Defence spending is surging. Investment opportunities abound, as conflict and geopolitics have catalysed a surge of interest in the sector. Private equity funds, sovereign investors, and venture capital are increasingly drawn to defence and dual-use opportunities, attracted by long-term demand signals, government backing, and geopolitical urgency. However, beneath this momentum lies a persistent disconnect: investor assumptions about defence businesses often diverge sharply from how procurement and delivery function in practice.

The gap between procurement reality and investment expectation is a primary driver of underperformance. Successfully navigating the complex terrain is becoming an essential skill for an increasing number of funds making their initial defence investments.

We will always need defence, right?

Today’s geopolitics makes defence look like a uniquely attractive investment. It shows demand stability (underpinned by expanding government budgets), multi-year programme announcements, and strengthening political and social consensus around rearmament. This narrative of predictable, long-duration revenue streams is bringing interest from many investors. However, the reality of military procurement is far less certain.

Defence demand is not simply a function of budget allocation; it is mediated through complex requirement-setting processes, shifting strategic priorities, and iterative programme design. Requirements evolve, often materially, over the life cycle of a programme. What begins as a clearly defined capability can become an over-specified, technologically ambitious system that is difficult to deliver at scale. History offers many notable examples in this respect, from the TSR2 supersonic low-level strike aircraft of the 1960s to the recent Ajax armoured fighting vehicle.

This is a novel risk for investors. Headline demand does not translate cleanly into executable contracts.

Have you got it in black?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) defence is not unique in its persistent pursuit of ‘exquisite’ requirements, with little attention paid to industrial feasibility. Programmes are frequently designed to deliver cutting-edge capability, with narrow specifications and high-performance thresholds. While arguably militarily desirable, this approach often overlooks the realities of manufacturing capacity and supply chain resilience.

Thus, for many companies positioned to benefit from increased defence spending, the habit of adding cost to programmes to build new manufacturing may cause them to struggle to convert the opportunity properly. Investors may assume that increased engineering complexity means larger margins. However, in defence, additional requirements frequently do not come with additional funds. The result is either eroded margins or fewer final systems delivered.

Those close to the money benefit from being close to the design and development process. In practical terms, the more advanced the requirement, the less predictable the commercial outcome.

Knowing how and knowing why

All this being said, cross-industry synergies are being found, particularly in firms with expertise in mass manufacturing. Companies grappling properly with the tension between requirements and technology are designing to match manufacturing capacity, rather than building new machinery to match designs. They are resisting the pressure to augment every component, funding extensive in-house Research and Development (R&D), and offering solutions prior to any official requirement set. This means that those who understand several industries will have novel opportunities.

Everybody’s problem: The supply chain

A further divergence between procurement and investment assumptions lies in the defence supply chain. Investors often assess target companies based on their position within a programme: whether prime, Tier 1 supplier, or niche capability provider. However, this linear view can obscure the supply chain fragility that affects the entire nation.

Defence supply chains are not currently configured for rapid scaling. They rely on specialised components, limited suppliers, and long lead times. Efforts to increase production volumes, particularly in response to geopolitical shocks, have exposed bottlenecks that were previously invisible. Rare earths are perhaps the most visible manifestation of this, but so are specialty alloys, substances used in explosives, and other industrial chemicals.

This introduces second-order risks to investments: revenue growth can be highly constrained by upstream limitations and cost pressures driven by scarce suppliers. A company’s ability to capitalise on demand is often not determined by its own capacity, but by the resilience of its ecosystem.

Security is not a dirty word

Nobody is surprised that security is a constraint when working in defence. A business must be sharp on its own physical and cyber security, and have an excellent understanding of its own supply chains and its employees. Vulnerabilities can repel customer interest or fatally damage the prospect of a contract.

In addition, the security assessments to do business are usually controlled not by the customer, but by a separate vetting agency within His Majesty’s (HM) Government. This bureaucracy must be navigated, but companies can make this easier or harder for themselves with thoughtful choices of employees and suppliers.

Finally, anyone close to defence operating commercially across borders will be familiar with the term ‘ITAR’ – the United States’ (US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Every country has its own version, and they can be highly constraining for defence businesses operating across borders. Most investors understand regulatory risk; this is defence’s additional dimension.

Overseas market access can be limited, as the regulations can cover controlled components, technical data, and services. Needless to say, these rules can limit and complicate exit options.

