investment: of the ten investors in KTG, only two were British funds.

Part of the problem lies in the structural barriers facing defence investors: slow and uncertain procurement cycles; Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) funding restrictions; and a shortage of late-stage capital across Europe. These weaknesses have left the UK increasingly dependent on overseas investors to finance technologies, with direct implications for its future security.

This dependence is most pronounced in relation to the US. American investors are not always the most frequent backers of British defence tech companies, but when they do invest, they tend to write much larger cheques. The average deal involving a US-based funder is significantly larger than one backed by European Union (EU)-based investors, and almost four times the size of a domestically funded round.

American capital has undoubtedly helped British companies to develop and scale technologies that might otherwise have struggled to secure funding. However, relying on it so heavily carries strategic risks. Investment can influence where companies expand, where intellectual property is held, and ultimately which country captures the economic and military value created by British innovation. The answer is not necessarily to turn away from US investors, but to rebuild the UK’s own capacity to finance strategically important companies.

Conclusion

Britain cannot rebuild its military strength through headline spending commitments alone. The technologies shaping modern warfare need patient capital, predictable grant funding, and a procurement system capable of moving promising products from prototype to deployment before their developers run out of money. Overseas investment, particularly from trusted allies, will remain valuable, but it should complement rather than substitute British capacity for financing important companies.

The DIP offers an opportunity for the UK to close this gap, but only if funding reaches beyond established primes and into the emerging businesses driving innovation. Otherwise, Britain risks entering the next crisis with the ideas to compete but neither the capital nor commercial pathways needed to get them into the field.

Callum Newton is an Associate Director at Beauhurst Insights, where he leads the team’s work with public sector organisations and institutional investors. He specialises in analysing the financial, fundraising, and innovation activity of private companies, with a particular focus on the UK’s defence tech landscape.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

Since February 2022, the strategic centre of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has moved decisively eastward. The Madrid and Vilnius summit declarations, the accessions of Finland and Sweden, the Permanent Structured Cooperation arrangements, and the forward-deployed brigades in the Baltic states represent the alliance’s most significant reorganisation since the end of the Cold War. Each step has been necessary, and proportionate to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

The corollary has been less visible. NATO’s attention to its southern flank has quietly diminished. No coherent doctrine for the eastern Mediterranean has emerged from recent summits, with the most recent one in Ankara settling this point. The strategic terrain in the region is shifting in ways that the alliance is barely tracking, and the United Kingdom (UK), whose most enduring forward presence sits in that theatre via the Royal Air Force (RAF) air stations on Cyprus, has not articulated a contribution to closing the gap, despite the Sovereign Base Areas giving it a permanent operational stake in the region that no other alliance member matches.

Post-Brexit, Britain has bilateral flexibility in the region that European Union (EU) member states do not, being able to develop relationships without European-level coordination. The UK-Greece Strategic Bilateral Framework and bilateral engagement with Egypt indicate that this flexibility is being used. What has not yet been built is the strategic framework that would unify these relationships into a coherent regional posture.

The Turkish factor

Türkiye’s autonomous strategic posture means that NATO planning cannot assume Ankara’s alignment on regional issues. For years, tension was expressed in the air, with airspace violations over the Aegean and periodic simulated dogfights between Greek and Turkish aircraft. However, the 2023 Athens Declaration on Friendly Relations and Good-Neighbourliness established a bilateral framework for managing disputes, and the reduction in incidents since has been marked. The improvement is real, but also bilateral, resting on the political will of two administrations and unaccompanied by any alliance-level mechanism. The underlying disagreements over the continental shelf, Cyprus, and hydrocarbon rights remain unresolved, and NATO has developed no means of addressing them should the present détente falter.

This autonomy should not be mistaken for distance from Washington. Turkish bilateral standing with the United States (US) is presently rising rather than falling. That is a reasonable return for a state which has carried significant alliance burdens in Syria and acted as mediator in Gaza and Iran, but it carries a structural consequence: a Türkiye whose interests are well served bilaterally has correspondingly less incentive to invest in multilateral southern flank frameworks. The task is therefore to make such frameworks worth Türkiye’s participation, rather than to lament their absence.

Britain’s tripartite contribution

A British contribution to the southern strategy missing from NATO doctrine would have three pillars. The first is a UK-led trilateral with Egypt and Greece on Suez-Red Sea maritime security. Egypt holds the Suez Canal; Greece holds the EU’s southeastern maritime frontier and the partnership with Cyprus; and Britain holds the Sovereign Base Areas and operational naval capacity demonstrated through recent Red Sea deployments. A formal annual trilateral summit, permanent working group on maritime security, and joint exercises drawing on each nation’s naval and air assets would bind these three states into a regional security architecture that none of them can build alone.

Such a framework must also reckon with the Turkish Straits. Türkiye controls the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and exercises that control under the 1936 Montreux Convention, affording Ankara a legally recognised custodial role over Black Sea access. It exercised that authority in 2022, determining that Article 19 of the Convention was engaged by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and restricting the transit of belligerent warships accordingly.

A trilateral treating Turkish cooperation as incidental would be attempting basin-wide maritime security while disregarding one of its two principal gateways. Sequencing matters more than initial membership: a working UK-Egypt-Greece format that demonstrates value, and to which Turkish participation on Straits and wider maritime security is subsequently extended, is more achievable than a four-way negotiation begun cold. Britain is uniquely well-placed to manage that sequence.

The second contribution is deeper naval cooperation with the Greek and Cypriot navies. This would encompass joint exercises building on the existing UK-Greece Strategic Bilateral Framework, intelligence sharing on Russian and Chinese naval movements in the basin, and formalised basing access. Bilateral defence relationships already exist. What is missing is the operational tempo that turns bilateral cooperation into regional deterrence.

The third British contribution is treating the eastern Mediterranean energy axis as a strategic concern, not a commercial one. The natural gas politics of the eastern basin involve EU member states, an alliance member excluded from the consortium and contesting its maritime legal basis (Türkiye), and Israeli onshore infrastructure that is increasingly subject to threat. A British role in convening East Mediterranean Gas Forum security discussions, and in deploying Royal Navy capability to protect undersea infrastructure, would extend NATO’s southern flank doctrine into a domain where the alliance has had no operational role. The precedent already exists in the BALTIC SENTRY mission, established in January 2025 after a sequence of cable-cutting incidents in the Baltic Sea. The Mediterranean equivalent has not yet been built.

The southern flank after Ankara

The Ankara summit’s outcomes bear directly on the argument presented in this article. The six-paragraph Ankara Summit Declaration reaffirms Article 5 and the 360-degree approach to deterrence. It records 2025’s defence investment commitment from The Hague, announces more than US$50 billion (£37.5 billion) in new procurement, and pledges €70 billion (£59.8 billion) in military support to Ukraine for 2026. It states that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon, and calls for freedom of navigation to be respected in the Strait of Hormuz. It does not mention the eastern Mediterranean.

The omission is all the more striking considering where the summit was held. Ankara is the capital of NATO’s principal Mediterranean power, and the Declaration’s only maritime security commitment concerns the Strait of Hormuz rather than the basin in which two alliance members contest each other’s continental shelf. NATO has found language for freedom of navigation in the Gulf, but none for the waters in which its own members dispute maritime boundaries.

That said, the southern flank was not absent from Ankara, being present in a different form. The most consequential southern flank business conducted at the summit was bilateral: Donald Trump, President of the US, signalled serious consideration of an F-35 Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft sale to Türkiye, although the transfer remains blocked by a legislative requirement that America certifies Türkiye no longer possesses the Russian S-400 missile system. Additionally, both Greece and Israel have voiced objections, and can be expected to press them in the US Congress.

This mechanism deserves attention. A question bearing directly on the Aegean military balance was raised between Washington and Ankara, and the NATO states most immediately affected by it have no forum in which to be heard other than Congress. An alliance member lobbying American legislators against a weapons transfer to another NATO country is not evidence of a functioning southern flank architecture. It is evidence that no such architecture exists, and that in its absence the smaller Mediterranean allies are reduced to working through Washington rather than through NATO itself.

This is not to say that the southern flank is unimportant to NATO. Rather, it is handled bilaterally and transactionally, and remains unarticulated at the level of collective commitment. The 360-degree formula has been alliance language since 2016, and still carries very little operational content south of the Bosphorus.

Here is where the British position is genuinely distinctive. EU engagement with Ankara is constrained by the vetoes available to Greece and Cyprus as member states, and American engagement is bilateral and transactional by habit. The UK is bound by neither. It is a guarantor power under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, maintains functional relationships with Athens and Ankara simultaneously, and sits outside the institutional machinery that makes Turkish participation so difficult to arrange.

Convening across the Greek-Turkish divide is not a British aspiration as much as a British comparative advantage. No other ally holds the same combination, although when a drone struck RAF Akrotiri on 1st March 2026, France responded by deploying anti-drone systems to Cyprus and Greece – publicly committing to their defence. On 8th June 2026, France and Cyprus formalised this cooperation by signing a Status of Forces Agreement, establishing the legal framework for a French military presence on the island. France has built this framework from a standing start. The UK, which has held the Sovereign Base Areas and its presence in Akrotiri for decades, has yet to do equivalent strategic work with Cyprus, Greece, or Egypt, and from a far stronger institutional base.

The eastern Mediterranean is where NATO’s next decade will be tested. Ankara has confirmed that the test will not be met by declaration. Britain has the standing to shape it, and now has rather clearer evidence that no one else intends to do so.

Ethan Gallant is an open-source intelligence analyst working on sanctions networks, corporate ownership, and strategic infrastructure. He publishes methodology-led investigative casework at ethangallantosint.substack.com and is a member of Chatham House and RUSI.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The past decade has witnessed a growing number of incidents in space that would once have seemed extraordinary. Russian satellites have conducted increasingly sophisticated rendezvous and proximity operations, most recently against an ICEYE Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Earth observation satellite allegedly used by Ukraine. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has also demonstrated comparable capabilities while notably expanding its counterspace portfolio. Electronic interference with satellite navigation and communications has not only become more frequent, but it has also become endemic in some parts of the world, such as in the Baltic region and the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, cyber operations against commercial and government space systems have become a routine feature of international competition.

Collectively, these activities are commonly described as examples of ‘grey zone’ warfare; hostile actions deliberately calibrated to remain below the threshold of conventional armed conflict. The phrase has become part of the contemporary strategic lexicon, particularly in discussions of space, where outright military confrontation carries enormous risks of escalation.

Yet, the growing popularity of the term raises an uncomfortable question. What if grey zone warfare is not the problem at all? What if it is simply the latest expression of something far older?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) challenge is not that Russia and the PRC have discovered a revolutionary new way of competing. Nor is it that Britain lacks capable armed forces, intelligence agencies, or commercial space companies. Rather, the greater danger is political. After more than three decades in which many assumed that major power rivalry had become increasingly constrained by globalisation, international institutions, and economic interdependence, the UK risks misinterpreting the normal condition of international politics. Space merely exposes that misunderstanding perhaps more clearly than other domains.

The idea that strategic competition exists somewhere between peace and war is itself somewhat misleading. History offers remarkably few examples of prolonged periods in which great powers simply coexisted without persistent rivalry. Throughout the 19th century, the Cold War, and indeed much of recorded history, states continuously sought to advance their interests through diplomacy, intelligence, economic pressure, technological competition, proxy conflicts, and military signalling. Open warfare was only one manifestation of a broader strategic contest.

If anything, the historical anomaly was the three decades following the end of the Cold War. The overwhelming predominance of the United States (US), combined with expanding global markets and international institutions, encouraged the erroneous belief that geopolitical competition had become progressively less central to international affairs. The expectation emerged – sometimes explicitly, often implicitly – that strategy itself had become less important than economic integration and crisis management.

As the late Colin S. Gray often reminded us about strategic affairs, bad times have an unfortunate habit of returning. Space illustrates this return with unusual clarity because it has become indispensable to modern civilisation. Military operations, financial markets, global communications, navigation, weather forecasting, and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) all depend upon space-based services. At the same time, these systems remain deeply interconnected. The destruction of satellites risks generating debris that threatens all space users, while attacks on strategic space assets carry profound implications for conventional military operations and potentially nuclear deterrence.

Britain’s adversaries therefore increasingly seek political advantage without provoking outright war. Cyber operations, electronic warfare, co-orbital satellite manoeuvres, growing commercial dependency, legal ambiguities, and intelligence collection offer opportunities to influence an adversary’s behaviour while managing escalation risks. This is not evidence that the character of strategy has fundamentally changed. Rather, it reflects the enduring logic of competition adapting to a domain in which the costs of direct military confrontation are exceptionally high.

Most analyses of these developments focus upon satellites, launch vehicles, or counterspace capabilities. Important though these are, they are not the true object of strategic competition. The real target is political judgement.

Persistent competition in space rarely seeks immediate military victory. Instead, it seeks to influence how political leaders interpret risk, assess escalation, and exercise strategic choice. A co-orbital satellite manoeuvre may reveal technical capability, but it also tests political resolve. Electronic interference with navigation systems imposes practical costs, but it also normalises behaviour that might previously have been considered unacceptable. Ambiguous actions create uncertainty not simply within a military headquarters, but within governments themselves.

Viewed individually, such incidents often appear too limited to justify a significant response. Viewed collectively, they reveal something rather different: a sustained strategic campaign designed to shape political decision-making over time.

This distinction matters because the UK does not principally suffer from a deficit of military capability. British military and intelligence organisations possess an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the challenges posed by adversarial space operations. Moreover, commercial space innovation is accelerating and, in turn, increases the attack surfaces by which adversaries might compete. Indeed, the UK has recognised space as a critical operational domain within the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and is planning to invest accordingly.

The more difficult question lies at the political level, where there appears to be a persistent tendency to interpret strategically coherent campaigns as isolated tactical incidents. The instinctive response has often been one of restraint: to avoid unnecessary escalation, to preserve diplomatic space, to take what might be described as the strategic high road.

Restraint is not in itself a weakness. Indeed, it is often a hallmark of responsible statecraft. The difficulty arises, however, when it is not accompanied by an equally coherent strategy for shaping an adversary’s behaviour. Adversaries probe, responses remain cautious, political thresholds become clearer, and further probing follows. Over time, the cumulative effect is not dramatic defeat but something considerably more subtle: the gradual erosion of strategic freedom of manoeuvre.

This process extends well beyond space. It is visible in cyberspace, maritime coercion, economic statecraft, information operations, and technological competition. Space simply provides perhaps the clearest illustration because the political consequences of apparently minor technical actions are often immediate and globally palpable.

The objective of persistent strategic competition is therefore not necessarily to compel surrender or achieve decisive military victory. It is the progressive narrowing of an opponent’s range of politically acceptable choices while preserving one’s own. Success is measured not by territory captured or forces destroyed, but by the gradual reduction of strategic freedom.

This should concern Britain because strategic freedom should be one of its greatest national assets. The UK’s influence has historically rested not only upon military capability but upon the ability to combine diplomacy, intelligence, commerce, alliances, and technological innovation into coherent statecraft. The challenge posed by contemporary strategic competition is not that these instruments have disappeared, but that they risk being employed reactively rather than proactively.

The language of grey zone warfare is therefore useful only up to a point. It describes certain activities, but it risks obscuring the larger strategic reality. The challenge facing Britain is not to prepare for an occasional category of conflict that sits somewhere between peace and war. Rather, it is to recognise that persistent strategic competition has always been the historical norm, and that space is simply the latest arena in which this enduring logic is being expressed.

The UK does not need to rediscover strategic thinking because space has become contested. It needs to rediscover strategic thinking because bad times – history – have returned.

The greatest danger is not that Britain’s competitors have developed a revolutionary new form of warfare. It is that they have remained students of strategy while the UK has, at times, behaved as though sustained geopolitical competition were an interruption to normal, benign international politics rather than its enduring competitive condition. The most immediate task is therefore not to develop a new vocabulary for competition, but to recover an older strategic understanding: that rivalry among major powers is continuous, that political judgement remains the decisive instrument of statecraft, and that the ultimate purpose of strategy is to preserve a state’s freedom to choose its own course in an increasingly contested world.

Dr John B. Sheldon is a Founding Partner of AstroAnalytica Ltd., a boutique space strategy consultancy headquartered in London.

This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

On 28th July, the Pentagon launched a six-month review of the United States’ (US) military footprint in Europe. This is likely to be the most consequential reassessment of American force posture on the continent for a generation. Although the Trump administration has stated that Europe remains ‘strategically and culturally vital to the United States’, this does not mean that the current force posture will endure. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, Commander US European Command (EUCOM), has already warned allies to expect force reductions.

Washington is trying to resolve a key strategic dilemma: how to maintain credible deterrence against Russia while reallocating military resources to prevent Chinese military dominance in the Indo-Pacific, but without undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) political cohesion – its centre of gravity.

The US has described its preferred end-state as ‘NATO 3.0’, under which European allies assume primary responsibility for their conventional defence while America concentrates on strategic enablers and deterrence, and frees up its forces for employment elsewhere.1 This reflects Washington’s assessment that European allies already possess a substantial conventional military advantage over Russia. Additionally, the US would continue to provide extended nuclear deterrence.

A thorough review may well lead to a more acceptable division of transatlantic labour. However, although Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War, told the Ankara summit that the review results were not predetermined, he also linked the review to what he characterised as European resistance to unrestricted American access to air stations during operations against Iran. Furthermore, if pledged European military investment fails to keep pace with probable US force reductions, any precipitous American posture change risks weaker deterrence, increased scope for Russian coercion, and a decline of US influence in Europe.

This is not the Trump administration’s first attempt to reduce the US military presence in Europe. In 2020, during his first term, Donald Trump, President of the US, ordered plans to withdraw approximately 12,000 personnel from Germany, although the decision was subsequently reversed by Joe Biden during his presidency. Trump’s current initiative represents less a radical departure from the past than the revival of a longstanding objective, albeit in a markedly different strategic environment. Waiting for Trump’s current term to end in the hope for a change in American direction is unwise; Washington’s shift in focus towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is generational and bipartisan.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted the largest reinforcement of US forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War. EUCOM today comprises more than 80,000 military and civilian personnel, divided between around 65,000 permanently based in Europe (mainly in Germany) and the remainder rotated in and out for operations and training. This has decreased from a peak of around 100,000 in the immediate wake of the Kremlin’s commencement of its invasion.

Grynkewich told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he has three priority missions: to secure the strategic approaches to the continental US, in particular the Atlantic and Arctic; to project combat power in and beyond Europe; and to position NATO to defend and deter against external aggression. Each mission is undertaken in conjunction with America’s European allies. His overlapping responsibilities show why the review must extend beyond simplistic arguments about troop numbers. It must determine which of these priority missions, in whole or in part, European allies can assume, and which will continue to require unique US capabilities.

Recent operations against the Russian ‘shadow fleet’, Iranian nuclear facilities, and Daesh affiliates in Africa all relied on American bases in Europe and close cooperation with European allies. The review must consider not only how many troops and facilities are to remain in the European theatre, but also which capabilities must remain there if the US is to continue to project combat power into neighbouring theatres.

Before the review was launched, Washington began adjusting its force posture. A rotational US Army Brigade Combat Team (BCT) returned to the US at the end of 2025 without replacement. The Pentagon cancelled the planned deployment of another BCT to Poland, although Trump reversed that decision. The administration also announced the withdrawal of 5,000 personnel from Germany, a move widely interpreted as a response to Berlin’s criticism of Washington’s operations against Iran. Even more strategically significant was its decision to cancel its previous commitment to deploy long-range missiles to Germany periodically, including ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.

These reductions illustrate a wider problem: European allies are being encouraged to assume greater responsibility for their own defence, but their planning is complicated if US deployments can be announced, cancelled, or reversed with little or no consultation.

Before his re-election, Trump’s officials briefed that as part of a planned radical reorientation of NATO, the US would maintain its existing airpower and bases in the UK, Germany, and Turkey, as well as its naval forces. Any reductions would be focused on land warfare capabilities such as infantry, armour, logistics, and artillery.

The most likely outcome of the review is a leaner American presence based on nuclear deterrence, strategic enablers, intelligence, Command and Control (C2), strategic mobility, rotational deployments, and naval, air, and special forces. This posture would allow the US to contribute to deterrence and surge forces in a crisis while projecting power further afield. The review is therefore likely to reduce those conventional capabilities that European allies can plausibly replace over the next decade while preserving those capabilities that remain uniquely American.

If this logic is followed through, an adapted US force posture would re-balance its capabilities as follows:

However, the axe may go deeper. Before Ankara, Trump mused about cutting troops in Europe by a third before settling on a review. This would reduce force levels to those before Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, as urged by some American think tanks.

There are several strategic risks. Members of Congress have expressed concern about any reduction of a ‘robust’ US troop presence in Europe while the conflict in Ukraine continues and also about the risk of nuclear proliferation by allies due to a perceived weakening of the American commitment to European security. Congress has prohibited use of Department of War funds for reducing troop levels below 76,000, selling or handing back EUCOM sites, or relinquishing the role of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). Similar provisions are in the draft 2027 National Defence Authorisation Act, currently stalled in the Senate.

Signalling retrenchment of conventional US support in Europe to incentivise America’s allies to spend more is one thing. However, as David Blagden, Associate Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Exeter, has argued, the US has ‘turned actively predatory’. It has issued threats over Greenland, imposed tariffs, insulted allied contributions to US-led operations, and harmed European economic security while simultaneously demanding that its European allies must be subordinate to Washington and continue to buy American equipment. If the US remains predatory and European governments cease to believe American commitments to continental security are credible, they will begin to hedge away from the US – ‘the reaction to belittlement is likely to simply [sic] be more defiance’.

In sum, the central question for the review is not how many American troops remain in Europe, but which military functions the US should continue to perform itself and which Europeans must provide for themselves in the future. If the review produces a coherent division of labour, underpinned by sustained European investment and credible American strategic commitment, NATO can emerge stronger despite a smaller US footprint. If reductions become strategically incoherent or are used to coerce allies politically, however, Washington risks encouraging the strategic hedging away from America that it seeks to avoid.

John Foreman CBE is an independent consultant specialising in Russia, Ukraine, and Euro-Atlantic security. He served as UK Defence Attaché to Kyiv (2008-2011) and Moscow (2019-2022).