What the heck is TEPIDOIL?

A further complication, but also an opportunity, is the depth and breadth of support the customer expects. Governments have learned – albeit imperfectly – that it is rarely enough to procure just the equipment. A ‘capability’ needs people trained, software updated, infrastructure built, and the logistics serviced throughout its life.

The British acronym for these elements is TEPIDOIL.* America uses the less mnemonic DOTMLPF-P.** Technology aggregators, or defence primes, are excellent at packaging these aspects; investors must understand where their companies fit in this ecosystem and the associated costs.

* Training, Equipment, People, Infrastructure, Doctrine, Organisation, Information, Logistics
** Doctrine, Organisations, Training, Materiel, Leader development, Personnel, Facilities, Policy

Procurement timelines versus investment horizons

Perhaps the most fundamental misalignment is temporal. Private capital typically operates on investment horizons of 3-7 years for private equity, or up to a decade for infrastructure or sovereign funds. Defence procurement, by contrast, can operate on timelines that can extend well beyond a decade.

This creates a tension where investors seek exit pathways, but procurement processes work to long, uncertain development cycles. Even when contracts are secured, revenue realisation may be back-loaded, contingent on milestones, or subject to renegotiation. For funds operating under time constraints, this can materially impact returns.

So, investors need a different mindset for defence. Traditional private equity playbooks, focused on rapid value creation and exit, require informed application in this sector.

Ever-shifting goalposts

The political cliché that ‘there are no votes in defence’ is losing its power, while the social cliché that military activity is inherently unethical is shifting. There have even been suggestions to add an ‘S’ for ‘Security’ to the framework of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), although this might be more a red herring than coherent plan. Dual-use technology is valuable to watch as leading in this space, especially as the line separating single-use from dual-use blurs further. These aspects are changing for investors, and should be factored in when building investment strategies and their narratives.

Not a bridge too far

The apparent disconnect between procurement and investment assumptions can appear profound. However, with the right communication, the incentives of HM Government, the British Armed Forces, and investors can be highly aligned. Investors who can see past the undulations of security, tolerate the jargon, and think deeper than budget announcements or programme headlines will be rewarded.

Compelling macro energy drives the current wave of defence investment. The broadening appeal and necessity of defence investments for a balanced portfolio will further increase the premium on those investors adept in this terrain.

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 HM Government or the Ministry of Defence.

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On Thursday, 23rd April, the Council on Geostrategy celebrated its five-year anniversary at the Locarno Suite in the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO). This article provides an amended transcript of the speech given by James Rogers, Co-founder (Research) at the Council, to outline the organisation’s intellectual framework.

I would like to say a few words about the intellectual framework we have sought to develop and promote over the past five years at the Council on Geostrategy. This is at the foundation of what we do – and what we intend to do in the future. Perhaps uniquely among British think tanks, we have an intellectual mission, and we have had it ever since we mobilised just over five years ago. That mission is to help regenerate applied geopolitics – otherwise known as geostrategy – in the United Kingdom (UK).

But what does that mean in practice? It means moving beyond post-national idealism and focusing on the foundational realities of national power, including geography, resources, technology, and state capability. Our work is rooted in the belief that you cannot shape the world of tomorrow if you do not understand the enduring physical constraints and the changing strategic realities of today.

For that reason, our ontology has been driven by three lodestars.

First, the centrality of the nation. As I said at the beginning, we are not just another international affairs think tank that proposes global solutions to global challenges. We put the British national interest at the heart of our work. In a geopolitical age, a strong, resilient and confident country is vital; it is the best vehicle for mobilising the power we need to protect our interests.

Second, a deep respect for geographic reality. We look at the world through the lens of a maritime nation. In our very first paper – entitled ‘A “Crowe Memorandum” for the twenty-first century’, after the famous Memo of Sir Eyre Crowe in 1907 – we explained that the narrow debates of the early 2020s over the relative importance of the Euro-Atlantic versus the Indo-Pacific were outmoded for the simple reason that the two regions were merging together.

We were quickly proven right. Soon after publication came the announcement of AUKUS, the Hiroshima Accord, and, in a different way, Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine, which has drawn North Korea, Iran, and the People’s Republic of China – Indo-Pacific states – into a war on European soil.

Third, assertive realism. Not only do we engage at the hard edge of systemic competition; we embrace it. We recognise that upholding a free and open international order requires a willingness to confront authoritarian challengers, analyse their national strategies, and prescribe actionable ways to out-compete them. That is why we have pioneered work on net assessment and strategic advantage, as well as the importance of strengthening our national powerbase, our nuclear deterrent, and the alliances that extend our influence.

This intellectual approach has been described as ‘politely disruptive’ by one serving minister. We challenge policymakers with bold, sometimes uncomfortable truths, replacing standard globalism with rigorous, actionable geostrategy. That is why we have used infographics and geopolitical maps so extensively; they project in a single visualisation what may still not be clear after 10,000 words of text. Our most important piece of work so far is our geopolitical atlas. If you have not seen it yet, then please take a look.

So where does this leave us? Over the past five years, our politely disruptive approach has proven essential. The geopolitical shocks of the 2020s have shown us that we need a different framework if we are to prevail in an increasingly confrontational and transactional world.

If we allow ourselves to weaken, we should be under no illusion: the opponents of openness, democracy, and freedom – what Britain stands for – will merely grow in strength. And we won’t be the first to suffer: our allies and partners, especially those smaller countries nearest to the geopolitical fault lines, will be the first to feel our adversaries’ wrath.

But before I close, I just want to thank our hosts here at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, our board members, our generous supporters, and, above all, our brilliant colleagues at the Council who do the hard work – organisational and analytical – every single day.

As we look to the next five years, I want to be clear: the Council on Geostrategy remains committed to generating the bold, rigorous, and unapologetically British strategic thought that this era demands.

Thank you for joining us to celebrate this milestone – and enjoy the rest of the night!

The Council on Geostrategy also received thoughts from two of our associates regarding the Council’s impact on British strategic policy over the past five years:

Richard Ballett

Council on Geostrategy

In its first five years, the Council on Geostrategy has played a key role in renewing British national security policy debates. It has helped to diversify what had become a somewhat stale intellectual ecosystem by injecting fresh perspectives and offering practical solutions rather than merely admiring policy problems. There is not enough space to list all the important contributions the Council has made; but three notable ones include the following:

On nuclear weapons: The Council has made several interventions to ongoing debates about the UK’s future nuclear forces, including options to augment, diversify, and enhance existing capabilities; the pros and cons of different options; and practical steps that should be taken for these to be realised.

On the PRC: The Council’s China Observatory has provided the policy community with realistic assessments of Beijing, and shone a light on some of the serious threats that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pose to British interests.

On sea power: The Council has reinvigorated debates in Whitehall about the future of the UK’s sea power, including practical solutions to rebuild the nation’s shipbuilding industry, augment its maritime forces, and posture these capabilities in an astute fashion to maximise British strategic advantage.

Jennifer Parker

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy; Founder and Principal, Barrier Strategic Advisory; Adjunct Fellow in Naval Studies, UNSW Canberra; and Expert Associate, ANU National Security College

Looking back at the last five years, the Council on Geostrategy’s real value has not just been its research; it has been its refusal to let British strategy slide into comfortable complacency. At a time when the global order was being rapidly reshaped, the Council forced a much-needed, and often uncomfortable, conversation about the return of state competition. It is one thing to acknowledge that the world is getting more dangerous; it is another to map out exactly what that means for a country such as the UK.

Its work on the Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ is the best example of this impact. The Council was among the loudest voices pointing out that the ‘tilt’ is just a slogan unless it is underpinned by a permanent presence and real-world capability. It successfully shifted the framing from political rhetoric to the hard work of delivery, making it clear that British security is now inextricably linked to the stability of distant maritime trade routes and the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

With AUKUS, the Council looked past the noise of the submarine headlines. It reframed the partnership as a generational integration of three maritime powers, emphasising the industrial discipline and focus to achieve it. In a space where strategy often gets lost in buzzwords, the Council on Geostrategy has been at the forefront of discussion, keeping the focus on the unforgiving realities of geography and hard power.

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The British Overseas Territories are currently receiving an overdue public appraisal. Recent Iranian attacks on the United Kingdom’s (UK) territories in Cyprus and Diego Garcia follow in the wake of a contentious agreement to cede sovereignty over the latter. Critics of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) deal allege the UK’s strategic naivety, succumbing to lawfare and diplomatic statecraft spearheaded by Russia. These events are symptomatic of both a deteriorating global order and intensifying international competition.