This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

A combination of global instability and the belief of Andy Burnham, Prime Minister, in hard power-backed reindustrialisation presents the North East of England with a generational opportunity to expand its footprint for defence manufacturing. Defined in this article as Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham, and Teesside, the North East hosts around 2,000 direct industry jobs backed by Ministry of Defence (MOD) expenditure; roughly 1% of British defence industry Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) jobs. Set within the larger 23,200 total number of MOD-supported military and civilian roles, it is clear that the region’s defence industry holds a disproportionately small share.

Amid this local context, the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) has reiterated the centrality of the Hybrid Navy concept to the Royal Navy, comprising a mixed crewed/uncrewed fleet, modular payloads, autonomy, and scalable production. This article therefore recommends that the MOD develops a North East ‘Hybrid Hub’ to support uncrewed systems development, training, and deployment in the North Sea to support national priorities while focusing the region’s underutilised defence industrial potential.

Currently, the North East receives roughly £180 million in direct spend – a fraction of the £4.7 billion, £6.6 billion, and £7.9 billion in the North West, South West, and South East respectively. With a stated goal of reaching 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence spending by 2035, a Burnham administration should use this opportunity to address the stark regional imbalance in defence spending.

North Sea security threats

This approach to defence expenditure should be targeted, with spending to be made in terms of a region’s recognised strengths and industrial potential. Arguably, the North East’s biggest asset (and vulnerability) is its geography, with the rivers Blyth, Tyne, Wear, and Tees all feeding directly into the North Sea. As an increasingly contested environment playing host to Russian combatant and ‘shadow fleet’ transits, the North Sea has already been the suspected host to sub-threshold activity, albeit further south. It is not outside the realm of possibility, however, that North East MOD sites – including Royal Air Force (RAF) Boulmer and RAF Spadeadam, alongside North Yorkshire’s RAF Leeming and RAF Fylingdales – could face similar hostile action in future.

As demonstrated across Europe, Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) also faces rising pressure from Russian sub-threshold attacks. In the Baltic region, suspected Russian sabotage of undersea cables has elicited several coordinated allied responses, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) BALTIC SENTRY mission. Such threats may also apply to the North Sea, in which critical renewables and hydrocarbon sources provide a significant share of British energy. Should the Burnham administration choose to expand North Sea oil and gas extraction, the need to secure it will only intensify.

Potential vulnerabilities also face the North East’s land-based CNI, which ranges across ports, undersea cable landings, chemical plants, airports, and upcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centres. The Port of Tyne in particular has demonstrated its importance to overseas deployments, with the 7th Light Mechanised Brigade departing North Shields aboard a civilian Roll-On, Roll-Off (Ro-Ro) ferry to move 1,400 personnel to participate in Exercise RHINO STORM earlier this year.

A ‘Hybrid Hub’

As a frontline region facing these threats, the North East is ideally positioned to provide a portion of the Royal Navy’s presence through attritable and autonomous uncrewed vessels, which are foundational to the Hybrid Navy concept. The North East should therefore host a ‘Hybrid Hub’ on the River Tyne to enable the development, training, and deployment of Uncrewed Surface and Undersea Vehicles (USVs and UUVs) directly into the North Sea.

In doing so, the Royal Navy would not be starting from scratch. HMS Calliope, a stone frigate on the River Tyne’s south bank in Gateshead, currently hosts up to four P2000 Archer class patrol/training vessels. Although a reservist training facility, a recent – yet unconfirmed – report has suggested that it is set to be expanded into a ‘shadow fleet command centre.’ This points to a notable evolution in testing, training, and deployment opportunities available for the region.

P2000s have already proven their integration with both USVs and UUVs, acting as a ‘mothership’ for tactical command. By expanding this in the North Sea, with its notably rough conditions, maritime traffic, and offshore energy, the Royal Navy could better prepare systems and crews for challenging environments, including the High North. This ultimately presents the MOD with a scalable opportunity, enabling expansion geared towards deeper support for larger crewed and uncrewed vessels, as envisioned by the Royal Navy.

A Hybrid Hub would also mark a contribution to shared international priorities, particularly with the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), for which North Sea security is an evolving imperative. With a shared objective of boosting interoperability and interchangeability, the JEF could further use the North Sea as a joint proving ground to support further training, development, and presence-enabled deterrence.

Industry

A North East Hybrid Hub would also create significant opportunities for local industry and raise broader avenues for inward investment. This would build upon an established supply chain which includes autonomous maritime, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and space capabilities, all of which will need to be leveraged to meet strategic requirements. Despite this alignment, the North East’s defence sector is, in part, held back by the MOD’s investment of only 4% of the defence budget in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) nationally.

Of the £180 million spent by the MOD in the North East, 35% goes to local SMEs (the highest percentage nationally by a significant margin). The region therefore receives the largest slice of the smallest pie. Although there is increasing space-centric investment in the region from primes such as Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Raytheon, and Leonardo, the North East would undoubtedly benefit should the Burnham administration decide to accelerate plans to provide further support for SMEs.

A Hybrid Hub, in convening industrial and strategic focus, could leverage the region’s more than 27,000 defence-related jobs, including in the space, cyber, AI, and advanced manufacturing sectors. This would draw upon a network including local Members of Parliament; the region’s two combined authorities; the North East Regional Defence and Security Cluster (NERDSC); the North East Technology Park (NETPark); and the region’s five universities, of which three are founding members of the Defence Universities Alliance.

Acting upon this could enable greater engagement with national programmes such as the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) and AUKUS, in addition to deepening bilateral industrial ties with partners like Ukraine. For the Royal Navy specifically, it could enable a scalable expansion of Project BEEHIVE autonomy trials to complement (not replace) Portsmouth-based uncrewed system testing. With a recent trial already demonstrating the utility of the North Sea for the world’s first USV airdrop, there is a clear rationale for the region to host and support similar activity in future.

Conclusion

In contributing towards Burnham’s regional growth agenda, expanding the MOD’s presence to a North East Hybrid Hub is just one option for British-made hard power reindustrialisation. A convergence of political priorities and the growing need to secure the North Sea provides the North East with an opportunity for generational change, reminiscent of its proud heritage of shipbuilding. As the future of European security adapts to the decisions made at the Resolute Desk, (itself fashioned from the remains of a ship built on the River Tyne), His Majesty’s Government should empower the North East to ensure that no region is left behind in responding to the challenges ahead.

Benedict Baxendale-Smith is an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and PhD Student in Defence Studies at King’s College London. His research focuses on British and Australian maritime strategies in the Indo-Pacific amid American-Chinese strategic competition.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

For decades, fighter aircraft have been the ultimate concentration of combat power, speed, and flexibility. A four-ship of Typhoons is complex and expensive, but for an urgent, difficult problem, fighter pilots knew they were probably the right answer. However, in recent conflicts, low-cost autonomous Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) – drones –have dominated numerically, and largely superseded crewed combat aviation at the battlefront. Now Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing warfighting, from planning to execution. As AI makes its way into autonomous systems, must fighter pilots – including the author – lament the end of their era?

Fighter pilots on the bench

Drones now cover all combat air roles. The defining system of this era – the Shahed – has been reproduced and modified by Iran’s allies and enemies alike. Autonomy and low cost have now been augmented with AI, starkly demonstrated by American and Israeli drones hunting individuals using facial recognition and behavioural tracking. With sufficient creativity, deep strike missions such as Ukraine’s Operation SPIDER’S WEB in June 2025 can also be executed with stunning value for money. With AI creeping up the targeting chain, even planning and prioritisation are being prised from fighter pilots’ grip.

Fighter pilots also have a new worry: nobody wants to be sat in a 9G supersonic fighter when their opponent is an AI-guided swarm of 25G hypersonic robots. The response to such a threat must be AI-guided, and the response will come sooner than we think. The fusion of AI, autonomy, mass manufacture, and precision is likely to drive the dominance of low-cost systems. Such systems are perfect proving ground for the technologies, not requiring the assurance that crewed platform adoption or integration requires. The bleeding edge of autonomy and AI sits at the cheap, expendable end of the spectrum.

This is where military forces will get most from coming investments. The relatively low cost of disposable systems, often in the low tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds or dollars, allows constant testing, driving up maturation, and driving down cost. In addition, the diversified design and manufacturing base for autonomy and AI is bringing fresh ideas, capturing some of the potential of the civilian sector (i.e., dual-use). Design, manufacture, and maintenance will improve, as will tactical performance.

Iceman’s children

The pendulum of combat advantage now swings towards smaller, disposable systems. However, as technology matures, it will inevitably swing back to the larger and more complex platforms. They will go faster, further, and deliver more weapons. Another new fighter pilot problem thus arises: if Iceman flew ‘ice cold, no mistakes’, the uncrewed systems – Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) – will be liquid nitrogen. They will be tactically excellent, with consistency and endurance beyond human reach.

In the United States (US), Anduril and General Atomics have perhaps the most advanced of these programmes. The first tranche of the Dark Merlin is expected in 2029, costing an estimated US$30 million (£22.4 million) each. Boeing in Australia also has a mature platform; the Ghost Bat, at a unit price of US$10-$15 million (£7.5-£11.2 million). Helsing in Germany has a similar platform in Europa. The People’s Republic of China has demonstrated its GJ-11 ‘Sharp Sword’, integrating with fourth- and fifth-generation combat aircraft. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has ignored CCAs. The Kremlin has operationally tested its S-70 Okhotnik, while Kyiv has committed to purchase 150 Saab Gripens from Sweden – already proven with AI-control, and effectively an optionally piloted fighter. These are all AI-enabled uncrewed combat aircraft, built to integrate with fifth-generation systems, and with extensive autonomous capabilities.

Don’t retire Maverick just yet

The rapid progress of autonomous and AI-driven programmes is not pricing combat pilots out of the market. Ethics will keep humans in the loop, and invaluable contributions can be made in imagination and original thought. To survive in their aircraft, however, pilots will need to command formations of autonomous teammates carrying sensors, jammers, decoys, and weapons.

Even the ‘legacy’ fourth-generation platforms have extremely well-engineered airframes and engines that can carry tonnes of fuel and weapons, and generate enough electrical power for significant compute. The way in which they deliver their roles must change fundamentally, but great value can be extracted from previous investment in existing fleets, albeit with some modernisation. This will bring extended utility from the equipment but, more importantly, also from the people operating and maintaining the systems.

Fighter pilots often say that today’s generation has less flying skill than their predecessors. This is, broadly speaking, true. Modern combat air is built on automation, making aircraft easier to fly as systems better fuse pilot inputs into more desirable outputs. However, if technology made poorer pilots, it made more capable warfighters. Freed of handling demands, combat pilots now control sensors, software, and weapons, and can manage much more tactical information, stretching to formations of dozens or hundreds of aircraft. This is not decline – it is evolution. Indeed, this same trend now stretches out of the crewed cockpit to formations of uncrewed systems.

Combat air will use uncrewed systems for reach, persistence, mass, and to take most of the physical risk. The human commander supplies intent, escalation control, the most difficult judgements, and – most importantly – imagination. Neither crewed platforms nor CCAs are cheap, but their thoughtful development and integration can extract significant value for many years to come. The scale at which they can operate can grow exponentially.

‘Top Gun’ class of 2027

Autonomy and AI are also adding new pressures to the existing model of command. At one level, it is an extension of mission command: intent from above, decentralised execution below, applied to software-controlled teams. However, with these technologies, commanders will not simply direct more units, but different kinds of units, with different tempos and varying levels of delegated authority and logic transparency.