Strategic choices

The precedent set through the recognition of Mauritius’ claim to the BIOT could undermine the position of other British territories, including the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus. Like the BIOT, these airfields were also retained upon the recognition of independence of a former Crown Colony. Unlike the American-operated base on Diego Garcia, however, they are home to British military and intelligence operations, and have performed a key staging role for the UK’s operations in the Middle East for decades.

While the Cyprus bases have been controversial locally for some time, Tehran’s attacks and inadequate British defences have increased their perceived liability to the Cypriot authorities. Nikos Christodoulides, President of Cyprus, labelled the bases a ‘colonial consequence’, requiring ‘frank discussion with the British government’. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, wasted no time in visiting the island to emphasise a new French-Cypriot strategic partnership, declaring that the island ‘can count on France’.

In an era of renewed contest between states and an unreliable hegemon in the United States (US), the ability to defend norms, alliances, and claims of sovereignty requires both a reserve of strategic power and the capacity to wield it. Macron backed up his rhetoric with 11 French Navy warships deployed to the eastern Mediterranean and wider Middle East, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Strategic autonomy extends beyond military power, with France benefiting from a long legacy of policy to develop and guard industrial champions in critical sectors.

The UK is fortunate that its allies – including France, Greece, and the US – were able to assist with the defence of Cyprus. In 2011, Britain deployed a sovereign response group consisting of three amphibious landing ships, a helicopter carrier, a frigate, and two auxiliary supply ships to the island. This exercise served as a demonstration of the UK’s capability at that point to ‘respond at short notice to unforeseen events in an unpredictable and fast-moving world’ as an independent force.

In 2026, additional British aircraft have been deployed to Cyprus, but the struggle to send a single warship to the region illustrates the decline of the Royal Navy. In tasking what few operational ships remain during 2025, His Majesty’s (HM) Government allegedly planned for air defence destroyers HMS Dragon and HMS Duncan to prioritise attendance at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) exercises in 2026 and 2027. The hard choices now forced on ministers are the inevitable product of decades of defence cuts, and delays to new ship orders during the austerity years.

Constrained military resources may force yet more trade-offs between commitments to NATO allies and the UK’s national priorities in future, with the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published in 2025, appearing to commit to both equally. The SDR is clear that ‘Role 1’ for the British Armed Forces is to defend and protect Britain, its Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies, while also adopting a ‘NATO first’ doctrine of commitment to European security in response to the strategic challenge posed by Russia.

Sub-threshold threats and drone proliferation

Both the SDR and National Security Strategy (NSS), also published in June 2025, lack depth in their assessments of the Overseas Territories. Beyond commitments to maintaining a military presence in Gibraltar, Cyprus, and the South Atlantic territories, there is little detail on the evolution of sub-threshold and non-military threats in relevant regions, or capabilities required to respond. In contrast, France’s National Strategic Review 2025 details disinformation, malign foreign influence operations, terrorism, and supply chain weaponisation as particular risks to the stability of its overseas territories.

The contrasting treatment reflects a different constitutional relationship between France and its overseas territories compared to Britain. Some French territories are fully integrated, operating under the same laws as the mainland with political representation at the Assemblée nationale (National Assembly of the French Parliament). Even for those with greater autonomy, policing and internal security remain reserved matters for Paris, with gendarmes deployed overseas. The UK, however, retains responsibility for only the defence and foreign affairs of the British Overseas Territories.

A neat delineation of internal security as an area of local competence, with the UK retaining responsibility for defence, may not be suited to evolving sub-threshold and non-military threats. The SDR identifies improved resilience to these types of sabotage, influence, and disinformation as an integral area for defence, requiring input from ‘industry, the finance sector, civil society, academia, education, and communities’. Enhanced partnerships could be implemented with local agencies in the Overseas Territories to build the same type of ‘whole-of-society’ resilience envisioned for the home islands.

Britain’s Caribbean territories merit a single mention in the SDR (a commitment to humanitarian and disaster relief), while the equivalent French review paints a more concerning picture. On the potential for expansion of geographical areas of conflict, it states French Caribbean territories ‘in strategic areas with high stakes’ are vulnerable to ‘manoeuvres to control international migration routes, organised crime…[and] regional disputes that could be exploited by adversaries’. It notes increasing collusion between criminals, terrorist networks, and state actors. These threats were subject to a UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry begun in 2024, but work has not resumed since the general election that July.

Iranian drone attacks on Cyprus serve as a harbinger for a new era of proliferation in drone technology. Beyond states, terrorists and cartels are now exploiting drones and tactics learnt from Ukraine to attack security forces, conduct reconnaissance, and transport illicit payloads. Drone sightings near UK military bases have doubled in the last year, while Russia and Iran have turned to criminals recruited online to carry out sabotage. Britain should prepare for these tactics in its Overseas Territories in light of the strategic Russian threat, as well as collusion with local organised crime.

The role of the River class

Given the island geographies of the Overseas Territories, the capability of the Royal Navy remains paramount. The UK relies on five basic Batch II River class Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) to protect the Overseas Territories, with a small simple gun and no hangar for the Wildcat helicopters recently deployed to Cyprus to shoot down Iranian drones. Three older Batch I River class OPVs patrol British home waters at an increasing tempo in response to heightened activity by Russian naval, intelligence-gathering, and ‘shadow fleet’ shipping. The March 2026 commitment by His Majesty’s (HM) Government to seize shadow fleet ships is illustrative of greater future demands on the Royal Navy in the UK’s home waters.

Maritime and aerial drones can be countered with cost-effective modern medium-calibre guns planned for five new Type 31 frigates. The Type 31s are planned to forward deploy overseas to protect global British interests, but the ‘immediate and pressing threat’ of Russia could derail this. With anti-submarine Type 26 frigates under construction now allocated to Norway, the three Batch I River class vessels decommissioning in 2028, and persistent issues with submarine and destroyer availability, any remaining Royal Navy surface ships will likely need to deploy in accordance with ‘NATO first’ in defence of Europe.

Given limited resources, HM Government should therefore procure smaller, cheaper ships to provide greater global presence and better protection of British interests, as mooted for a potential Type 32 frigate. Beyond the UK’s home waters, this includes protection of military basing and intelligence infrastructure overseas, and maritime security in the Caribbean.

A potential design might include a helicopter hangar, modern anti-drone armament, and hull-mounted sonar for undersea surveillance, as built into the French ‘Patrouilleurs Hauturiers’ programme of ten vessels. Some of these capabilities could be retrofitted to the five newer River class OPVs for use either at home or further afield. In tandem, the Royal Navy should also optimise the Type 31 frigate to offer greater both offensive and defensive capabilities in the Euro-Atlantic area, rather than for a global patrol role.

Robin Potter is Academy Associate with the UK in the World Programme at Chatham House. His research focuses on policy reform and intervention to improve resilience against sub-threshold challenges.

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Recent tensions in the Middle East have exposed a deeper structural dilemma in the United Kingdom’s (UK) defence policy. Operational readiness shortfalls have undermined perceptions of British leadership, while the economic consequences of renewed instability risk further constraining defence spending. A recent research briefing from the House of Commons Library suggests that the ongoing Iran conflict will intensify inflationary pressures, eroding the real value of current defence budgets and complicating the delivery of an ambitious industrial strategy. At the same time, Britain faces a renewed alliance dilemma: a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) that must either adapt to the United States (US) under Donald Trump’s presidency, or for the possibility of no America in the alliance at all.

Despite clear British strategic intent to mobilise industry at wartime pace, defence procurement remains constrained by persistent institutional inertia and fragmentation. In practice, this exposes a tension between intent and implementation.

The UK recognises the need for faster capability generation and greater industrial mobilisation, but it attempts to achieve these objectives through national mechanisms rather than collective ones. Nevertheless, Britain does not need to invent a new procurement model. Rather, it should better employ its existing multinational frameworks.

The Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) provides such a mechanism. A dynamic UK-led coalition of ten high-trust northern European states, it has proven its value through rapid crisis response, interoperability, and credible deterrence in the High North, Baltic, and North Atlantic theatres. It also holds considerably more potential; alongside its flexible operating framework, it is a structured procurement powerhouse. Already well-aligned, the JEF could aggregate demand, and procure primarily through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). This would deliver shared capability at scale, fortify NATO’s northern flank, and cement British leadership in practical terms.

There is little resistance to the idea that faster, harmonious military procurement is urgent. In March 2026, the UK, Finland, and the Netherlands issued a joint statement announcing a new mechanism by 2027 to pool demand, accelerate procurement of critical capabilities such as munitions, and expand industrial capacity. Explicitly open to ‘like-minded partners’, this idea is exactly what the JEF can deliver. NSPA could give it scalable procurement.