AI will also offer novel tactics that commanders must be able to filter. It returns inevitably to the human, where military competences will need to evolve just as they have for fighter pilots, and add commanding both human and non-human subordinates, as well as controlling and responding to AI-driven systems.

The first generations of these systems seem likely to be able to operate through several layers or decision points of warfare, but not able to manage all its tactical and strategic dimensions. Humans will need to guide the machines and make many critical decisions. It would be unwise to surrender these functions. Low-cost systems will build tactical and technical competence. Large and complex systems will come, but humans should hone skills now on the accessible and affordable ones.

Autonomy and AI are rapidly proliferating through low-cost platforms and transforming all aspects of warfare, from design and manufacture, to how we train, plan, and fight. This phenomenon is highly visible in small and disposable systems, but it is premature to conclude that large, crewed fighter aircraft are no longer useful.

Iteration will mature the technology and the techniques, but these will be given new power and reach when integrated into larger and more sophisticated platforms. Fighter pilots will lament the twilight of the sweaty, cramped 9G cockpit, but this is the dawn of commanding distributed, intelligent systems across domains. The mental and physical challenges will be just as demanding, and the skills, initiative, and intellect to thrive will echo those possessed by history’s best fighter pilots.

Wg. Cdr. Ben Goodwin MBE is an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and a fighter pilot with experience in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, and Central Africa. He has been posted to the Ministry of Defence and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Brussels. Previously, he worked at the trading arm of a large bank, focused on foreign exchange and government bonds.

This article was written by the author in a personal capacity. The opinions expressed are his own, and do not reflect the views of His Majesty’s Government or the Ministry of Defence.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) macroeconomic stability is directly tied to the security of vulnerable seabed cables and pipelines in the North Atlantic and North Sea. However, the Royal Navy hulls and surveillance platforms required to monitor these assets face severe operational overstretch, and Ministry of Defence (MOD) funding allocations have not kept pace with the evolving threat profile. As hostile states expand capabilities to map and probe this infrastructure below the threshold of open conflict, the subsea domain reveals a structural gap between His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s stated strategic ambitions and available frontline resources.

This fiscal friction culminated in June 2026 with the resignations of John Healey as Secretary of State for Defence and Al Carns as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, who formally cited HM Treasury’s unwillingness to resource the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) appropriately against escalating North Atlantic and European threats.

Britain’s reliance on a concentrated network of undersea data cables and energy pipelines presents a systemic vulnerability. Hostile actors can exploit this infrastructure through deniable seabed activity designed to avoid triggering the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Article 5. The UK’s current capabilities for underwater surveillance, rapid attribution, and physical intervention remain unscaled to the value of the assets at risk. Furthermore, current force generation trajectories provide insufficient organic capacity to sustain seabed monitoring as a core, enduring mission. Absent a ringfenced uplift in maritime security funding within upcoming expenditure reviews, the capability gap will widen.

Recent allied initiatives – including new NATO coordination cells and Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) task groups – improve regional situational awareness, but do not yet constitute a credible maritime deterrence posture. Britain is currently on track to become a net consumer of allied security in the North Atlantic, rather than the leading framework contributor.

Addressing undersea vulnerabilities requires explicit fiscal trade-offs. HM Government should either lift the defence spending ceiling or curtail out-of-theatre commitments to fund domestic maritime surveillance, Uncrewed Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), and commercial sector resilience integration.

Financial data flows, international cloud services, government communications, and a significant portion of the domestic energy mix rely on seabed routes. Yet, policy oversight of these assets remains fragmented across the Cabinet Office, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the MOD, and private commercial operators. This decentralisation prevents the generation of a unified operational picture.

The geography of the UK’s continental shelf compounds the security challenge. Critical data and energy corridors transit shallow, highly trafficked waters in the North Sea, making them accessible both to advanced military assets and dual-use civilian hulls. As these networks converge on a limited number of high-density landing corridors and coastal chokepoints, minimal operational effort can yield systemic economic disruption. While the data network possesses some inherent rerouting redundancy, the repair timelines for major gas pipelines or deep-sea fibre trunks do not match the speed at which a coordinated outage would generate severe political leverage during a crisis.

The primary threat to British undersea infrastructure is persistent, ambiguous interference in the ‘grey zone’ – the space below the threshold of armed conflict where attribution is difficult and the risk of escalation complicates decision-making. Foreign state actors – principally Russia – routinely deploy specialised hydrographic survey vessels, notably the Yantar. As noted by Healey in a personal statement to Parliament, the persistent loitering of the Yantar within the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and vital maritime corridors over the past two years underscores a deliberate, state-directed mapping campaign.

This physical probing is compounded by sophisticated cyber-physical targeting. Recent intelligence disclosures from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) highlight that adversarial cyber actors are seeking exploitation vectors within the industrial control systems managing undersea landing stations, pairing physical reconnaissance with digital vulnerability mapping.

Hostile operations do not require the physical severance of a cable to achieve strategic effect. A pattern of unexplained telemetry dropouts, micro-damage to pipeline casings, or localised outages on secondary routes forces both HM Government and private operators to deplete finite operational and analytical capacity in simply diagnosing the incidents. Furthermore, operations conducted in international waters or under the guise of marine scientific research within EEZs exploit legal ambiguities, leaving Britain with few viable enforcement options short of escalating a civil maritime dispute into a state-level confrontation.

While the MOD has made tactical adjustments – notably bringing the Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance (MROS) ship RFA Proteus into service and participating in NATO’s Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell – the volume of available operational assets is small relative to the geographic scale of threats. The Royal Navy faces a severe escort deficit. Its remaining Type 23 class frigates and Type 45 class destroyers, alongside the nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) fleet and the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, are committed to high-priority, non-negotiable missions. These dictate sustaining the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD), providing Carrier Strike Group escort duties, and monitoring Russian naval transit through the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap.

Adding continuous, proactive seabed infrastructure patrol to this list is thus non-viable with the current fleet size. Financial constraints mean that new procurement programmes face frequent delays due to funding competition from legacy hardware programmes.

The structural reality of this underfunding was laid bare by the dual resignations of the political leadership at the MOD in June 2026. In his departure statement, Healey explicitly warned that the backloaded DIP financial settlement ‘falls well short of what is required’ and forces choices that ‘reduce the readiness of our forces’. Carns echoed this deficit, stating that Britain is failing to provide the necessary ‘kit to do the job’. Within the subsea domain, this funding ceiling means the Royal Navy cannot transition from a reactive, event-driven posture to the persistent, proactive underwater presence required to deter adversarial sub-threshold actions.

If HM Government intends to mitigate these vulnerabilities prior to long-term budget adjustments, it must pursue low-cost capability shifts. Firstly, it should designate underwater infrastructure protection as a standalone, core statutory task for the Royal Navy and the National Cyber Force, supported by wider deployment of off-the-shelf, low-cost commercial autonomous vehicles for routine monitoring.

Secondly, it should mandate industry-government data integration, establishing a joint, real-time data-sharing hub where commercial acoustic telemetry and cable diagnostic data are fused with military maritime intelligence to accelerate sub-threshold attribution. This initiative should draw directly upon the modern regulatory standards put forward in the recent undersea internet cable strategy published by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT).

Finally, Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Defence, should leverage the UK’s leadership within the JEF to establish a strict geographic division of labour. Securing formal commitments from Nordic and Baltic allies to manage localised shallow-water monitoring would free high-end Royal Navy assets for Atlantic surveillance.

Ash Walker is a strategic intelligence analyst specialising in geopolitical risk, defence policy, and hybrid warfare, with a focus on critical minerals and supply chain security and operational resilience analysis.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

On 30th June 2026, Sir Keir Starmer, outgoing Prime Minister, finally released the much-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) , which sets out how His Majesty’s (HM) Government will resource the prior year’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The process of arriving at the DIP was nothing if not painful, resulting in the resignation of John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, and Al Carns, Minister of State for the Armed Forces. Putting the political machinations behind and pain of delivery aside, there is some good news buried within the DIP for the United States (US).

First, the United Kingdom (UK) is consciously making choices in its defence policy and strategy. While the SDR identified and enumerated priorities, it singularly failed to make definitive choices. This meant that Britain was pursuing a multi-domain ‘Integrated Force’ without prioritisation or the resource base to support or sustain such an order of battle. It had consequently – the quality of its men and women in uniform notwithstanding – suffered a crisis of credibility as of late within the political circles of defence in Washington ( the British Armed Forces remain highly regarded within American military circles). At least now there is a clearer direction that the UK’s military is taking.

Emblematic of these choices is the DIP’s emphasis on uncrewed and autonomous systems across multiple domains, which reflects lessons learned from Ukraine and the changing character of war. It also establishes a course for the UK to develop key enabling capabilities that would complement those of the US in-theatre, allowing the British to offset these capabilities should a crisis – such as one over Taiwan, or as Operation EPIC FURY vividly demonstrated – require American attention elsewhere.

There are, however, risks in doing so. It is too early to tell what the right balance is between crewed and uncrewed systems. Clearly the British Armed Forces are leaning more into autonomous systems than some of their partner militaries. The UK’s experience in developing this hybrid force will be informative. How will the ‘New Hybrid Navy’ execute traditional sea control operations in the North Atlantic and in support of Atlantic Bastion? How will it manage operating crewed assets in traditional missions along with autonomous subsurface and undersea operations?

Here, the DIP, while retiring the Type 45 class destroyer in favour of six Common Combat Vessels (CCVs), retains a commitment to crewed systems – including the reinvestment in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, partnership with Norway for the Type 26 class frigate, and the SSN-AUKUS class nuclear submarine. Notably, if the Defence Nuclear Enterprise is removed from Royal Navy’s budgeting, the Royal Navy receives less than the British Army and Royal Air Force (RAF), despite the UK being an island nation.

Washington will look to London’s experiences in this area, as the question of what that future force looks like is as yet unanswered in the Pentagon. The Department of War is pushing to achieve its own version of drone dominance and recently announced a drone ‘tsar’ to oversee most uncrewed programmes, but what the high-low mixture looks like is still in development. If HM Government sticks with the 20-40-40 model of crewed, uncrewed, and attritable effectors as outlined in the SDR, it could well end up with a more balanced force. Seeing drones as, however, a cheaper and cost-saving alternative to crewed systems is ill-advised – much of the present conversation focuses on what drones can do, not what they cannot.

Second, the DIP recognises the changing strategic landscape of European defence and adapts accordingly. In response to both the threat posed by Russia and the demands by Donald Trump, President of the US, that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member states shoulder more of the defence burden, the European pillar of the alliance is stepping up in a big way. Germany’s ‘Responsibility for Europe’ envisions a force of 460,000 by 2039. Poland aims to double its military to 500,000 by the same year.

Beyond raw personnel numbers, Berlin is investing heavily in space and enabling capabilities to shift some of the burden away from America as it seeks to pivot to the Pacific. This, in turn, means that Britain can reconceptualise its own defence strategy and position within NATO. Here again there are risks. If the plans Berlin and Warsaw have set out fail to materialise, or national politics charts a different course while the US is rebalancing its attention away from NATO, gaps could emerge.