Europe is rearming amid rising threats, but fragmented national procurement risks turning higher budgets into duplicated systems, delayed deliveries, and fragile sustainment. The JEF offers a firm basis upon which to build.

The procurement challenge and next phase of the JEF

Defence procurement in Europe suffers from three persistent flaws: duplication, procurement delays, and inadequate through-life support. Allies routinely acquire similar capabilities – e.g., maritime patrol aircraft, air defence systems, anti-submarine sensors, and secure communications – through separate national processes.

NSPA exists to improve this. Such duplication misses opportunities to reduce unit costs, can produce incompatible standards, and leaves sustainment chains fragmented across borders, which ultimately undermines operational readiness. In a contested, complex environment, operating demands seamless integration, and these inefficiencies must be avoided.

The JEF is uniquely positioned to address this. Its ten member states (Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden) share converging threat perceptions and a common strategic geography. The JEF’s very purpose emphasises pooling high-readiness shared resources in support of NATO, creating fertile ground for harmonised requirements.

By identifying shared needs early, say for long-range sensors, missile defence enablers, deployable logistics, or munitions stockpiles, the JEF can aggregate demand, standardise specifications, and leverage collective scale. This turns political cohesion into military effect.

NSPA: Ready-made, already-paid

NSPA provides the ideal mechanism for the JEF. As NATO’s primary acquisition and logistics mechanism, it manages everything from initial procurement and competitive tendering to life-cycle sustainment, fuel supply, airlift, and repair services for allies and partners. All alliance members have access to NSPA by virtue of their NATO fees. It would be wasteful not to maximise its utility.

His Majesty’s (HM) Government guidance explicitly endorses NSPA for multinational projects, noting its ability to balance industrial participation while delivering economies of scale. NSPA’s track record is strong: multinational contracts for Stinger missile extensions, Allied Ground Surveillance (AGS) radar maintenance, and high-ranked repair facilities demonstrate how NSPA aggregates demand into tangible outcomes.

One of NSPA’s recent munitions procurements shows it can operate at scale. US$11 billion (£8.2 billion) was spent on various munitions, including US$5.6 billion (£4.2 billion) for Patriot missiles, which involved building a factory for their production in Germany. This is an organisation able to do the business that NATO members require.

The UK-Finland-Netherlands statement could lead directly to this. It targets joint procurement of munitions and equipment by 2027 to accelerate delivery and boost production capacity. Imagine pooled demand for air defence spares, maritime surveillance networks, digital command systems, or prepositioned logistics modules. These enablers, rather than prestige platforms, are where aggregation can yield impressive returns, resulting in lower costs, faster fielding, and sustainment resilience. NSPA’s competitive processes ensure transparency and value, while its multinational model distributes industrial benefits fairly.

Fortifying NATO’s northern flank

By building within NATO, a JEF-NSPA procurement pipeline would strengthen the alliance. Deterrence rests on interoperable, sustainable forces, capable of rapid reinforcement across domains. However, NATO’s own assessments highlight persistent gaps in demand coordination and industrial surge capacity. With increased coherence on the alliance’s northern flank, the JEF would deliver a more coherent capability package that could activate even before a crisis, from Baltic reinforcement to High North patrols.

This approach aligns seamlessly with NATO’s Defence Production Action Plan and emerging lessons from partnerships with Ukraine, such as drone sustainment and undersea defence. The UK-Finland-Netherlands idea, with its focus on munitions and industrial scaling, fits perfectly as a JEF prototype: by expanding it multilaterally through NSPA, it would create a regional force multiplier that enhances alliance-wide readiness without waiting for 32-nation consensus.

British leadership made concrete and credible

For the UK, this subject is about more than capability; it is about leadership. As the JEF’s framework nation since its inception in 2014, Britain has shaped its strategic identity and hosted key exercises. However, rhetorical leadership alone no longer suffices. The UK-Finland-Netherlands statement exemplifies the concrete action required: by launching a financing tool explicitly open to like-minded partners, Britain has already begun convening procurement cooperation among core JEF members. Folding this into a broader JEF-NSPA framework would elevate that initiative, positioning the UK as the indispensable convener for northern European defence.