More broadly, the UK is stepping up its partnership with and support of NATO’s defence and deterrence mission. Through bilateral cooperation with Norway on the aforementioned Type 26s, co-development of long-range precision strike with Germany, and commitment to the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) with (thus far) Italy and Japan, Britain is working to embed itself deeper into NATO’s European defence architecture while expanding its defence industrial base and reach. These are, in aggregate, welcome developments from Washington’s point of view, demonstrating practical burden shifting through planning and acquisition.

Third, and least appreciated, the DIP is indicative of at least an upward trajectory in defence spending for the UK. The £15 billion uplift is well short of the £28 billion service chiefs said was necessary, and it means that HM Government will not hit the 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) core defence spending target in the near term. That Washington had any belief that London would be able to do so was, however, misguided from the start.

HM Government stated that defence would be its top priority in the next spending review, but it has thus far been unwilling to cut anything other than international development spending in order to make that happen (beyond what is already outlined in the DIP). Put simply, the increase is welcome, but not nearly enough for Britain to act independently, or to lead within NATO.

Trump is overwhelmingly a president who focuses on outcomes, not processes. That the DIP is finally published counts, but only just. The President will almost certainly lambast the UK for failing to reach NATO’s 3.5% of GDP core defence spending target agreed to at The Hague last year, even if reaching it within one year was never likely.

There is certainly a risk that at the forthcoming Ankara Summit Trump singles out Britain for its underperformance in the spending league tables. His previous, curiously cordial, relationship with Sir Keir has all but evaporated, and the delay in issuing the DIP will not have improved 10 Downing Street’s standing. He is less interested in the details (and the devil of creative accounting is very much in the DIP details), but London’s counterparts, both political and military, in the Pentagon will be watching closely to see how these precious pounds are spent.

The pressing challenge is whether and how HM Government executes on the funding plan, and if the plan survives first contact with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester and expected successor to Sir Keir. As the second largest economy in Europe, what the UK does matters, certainly more than the smaller NATO partners (whose respective contributions are absolutely to be welcomed and applauded). HM Government needs to find more resources to meet the 3.5% defence spending target and the additional 1.5% of non-military defence-related expenditures.

Given Britain’s current political challenges, the question is whether the DIP survives the transition between prime ministers. Assuming Burnham enters No. 10, will he demand a refresh of the SDR? Will he support the decisions his predecessor made, given his priorities and the challenge of balancing an eclectic Labour Party? Will he in fact make defence the top priority in any future spending reviews?

The savings found in departmental budgets, halted road improvement works, and Net Zero targets (sacrifices which are fundamentally necessary), will almost assuredly cause the incoming prime minister political headaches from within their own Labour Party. They will also undoubtedly be less than pleased with the fact that there is at least £4.7 billion in unfunded mandates over the duration of the four-year plan itself.

There are, of course, issues within the DIP, and at times creative accounting undertaken to facilitate the increased budget. They should not be dismissed, and HM Government should be held to account by its allies in Washington and indeed across NATO. Nonetheless, Britain is taking steps in the right direction and on the journey to increased defence spending. Along the way, it is recognising both the changing character of war and the shifting strategic landscape on the continent of Europe and responding accordingly.

These are all messages that will be welcomed by Washington. The challenge is turning commitments into action.

Joshua Huminski is Senior Vice President for National Security and Intelligence at the Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and an International Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) ends more than a decade of fiction in British defence finance. By the time the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) last ten-year Defence Equipment Plan was published, around a month into the premiership of Rishi Sunak, the gap between spending and money available was £17 billion. After that, the Conservative administration produced no long-term costings at all.

The DIP was supposed to deliver the commitments that the administration of Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, signed up to in last year’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR): a ten-year programme to match the ten-year vision of the Review. However, it does not.

Sir Keir made the reasons explicit in his speech announcing the DIP. He was unwilling to use increased borrowing in any form – including the ‘defence bonds’ requested by industry groups such as Make UK – and had reached the limits of departmental budget reallocation.

As a result, the ten-year programme is only financed over the next four years, and takes the United Kingdom’s (UK) defence spending only to 2.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the fiscal year 2029, leaving the Prime Minister’s pledge of 3% by 2030 hard to reach, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) target of 3.5%+1.5% of GDP on defence and related infrastructure effectively notional. Just under £5 billion of the allocated cash is to be found at the next Budget.

As John Healey, former Secretary of State for Defence – who made most of the choices contained in the DIP before resigning – put it, the Prime Minister was ‘unable’ and Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ‘unwilling’ to fund rearmament at the scale required by the SDR. Whatever happens under the expected premiership of Andy Burnham, the DIP must be judged a failure against the aspirations laid out in the SDR.

During the political spat that led to Healey’s resignation, the descriptor used internally by those with sight of the DIP was ‘scalable’: it is built for a necessarily constrained spending envelope today, but contains choices that would allow capabilities to be expanded should the political argument over money turn in favour of comprehensive rearmament.

What is welcome is the strategic nature of the choices made. The standout commitments are to upgrade the nuclear deterrent, the next generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) via AUKUS, the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), and the munitions stockpile. The standout platform deletions are commitments to crewed air defence destroyers, reconnaissance helicopters, and the so-far notional Type 32 general purpose frigate.

In their place, the vision of Gen. Sir Gwyn Jenkins, First Sea Lord, for a ‘hybrid navy’ by 2029 gets backing for the purchase of a mixture of crewed and uncrewed naval drone and missile platforms. No other major naval power is abandoning conventional power projection platforms with such alacrity, and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating (sometime in the 2030s).

The GCAP budget allocation is a major signal – not just to allies and industrial partners, but geopolitically. Once operational, the Tempest airframe will give Britain a genuine, sixth-generation air combat system that is independent of the United States (US), in a world where European partners have failed to produce one and where the other major players will consist of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and America. It is a bet not only on the concept of a ‘system of systems’ in air combat, but on British industry, with BAE Systems and its supply chain standing to become global players in a very limited but strategically vital ecosystem.

The irony is that, since the publication of the Defence Industrial Strategy in 2025, and the formation of the National Armaments Directorate within the MOD, the UK has had a metaphorical Formula 1 car ready to race in terms of industrial transformation. With the appointment of Rupert Pearce as National Armaments Director (NAD), it has a driver. What it has lacked is fuel in the tank and a race plan. The DIP provides fuel for four out of the next ten years, leaving the next administration to take the tough decisions.

Sir Keir’s determination to slap down the idea of defence bonds, and the allocation of £400 million to the Multilateral Defence Mechanism (MDM), backed by His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury, might both be read as attempts to limit the options of the incoming administration. The MDM – a joint procurement initiative with Finland and the Netherlands – has been counterposed by HM Treasury to the Canadian-backed Defence Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which looks set to launch at the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara. Defence bonds have been advocated by numerous industry bodies and think tanks. It is clear that without either major welfare cuts or some mixture of hypothecated and multilateral borrowing, British rearmament cannot match the escalated nature of the threat.

Assuming he becomes Britain’s next Prime Minister, Burnham’s first budget is unlikely to prioritise defence. Thus, the framework for the next phase of rearmament will likely be set at the next Spending Review, in Q1 2027 – a milestone Starmer signalled in his speech, and Healey in his backbench intervention. By then, either the Labour government finds more money – whether through borrowing, taxation, or reallocation – or the 3% target is toast and the 3.5% might be judged fictional.

The contrast between the UK’s hesitant spending commitments and those of its allies is already stark. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Türkiye, and Germany all have firm spending commitments of 3.5% of GDP by 2030. More importantly, Germany has, for the first time since 1995, overtaken Britain in absolute cash spending terms (in current US dollars).

This places the UK’s ambition to be America’s ‘leading European ally’ in question. With the European Union’s (EU) Security Action For Europe (SAFE) instrument giving the European Commission shaping power over allied defence industrial collaboration, this could, in the worst case, leave British firms out in the cold, and the UK without the power to shape capability and force structures for the defence of the continent.

Although the DIP is a major and immediate uplift, sending a clear demand signal throughout the British defence sector, it falls way short of what is needed to deliver the NATO target. Additionally, the fact remains that it is a plan issued by an administration that will not exist by 20th July, after a political crisis that saw two defence ministers – both highly respected in the sector – quit.

In other words, the story of the SDR, the DIP, and the NATO targets is far from concluded.

Paul Mason is an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy; and a journalist, author, and political researcher.

This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) defence policy is undergoing a marked transformation. The publication of the Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) in 2025 signals not simply a refresh of procurement priorities, but a recalibration of how the state views the relationship between national security, industrial capability, and market competition. At its core lies a renewed emphasis on sovereignty; on ensuring that critical defence capabilities can be developed, sustained, and scaled within a British-aligned industrial base.

This shift reflects a compelling strategic logic. Geopolitical instability, supply chain fragility, and the experience of recent conflicts have reinforced the importance of resilience and assured access to capability. The longstanding assumption that globalised supply chains can reliably deliver defence outputs at pace and scale has been tested and, in some cases, found wanting. Against this background, His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s ambition to strengthen the domestic industrial base is both understandable – and, in many respects, necessary.

At the same time, this is a policy direction that must be understood in context. The UK’s traditional procurement model was built not only on competition and value for money, but also (before Brexit) on participation in a broader European market characterised by cross-border supply chains and procurement integration. While the post-Brexit framework preserves competition as a core principle, it also affords Britain greater flexibility to prioritise domestic capability and resilience, albeit within the constraints of its international commitments.

The current framework, therefore, does not abandon competition, but increasingly qualifies its application. The result is a growing tension between two models: one anchored in competition and market discipline; the other in coordination, resilience, and strategic control.

From market mechanism to strategic instrument

The DIS makes clear that defence procurement is no longer viewed as a purely transactional market exercise. Instead, it is increasingly positioned (at least at a policy level) as a tool for shaping the industrial base in support of national security and economic growth.

HM Government envisages that investment decisions, partnership models, and supply chain structures will, over time, be used to deliver broader outcomes, including domestic capacity, technological leadership, and regional economic development. While some reforms are already underway, much of this agenda remains prospective, with implementation still evolving.

This marks a significant conceptual shift. If procurement is both a market function and an instrument of statecraft, tensions are inevitable. The critical question becomes not whether competition remains relevant (in legal terms, it clearly does), but how it is balanced in practice against wider policy objectives.

The logic of sovereignty: Prioritising resilience

‘Sovereignty’ in this context does not necessarily mean complete domestic ownership. Rather, it implies the ability to rely on certain capabilities in times of crisis, to expand production rapidly, and to insulate critical supply chains from external disruption. In practice, this is likely to involve a preference for suppliers that are either UK-based or drawn from closely aligned jurisdictions, reflecting both practical and political considerations – even if this hierarchy is not always formally codified.

Achieving these outcomes may require sustained investment, redundancy in capacity, and closer coordination between government and industry. These characteristics do not always align with competitive market dynamics, which tend to reward efficiency and lean operations. As such, the pursuit of sovereignty places pressure on the traditional assumptions of market-based governance, even if it does not displace them entirely.

The emergence of a coordinated model

There are increasing indications that HM Government intends to foster longer-term partnerships with key suppliers, providing greater certainty to support investment in capacity and innovation. These arrangements would mark a shift away from purely transactional procurement cycles towards more enduring relationships.

Alongside this, there are signs that certain capabilities are being identified as strategically critical. Where this occurs, firms may become central to their delivery. While this does not formally displace competition, it can, in practice, lead to a degree of concentration, with fewer suppliers playing a more significant and sustained role.

Consolidation reinforces this dynamic. Mergers and collaborations may be encouraged where they enhance scale, capacity, or interoperability. From a policy perspective, this may be seen as supporting resilience and capability. From a competition perspective, however, it may narrow the field of active competitors. The tension between these perspectives is likely to become more pronounced as the strategy develops.

Regulatory tension and the limits of the current framework

Competition law in Britain has not fundamentally changed, and it continues to apply in full to the defence sector. Firms cannot assume that collaboration encouraged by policy will be insulated from enforcement risk. Indeed, the experience of sector-specific relaxations during the Covid-19 pandemic illustrates that where flexibility is required, it is typically provided explicitly and temporarily.

This suggests that, if anything, constraint may operate in the opposite direction: competition law may limit the extent to which HM Government’s coordination objectives can be realised, absent further policy or legal intervention.

There is an additional external dimension. The UK’s international commitments, including under its trade arrangements with the European Union, continue to impose disciplines around competition and non-discrimination. While there is scope within those frameworks to pursue legitimate security objectives, an overt shift towards protectionist or exclusionary practices could give rise to challenge, particularly where it affects access for non-British suppliers.

The result is a more complex environment in which policy ambition and legal constraint must be reconciled. Without a clear articulation of how that balance is to be struck, businesses may face uncertainty in structuring transactions, partnerships, and collaborations.

Rethinking what ‘competition’ means in defence

Traditional metrics such as price, number of suppliers, and ease of entry remain relevant, but they are unlikely to be determinative in all cases. In a sector where continuity of supply and the ability to scale at pace are critical, additional performance measures are increasingly important.

This does not require abandoning competition as a principle. Rather, it suggests that competition may operate differently. In some cases, it may occur at the point of initial contract award, rather than persist continuously throughout the life of a programme. In others, it may coexist with elements of coordination and long-term alignment.

It is also necessary to distinguish more clearly between different segments of the defence sector. Highly sensitive or strategically critical capabilities may warrant greater coordination, while less critical areas may remain more open to conventional competition. The challenge lies in defining those boundaries in a way that is consistent, transparent, and legally robust.

A hybrid future for defence markets

The UK’s pursuit of defence sovereignty does not signal the end of competitive markets. However, it does point towards a more ‘hybrid’ model, in which competition coexists with a greater degree of strategic direction.

Crucially, this evolution is taking place within an unchanged legal framework. Competition law continues to apply, and there has been no general relaxation of the underlying rules. As a result, any shift towards coordination must operate within those constraints, unless and until they are expressly modified.

In practice, this is likely to result in a system in which competition continues to drive efficiency and innovation in parts of the market, while HM Government plays a more active role in shaping outcomes in areas of strategic importance.

Coherence as the central challenge

The central challenge for policymakers is therefore one of coherence. Britain’s defence industrial policy is evolving in response to genuine strategic pressures. Still, the legal and regulatory frameworks through which it is delivered have not shifted to the same extent.

Closing that gap will require clarity. Businesses need a predictable environment in which to invest and collaborate. Regulators need a clear basis for incorporating resilience and security considerations into their analysis. Policymakers must decide whether existing tools are sufficient or whether more explicit adjustments are required.

Competitive markets can survive the UK’s pursuit of defence sovereignty. However, they will do so in a modified form; shaped by strategic priorities, constrained by legal frameworks, and increasingly defined at the intersection of industrial policy and competition principles.

The task ahead is to ensure that this evolution is coherent. Without that, the risk is not the loss of competition, but the emergence of uncertainty at precisely the point where clarity is most needed.

Della Heptinstall is Defence Sector Lead at Walker Morris LLP and an Army Reservist. She advises businesses operating across the defence and security sector on strategic, regulatory, and commercial matters, with a particular focus on industrial capability, supply chain resilience, and national security.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

Andy Burnham voted for the Iraq War, and against an inquiry into its legality. 20 years later, he publicly regretted the ‘rage rhetoric and haste’ in which the operation was conceived, and the absence of a post-war plan. ‘If I had my time again’, he said in 2024, ‘I wouldn’t have voted for it’.

Like the party he will now lead, Burnham has been on a journey over national security, resilience, and defence. That journey has been shaped by the fragmenting global order. If he becomes Prime Minister, it will now be shaped by the man himself. And, given the deteriorating security environment, the journey cannot be over.

Burnham, like Sir Keir Starmer, former Prime Minister, is an instinctive Atlanticist – an instinct embedded into Labour’s DNA since Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary in the aftermath of the Second World War. But, like his predecessor, he faces a global economy shattered into competing blocs, amid intensifying geopolitical competition and a rolling, multifront crisis. He faces, above all, the challenge of creating a new European security architecture as the Atlanticist one crumbles.

As Prime Minister, Burnham would face the same basic dilemmas: how to handle a transactional Trump administration that is verbally hostile to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and pursues American national interests relentlessly; how to maintain the United Kingdom’s (UK) role as ‘leading NATO ally’ in Europe as Germany and Poland rearm; how to defeat Russian aggression against Ukraine – and increasingly, via the sub-threshold route, against Britain – and above all, how to win popular support for the trade-offs and fiscal burdens needed if the UK is to meet the 2035 NATO spending targets.

To predict how a Burnham administration might respond, we need to understand the man, his municipal socialist principles, the domestic project he will pursue, and the factional balance inside the Parliamentary Labour Party, which will have more clout than it did under Starmer.

Like me, Burnham is a ‘not particularly religious’ Catholic. We grew up in the same northern English coal and cotton town – Leigh – and went to the same kind of denominational secondary school. So, when Burnham says ‘Catholic social teaching underpins my politics’, I have a good idea of what that means: a view of global affairs framed by a universalist vision of human dignity and equality. It demands that wars be just both in their cause and execution, and sees poverty, insecurity, and injustice as the causes of global instability.

Politically, he is likely to maintain the NATO spending pledges. To achieve a path towards them while maintaining fiscal credibility, he will need to attack the problem Starmer failed to solve, losing John Healey as Defence Secretary in the process: how to match the capabilities to the threats outlined in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR)? Given he is advised by economists who support controlled, hypothecated borrowing and a more directive state, and with service chiefs adamant that the current Defence Investment Plan (DIP) cannot be delivered on the money allocated, I would expect a resolution in the upward direction.

One defence issue that has split the Labour Party is the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which service veterans have complained opens them to retrospective legal action, while civilian victims of the violence complain does not go far enough. Al Carns, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, who has been supportive of Burnham, made opposition to the Bill as it stands an issue in his resignation speech. However, minor rather than substantial changes to the legislation should be expected.

The bigger departure will likely come in the balance between hard defence efforts and the resilience agenda – which the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has begun to push forward via the ‘National Conversation on Defence’ and the Defence Readiness Bill, slated for 2027.

One of Burnham’s finest political moments, and indeed Manchester’s, was the city’s response to the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, whose perpetrator killed 22 people and injured one thousand others. Burnham not only led the city with dignity through that trauma; in response to an inquiry into emergency service failings on the night, he commissioned a ten-year city resilience strategy. This promised to deliver ‘the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience’.

That put Burnham ahead of the government during the Covid-19 pandemic and, as a result, the city has been recognised as a global leader in resilience. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Burnham founded the UNBROKEN Cities Network, together with the mayors of Lviv and Liverpool, to learn lessons from the conflict in real time.

For Burnham, therefore, resilience is not a euphemism for flood defences and police communications systems: it is about creating the kind of society and democracy that people will defend. His supporters, including former Shadow Defence Secretary Clive Lewis, have cited Finland as a role model.

Burnham has pledged to travel as little as possible and to focus on pressing domestic challenges. Yet, like Starmer, should he become Prime Minister, he will be dragged out of that comfort zone onto a world stage where engagement and face-to-face personal relationships matter intensely.

For the defence community, the optimum outcomes are as follows: Burnham restores the 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 target; he maintains all security related Bills in the King’s Speech, and manages to assuage veteran concerns about the Troubles Bill; he fast-tracks the Defence Readiness Bill, which His Majesty’s (HM) Government had slated only for 2027-2028, creating new powers to control public utilities in a crisis; he brings cognitive and hybrid resilience into the urgent/important box; and gets the whole of government enthused about the National Conversation, which begins today with the start of Armed Forces Week, but needs a morale boost following Healey’s departure.

The sub-optimal outcome would be if each of these challenges becomes a point of contest in a four-way battle between the Labour Party’s factions: the left, the soft left, the Blairite right, and the traditional right. The Members of Parliament (MPs) will have greater agency because, if Burnham becomes Prime Minister via acclaim rather than a membership vote, their continuous backing will matter.

Probably the most positive impact of Burnham’s accession, should it occur, is his declared preference for ten-year settlements – both for defence and welfare spending. A ten-year settlement for defence was something Healey asked for but did not get.

With the NATO 2035 target date to aim for, and the SDR goals as the pacing challenge, now is the perfect time to give the British Armed Forces, their families, and the defence companies that supply them something that Starmer’s retreat from the DIP has left absent: certainty.

Paul Mason is an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy; and a journalist, author, and political researcher.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

As the United States (US) considers reallocating naval assets to the Indo-Pacific, hemispheric defence, and the Middle East, the Euro-Atlantic faces a harsh reality. The Wider North – including the Arctic, Nordic, and Baltic areas – is increasingly exposed to Russian aggression. For the past two decades, European navies have shrunk, assuming that Euro-Atlantic maritime spaces would remain uncontested or perpetually underwritten by American power.

That assumption faces dislocation. The seas and oceans around Europe are contested once more: not only does Russia attempt to operate beneath the threshold of war, but its Northern Fleet – operating from bases on the Kola Peninsula – has modernised and threatens the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) northern flank. Unless they wish to surrender control over this vital region to Russian encroachment, the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany – as European NATO’s two biggest investors in defence – should work together to reassert control.

The nature of the threat

By now, the Kremlin’s adversarial tactics are well known. The Russians seek to exploit the seams between peace and war to circumvent international law, distract and disorient European countries, and fracture NATO so that they might pursue their kleptocracy’s interests more effectively. At sea, since 2022, this has taken the form of surveying critical undersea pipelines to threaten sabotage and deploying uninsured shadow fleets to skirt sanctions. Given the drawdown in European naval forces since 2010, Russia knows European navies, including the Royal Navy, have limited surveillance capacity.

Meanwhile, the Russian Northern Fleet has come a long way since its post-Soviet slump. It is smaller, but more modern and far more active. Crucially, in relative terms, the balance of naval power in the High North has not been as bad from a NATO perspective since the 1970s due to the decline in peer combat-capable European NATO warships. Although not all would be able to operate simultaneously, the Northern Fleet has 26 submarines, including a number of the new Yasen class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and 11 major surface combatants. It also has a potent geographic advantage, given the Russian naval bases and air stations in the Kola Peninsula, as well as a number of newer and upgraded facilities in the Arctic.

Together, depending on loadouts, the total offensive missile capacity of the Russian Northern Fleet comes to over 800 missiles – a formidable threat. Several more new submarines and surface combatants are planned with the Kremlin planning on spending ₽8.4 trillion (£84 billion) on naval construction over the next decade. This comes at a time when the Royal Navy, and other Northern European navies, experience an all-time low in their number of frigates.

Towards a British and German response

This challenge to NATO sea control in the North Atlantic requires a forceful British and German response. Not only do both nations, in their respective ways, possess highly globalised economies that depend heavily on the sea, but they rely increasingly on the wider maritime domain: undersea data cables, energy pipelines, and offshore wind farms are highly vulnerable to Russian sabotage or outright attack.

To counter this, a purely national approach would be inefficient. Consequently, the two largest defence investors in European NATO should transform their bilateral relationship from a series of high-level diplomatic agreements into a deeply institutionalised partnership for European maritime dominance. Coordinating this with France – a significant naval power, albeit one focused on the mid-Atlantic and Mediterranean – would amplify its effectiveness.

True, intensified British-German cooperation requires navigating distinct, and often clashing, strategic cultures. Historically, the UK has seen its navy as a genuinely national enterprise, from nuclear deterrence to global power projection. Conversely, German defence policy has long been defined by a terrestrial focus, a deep reluctance to deploy naval power, and binding the Bundeswehr’s capabilities to multinational frameworks. However, the geopolitical changes of the past few years have forced a strategic change in both London and Berlin.

Yet, with Russia’s resurgence, British strategists have realised that their home areas – the North Atlantic, the Baltic and Mediterranean seas, and even the British Isles themselves – are at risk, mandating a more focused geostrategic approach, which dovetails with German interests. Simultaneously, German planners have acknowledged that their country must step up and embrace a more active posture. The decision to forward deploy a German combat brigade to Lithuania represents a significant political leap, intended to deter Russia from further aggression. While the UK is traditionally faster to act, Germany’s pivot towards proactive deterrence reinforces the industrial and political gravity necessary to anchor NATO’s northern flank.

The diplomatic scaffolding for the coordination of geostrategic postures is now in place. The Trinity House Agreement of October 2024 sparked tangible operational ties, such as joint maritime surveillance out of Royal Air Force (RAF) Lossiemouth, while the subsequent July 2025 Kensington Treaty provided a broader, legally binding framework. At the same time, Britain, the leading naval power in Europe, has put in place the foundations for a new maritime posture in the North Atlantic – Atlantic Bastion, Shield and Strike, underpinned by the concept of a New Hybrid Navy; i.e., a navy integrating autonomous surface/subsurface combatants with crewed vessels – asymmetrically calibrated to reduce the threat from Russia’s potent and growing Northern Fleet.

The immediate test is whether these two powers can move beyond ambitious rhetoric and actually build a larger and more coordinated naval fleet to constrain Russian ambitions in the Wider North. The time has come for Britain and Germany to combine their naval potential, alongside their NATO allies in Northern Europe. Together, they would pose more than a match for Russia’s Northern Fleet. Their objective should be simple: re-establishing European maritime supremacy over the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, as well as the Baltic region, so that Russia cannot threaten British, German, and European interests.

Rebuilding European naval supremacy

Constraining the Russian Northern Fleet necessitates a coordinated naval buildup, from the surface to the sub-surface domain, and with capabilities suitable across the spectrum of sub-threshold conflict to open warfare. The Nord Stream sabotage proved that critical civilian infrastructure is a primary target in sub-threshold warfare. Both the British and German service-led economies rely utterly on the dense webs of cables and pipelines crossing the North Atlantic and North Sea areas, alongside the offshore wind infrastructure driving their energy transitions. The severe capacity limits of current European NATO fleets leave them dangerously exposed: the Royal Navy is down to a handful of operational frigates, while the Deutsch Marine has become a naval minnow since the end of the Cold War.

In any case, conventional, crewed vessels cannot comprehensively protect this vast, static network, and new technologies mean that crewed systems should be augmented – indeed, sometimes even replaced – by robotic and autonomous systems. As such, it makes sense for Germany to join British initiatives such as Project CETUS. The immediate hurdle is harmonising software architectures to ensure data flows seamlessly between national maritime operations centres. Bypassing sluggish five-year planning cycles, both navies should pool capital for autonomous mine countermeasures and Uncrewed Underwater Vehicles (UUVs).

However, the two nations also need to focus on high-end warfighting capabilities. As Russia’s Northern Fleet grows, it will become more capable of probing around the Svalbard archipelago and the Norwegian Sea. Undoubtedly, it will attempt to project out of its own bastions, which consist of Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) networks in the Barents Sea to protect its bases on the Kola peninsula and the Russia nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) flotilla, leading to competition to exert control across the entire northern region.

This will require complex Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) and a sustained surface presence, precisely what the Royal Navy’s own bastions – Atlantic, Shield, and Strike – and New Hybrid Navy are designed to counter. As its own navy grows in strength, Germany should be more closely integrated with this effort alongside the Norwegians.

As Britain and Germany focus high-end assets on the North Atlantic, Northern European allies can help fill the deficit in the marginal seas. The First Sea Lord has already proposed the creation of a ‘Northern Navies initiative’. Regional Nordic navies – especially Sweden, Denmark, and Finland – are purpose-built for the complex littoral environments of the Baltic. Passing littoral burdens to these allies frees the limited number of high-endurance surface combatants, such as the British and Norwegian Type 26 class and German F126 class frigates, to focus their advanced sensor suites on wide-area ASW and air defence in the deep waters of the North Atlantic. London and Berlin should work together to coordinate this effort.

A similar division of labour is also vital between Britain and Germany, and Poland and the Baltic states. With the Suwałki Gap remaining a fragile overland corridor, reinforcing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania depends almost entirely on uncontested maritime communication lines to ports such as Klaipėda, Riga, and Tallinn. The Deutsche Marine offers regional command in the Baltic Sea from Rostock, but it cannot secure these supply lines while simultaneously meeting growing obligations in the North Atlantic; the logistical requirements fundamentally overstretch its current capacity. British intelligence, maritime strike, and logistical support act as an indispensable force multiplier for German command structures here. Deep interoperability means ensuring British munitions can be cross-loaded onto German vessels and pushing integrated intelligence feeds down to the lowest tactical level.

Finally, and critically, any credible strategy for dominance over the North Atlantic must account for the ultimate guarantor of European security, especially in an era where the US may be drawn into an Indo-Pacific contingency: the UK’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD). Ultimately, the Royal Navy’s Vanguard class – and eventually the Dreadnought class – SSBNs hold up the European pillar of NATO’s security umbrella. Protecting these strategic assets requires a potent conventional shielding force as they transit from Faslane through contested waters to their patrol areas. With US Navy assets increasingly tied down in the Pacific to counter the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Britain and Germany, alongside other Northern European allies, must step up to undergird their ultimate insurance guarantee.

A joint British, German, and Baltic conventional naval screen must be built to secure these patrol areas. German P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft and British Astute class SSNs ought to operate as a unified sub-hunting network. Establishing a formal European caucus within NATO to synchronise this conventional posture with broader nuclear messaging is a vital further step to reinforce deterrence against Russia.

Conclusion

The post-Cold War era of uncontested Euro-Atlantic sea control is over. Without a focus on execution, the current British-German defence arrangements will join a crowded list of well-intentioned but operationally hollow initiatives. If London and Berlin fail to forge a cohesive naval posture, NATO’s maritime flanks, especially to the north, will become more and more vulnerable to an adversary highly skilled at exploiting the ‘grey zone’ between peace and war, and pushing its luck when it senses weakness.

It falls to European NATO’s two largest defence spenders to reduce Russia’s ability to assert dominance; failure to do so would merely encourage the Kremlin’s aggressiveness. It is therefore time for the UK and Germany to coordinate and regenerate their naval forces, align their northern European allies into a northern powerbloc in support of NATO, and reassert European naval control over the North Atlantic.

James Rogers is Co-President (Research) of the Council on Geostrategy.

This article is the result of a half-day conference held on 21st April 2026 in partnership with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) UK and Ireland. This was the second in a series of events in 2026 that the Council on Geostrategy is organising with KAS to encourage closer defence cooperation between Britain and Germany.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

Since 2015, His Majesty’s (HM) Government has released several national security and defence strategies, most recently the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and the 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR). Both state that the United Kingdom (UK) must pursue its national security and defence in service of the national interest. Yet, neither document identifies what those specific interests actually are. The NSS, for example, mentions the ‘national interest’ 11 times, but asserts only that these interests will be defined as ‘the long-term security and social and economic wellbeing of the British people’ – a laudable goal, but one that lacks the specificity required for strategic planning.

Meanwhile, the SDR identifies three key roles for British defence policy: firstly, defending the British homeland, the Overseas Territories, and the Crown Dependencies from attack; secondly, deterring and defending in the Euro-Atlantic; and, finally, shaping the global environment. While these are vital operational tasks, they describe how Britain will act, rather than what fundamental interests it is acting to protect.

Ultimately, of course, HM Government’s fundamental duty is to maximise the security, prosperity, and wellbeing of the British people, as the NSS rightly notes. Translating this ambition into practice, however, requires the development of a series of nested national interests. These must look inward before they look outward. Strategic objectives cannot be achieved overseas if the domestic powerbase – comprising civic identity, institutional structures, and the economy – is hollowed out at home. Therefore, Britain’s fundamental interests must be understood as an interconnected chain – building from the human and economic foundations of the country up to the ultimate guarantees of sovereign power.

The following five national interests have been selected because they form an integrated whole, based on the geographic predilection of the British Isles, the scale of the national powerbase, and the prevailing character of the contemporary international order.

Five national interests

1. National cohesion and civic unity

A fractured society is an acute national security vulnerability. In an era of ideological conflict and political warfare, adversaries do not just target military infrastructure; they exploit domestic social, cultural, and political fault lines to paralyse a state’s decision-making apparatus. While pluralism of thought is a democratic norm, a fundamental lack of national cohesion erodes the shared civic identity required to withstand protracted crises. If a population believes it shares no common destiny, its collective will to resist foreign coercion may decline. Cultivating national self-confidence and civic unity is therefore a strategic necessity; without it, the British public remains highly susceptible to cognitive manipulation and subversion by hostile foreign states.

2. A dynamic and resilient national powerbase

Building upon this internal solidarity, the UK must cultivate a dynamic and resilient national powerbase. In the 21st century, relying on strategic competitors for energy supplies, key commodities, advanced manufacturing capabilities, and critical infrastructure is a severe vulnerability. Britain must also refuse to be dependent on hostile powers for its technological and research base. A core national interest is securing domestic or tightly allied control over next-generation technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), fusion power, quantum computing, and advanced maritime and aerospace manufacturing. Additionally, the UK must protect and promote the City of London’s position as a global command centre while also building capacity to engage in economic statecraft, including economic sanctions, capital controls, and access to British financial markets as coercive weapons to punish adversaries and to reward compliance.

3. A zone of denial

As an archipelagic nation dependent on open seas, undersea infrastructure, and orbital spaces for the transit of food, energy, manufactured goods, and information, the UK must do everything in its power to secure the communication lines that supply its national powerbase. Without the continental scale of a superpower, Britain lacks the mass required for absolute global sea or space control, so British strategy must focus on a strategy of denial. Geographically, this requires securing not just immediate Euro-Atlantic approaches – such as the Northern Gap and the Strait of Gibraltar – but also the critical maritime arteries and strategic chokepoints connecting the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, including the Persian Gulf, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and the Strait of Malacca. It must also focus on space to protect British orbital assets and deny space-based advantages to adversaries. Ultimately, this global reach is essential to counter Russian revisionism, disrupt a consolidating Chinese-Russian axis in Eurasia, and help protect Britain’s most vital allies and partners – including those in Europe, but also the United States (US), Australia, Canada, and Japan.

4. Strategic indispensability to key alliances

Alliances are not friendships or communities of values. Rather, they hold three functions: firstly, to deter adversaries from attacking countries or regions that the UK deems essential to its own wellbeing; secondly, to dissuade allies from taking actions that are detrimental to British interests; and thirdly, to act as force multipliers for the UK’s own powerbase. This is why the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), above all else, is central to the defence of the British Isles. Part of Ernest Bevin’s rationale for forging NATO was to keep the Soviets out of Western Europe, smother geopolitical competition in Western Europe, and draw in US power so as to reduce the cost of the endeavour to the British people. Likewise, AUKUS is also increasingly central to Britain’s defence: it deters the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia; it spreads the cost of developing expensive next-generation nuclear and conventional technologies; and it amplifies British power by combining forces with Australia and the US.

5. Sovereign control of the nuclear escalatory ladder

While alliances multiply British power, they cannot replace the ultimate link in the chain: sovereign control over nuclear escalation. With the advent of nuclear weapons in 1945, a country had to possess nuclear capability to be taken seriously as a great power. Without it, a state lacks the ultimate sovereign guarantor of its continued freedom. That is why HM Government has maintained a Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) with a guaranteed second strike delivery system since 1969. However, possession of such awesome destructive power is not enough: in an era where several adversaries are nuclear-armed, the UK needs sovereign control over its escalatory response. It is no longer enough to possess a single strategic weapons system; if Britain is to do more to underwrite NATO, it needs to be able to meet potential nuclear-armed rivals symmetrically, and provide a flexible response – an imperative that now demands the acquisition of sub-strategic nuclear weapons.

Conclusion

As the UK starts to look towards a new cycle of strategic assessment, it should begin to think harder about its fundamental interests. Over the past few decades, British strategic reviews have too often been budget-led or threat-led. This has resulted in reactive policies that primarily respond to the crises of the day, rather than shaping the world surrounding the UK to the advantage of the nation. By structuring future defence and security strategies through fundamental national interests, policymakers can ensure that resources are allocated proactively, capabilities are developed purposefully, and that Britain remains secure and prosperous in an increasingly confrontational world.

What do you think? What is Britain’s most fundamental national interest? Vote in our poll!

James Rogers is Co-President (Research) of the Council on Geostrategy.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?

European nations are rearming at a pace not seen since the Cold War. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered a surge in defence spending, new procurement programmes, and renewed attention to deterrence. Yet, despite this mobilisation, European military power remains fragmented – and, in some respects, risks becoming even more so.

The central problem is not technical. European countries do not lack institutions, frameworks, or expertise. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) provides established interoperability standards and integrated planning, while the European Union (EU) has begun to mobilise significant financial instruments for defence. Rather, fragmentation persists because it reflects deeper political and strategic divisions among European states. These divisions limit the scope for meaningful capability specialisation – the shortest pathway to a more efficient and credible European defence posture.

This presents both a constraint and an opportunity for the United Kingdom (UK). As a leading military power outside the EU, but central to European security, Britain is a necessary partner in shaping a more flexible model of defence integration adapted to European realities.

Fragmentation as a political choice

European defence fragmentation is often described as the result of inefficient procurement or insufficient coordination. While these factors matter, they are symptoms rather than causes. At its core, fragmentation reflects the persistence of national sovereignty in defence policy. Simply put, European states do not fully agree on the purpose, scope, or future direction of defence integration.

Countries on NATO’s eastern flank – particularly Poland and the Baltic states – prioritise immediate readiness against Russian aggression and remain strongly committed to the alliance. For them, rapid capability acquisition and American security guarantees are paramount. By contrast, France continues to frame defence integration in terms of European strategic autonomy, focusing on strengthening continental capacity to act independently of the United States (US) when necessary.

Germany occupies a middle position, seeking to reconcile NATO commitments with industrial policy objectives and ambitions for technological sovereignty. Southern European states, meanwhile, often approach defence cooperation through the lens of burden sharing and industrial participation, shaped as much by domestic economic considerations as by strategic priorities.

Moreover, neutral or militarily non-aligned EU member states, including Austria and the Republic of Ireland, remain cautious regarding deeper defence integration. While this reflects constitutional constraints and political sensitivities surrounding military alignment, it also entails their factual continued reliance on the security provision of more actively engaged European partners, instead of a model of armed neutrality – like that of Switzerland – that would indirectly contribute to the continent’s collective defence.

These divergent perspectives extend beyond strategy into defence industrial policy. Governments continue to view defence procurement as a tool of economic policy, technological development, and employment protection. Control over critical supply chains and industrial capacity is increasingly associated with strategic resilience. As a result, states remain reluctant to accept cross-border consolidation when it threatens national industrial capabilities or political influence.

This helps to explain why European defence continues to be characterised by duplication – encompassing multiple tank programmes, competing combat aircraft projects, and fragmented naval procurement. These are not so much industrial inefficiencies as they are political choices.

Britain’s role in a divided Europe

Brexit has complicated the defence landscape, but it has not diminished the UK’s strategic importance. Britain remains one of Europe’s most capable military powers: a nuclear state, a leading defence industrial actor, and a central player within NATO. Any model of European defence that excludes the UK is therefore structurally incomplete.

The post-Brexit relationship between Britain and the EU has begun to stabilise, with the 2025 establishment of a Security and Defence Partnership providing a framework for dialogue and cooperation in areas such as cyber security, maritime operations, and defence research. However, this arrangement remains limited, and the UK continues to stand outside key EU defence industrial instruments.

In practice, Britain has adapted by deepening bilateral and minilateral defence cooperation. The Lancaster House Treaties and the Northwood Declaration with France continue to underpin close operational collaboration between Europe’s two nuclear powers. More recently, the Kensington Treaty with Germany has signalled renewed efforts to strengthen British-German defence ties across operational and industrial domains. At the same time, the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), linking ten Northern European countries, has emerged as a flexible framework for regional security cooperation and rapid response. Most recently, on 27th May, the British-Polish Northolt Treaty on a Security and Defence Partnership was signed.

The Northolt Treaty is particularly significant in this regard. Beyond reaffirming commitments to defence cooperation and strategic consultation, it highlights the growing importance of bilateral frameworks in addressing the political constraints on broader European defence integration. Crucially, the treaty is explicitly anchored in NATO obligations, reinforcing the Alliance as the primary framework for European security rather than generating alternative institutional pathways. Bringing together two countries with convergent threat perceptions and a strongly Atlanticist outlook, it reflects a wider shift towards cooperation among like-minded allies within NATO. Such agreements can therefore complement the Alliance by enabling more targeted forms of capability development and coordination, without requiring full strategic convergence across Europe.

These developments point towards a broader shift in European defence cooperation. Rather than converging towards a single institutional model, Europe is evolving into a more flexible ecosystem of overlapping arrangements: NATO, EU mechanisms, bilateral agreements, and minilateral coalitions. It aligns with the UK’s longstanding preference for flexible, coalition-based approaches to security cooperation and reinforces its role as a central connector within Europe’s evolving security architecture. However, Britain’s ability to sustain this role depends on the rapid strengthening of its own military capabilities after a prolonged period of underinvestment and force reductions.

Minilateralism and the future of specialisation

Full strategic convergence among European states remains unlikely in the near term. Divergent threat perceptions, political priorities, and industrial interests will continue to constrain large-scale integration. In this context, the most realistic pathway towards greater efficiency lies in selective capability specialisation within smaller, like-minded groups of states.

Minilateral frameworks, such as the JEF and emerging groupings on NATO’s eastern flank, are particularly well suited to this approach. They bring together countries with shared threat perceptions, stronger political trust, and greater willingness to coordinate force development. Unlike broader European frameworks, they can move more quickly and avoid many of the political disputes associated with EU-level initiatives.

Specialisation is most feasible in high-cost, high-complexity capability areas. Strategic airlift; missile defence; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); logistics; and cyber capabilities are natural candidates. These sectors require sustained investment and offer clear benefits from pooling resources and reducing duplication.

However, even in these areas, progress will depend on political incentives rather than institutional designs. Governments will not accept specialisation if it is perceived to undermine sovereignty or damage domestic industries. Instead, cooperation must be framed as enhancing national capabilities through burden sharing.

Standardisation is equally important. European countries’ proliferation of military platforms reduces interoperability and increases costs. Incremental convergence around existing systems, such as on the F-35 Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft or shared air defence solutions, offers a more realistic path forward than ambitious but contested new programmes. Convergence should also be pursued in emerging areas such as drone warfare, where political and bureaucratic barriers to international cooperation are less entrenched than in legacy systems.

Why NATO remains central

Despite the growing role of EU initiatives, NATO remains the only politically acceptable framework for large-scale capability coordination across Europe. It accommodates both EU and non-EU members, preserves the American strategic anchor, and provides established structures for planning and interoperability.

By contrast, EU defence integration remains politically contested. Instruments such as joint financing programmes represent an important step forward in industrial coordination, but they also highlight underlying tensions over governance, access, and strategic orientation. For countries such as the UK, participation in these mechanisms remains constrained.

In this context, a NATO-centric model of defence integration, supplemented by EU financial tools and regional initiatives, appears more politically viable than a fully integrated European defence system. The challenge is not the absence of institutional frameworks, but the lack of sufficiently strong incentives to encourage states to use them more effectively.

What Britain could do

If fragmentation is political, then overcoming it requires political leadership. The UK is well placed to provide it. Firstly, it should prioritise minilateral defence cooperation as the primary vehicle for capability integration. Strengthening the JEF and expanding partnerships on NATO’s eastern flank, as well as deepening cooperation with France and Germany, would allow Britain to shape patterns of specialisation among like-minded states.

Secondly, the UK should focus on leading in specific capability areas. It already possesses comparative advantages in intelligence, cyber operations, maritime power, air power, and advanced defence technologies. Concentrating investment in these sectors would enable Britain to act as a hub within broader European capability networks.

Thirdly, the UK should seek pragmatic engagement with EU defence initiatives. While full participation in EU mechanisms may not be feasible, selective cooperation – particularly in areas such as research, innovation, and supply chain resilience – could benefit both sides.

Finally, Britain should reinforce NATO as the central framework for European defence. This means not only maintaining strong commitments to the alliance, but also using NATO structures to promote standardisation, interoperability, and coordinated capability development.

Conclusion

European defence fragmentation is not the result of a lack of institutions or technical solutions. It reflects enduring political divisions over sovereignty, strategy, and industrial policy. These divisions will not disappear in the near term.

However, fragmentation is not inevitable. Through selective capability specialisation, minilateral cooperation, and incremental standardisation, Europe can build a more coherent and effective defence posture. This process should not be aimed so much at building a unified European army as reducing the costliest forms of duplication and strengthening collective deterrence.

In a period of geopolitical uncertainty amid renewed Russian aggression and American strategic repositioning, European countries – although they can never fully specialise – should work together to move the dial further towards specialisation to improve returns on investment. The balance struck by nations closer to the immediate threat should be emulated more widely across NATO.

Dr Przemyslaw Biskup, Senior Lecturer at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics and Senior Research Fellow in the European Union Programme, Polish Institute of Foreign Affairs (PISM).

This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?