This matters politically. Nordic and Baltic partners value not just solidarity, but delivery as well: coherence, shared stockpiles, reliable sustainment, and systems that actually integrate under fire. By championing aggregation from within the JEF and NATO, Britain would deepen that trust, sidestep European Union (EU)-centric funding debates where it prioritises value over access, and reaffirm its role as the continent’s agile security anchor. In an era of American strategic rebalancing and European industrial strain, such leadership would resonate from Tallinn to Tromsø.

A disciplined path forward

Implementation demands focus, not ambition. The JEF should start small, convening a procurement working group to identify achievable priority areas where needs align unequivocally. Munitions, logistics packages, secure communications, air defence enablers, and undersea surveillance could all be areas to build on existing equipment programmes. The next step would be to harmonise requirements through existing JEF channels, then route consolidated demand through NSPA tenders.

Governance would be straightforward: a JEF procurement board for prioritisation and NSPA for execution, with transparency on industrial offsets. Early wins, for instance a shared spares pipeline, build momentum; risks such as bureaucratic inertia or parochial industry lobbying are real, but would be mitigated by the bilateral precedent and NSPA’s proven track record. Over time, this could evolve into a standing JEF capability fund, mirroring the new trilateral mechanism but scaled for the full coalition.

The strategic imperative

Demand aggregation via the NSPA would transform the JEF from a promising minilateral into a European procurement vanguard. It would yield operationally relevant forces, a fortified NATO, and British leadership that delivers enduring value. The JEF has both precedent and momentum. In a continent racing to convert euros into effects, this is how northern Europe leads and wins.

This strategic logic is further reinforced by Canada’s increasing engagement with the JEF. Ottawa has recently increased defence spending to 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, signalled plans at the JEF Leaders’ Summit in March 2026 to deepen collaboration with the group, including on capability development. Canada’s involvement is strategically significant, not only because of mutual interests in High North security, but because it expands the scale of potential demand aggregation.

Together, the JEF and Canada account for a total defence spend of US$226 billion (£168.5 billion), representing a higher average share of GDP than the rest of European NATO. While the absolute figure remains lower than the combined spending of the other 19 European allies – US$333.3 billion (£248.6 billion) – the proportionate investment reflects a coalition of states already demonstrating strong political willingness to prioritise defence.

Such alignment creates favourable conditions for deeper procurement cooperation through NSPA. Canada’s direction for defence procurement and industry is harmonious with the JEF. It can only strengthen the group by increasing the JEF’s economic clout and enhancing its ability to act as a coherent, market-shaping procurement bloc rather than a loose aggregation of national buyers.

You can go your own way

Two further advantages arise from such a framework. First, it would expand the JEF’s capacity to support Ukraine. Aggregated procurement through existing NSPA-Ukraine coordination mechanisms would enable larger and more predictable orders to the defence industry, accelerating production while ensuring sustained delivery at lower marginal cost. The political agility of the JEF as a minilateral framework has already been demonstrated: during the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, its ten members provided security assistance equivalent to Ukraine reaching 1.53% of GDP, exceeding the 0.29% provided by the rest of European NATO. This exemplifies how an NSPA JEF-Canada framework would be uniquely positioned to mobilise higher, faster, and more strategically aligned support for Ukraine.

Second, the framework would mitigate uncertainty surrounding the long-term trajectory of American engagement in European security. Although the US maintains an annual defence budget of US$980 billion (£730.8 billion), its commitments are global in scope. By contrast, the strategic focus of a JEF-Canada grouping is regional, centred on the security of the North Atlantic, Baltic Sea, and High North.

While the US accounts for roughly 60% of total NATO defence spending, research suggests that only a small proportion of this expenditure is directed specifically towards European defence. Estimates indicate that replacing American capabilities in Europe could cost approximately US$1 trillion (£745.7 billion) over a 25 year period, or US$40 billion (£29.8 billion) per year. This scale of potential exposure underscores the strategic logic of deeper regional cooperation.

In this context, a JEF-Canada procurement framework offers a practical mechanism for reducing vulnerability to fluctuations in American commitments. By pooling resources, synchronising procurement cycles, and focusing investment on NATO’s northern and transatlantic flanks, the coalition could assume a greater share of regional security responsibilities without attempting to replicate the global military power of the US. This was the JEF’s original raison d’être at its inception in 2014.

At a moment when the transatlantic security order faces renewed uncertainty, the strategic question for European nations is no longer whether to rearm, but how to do so effectively. The JEF provides a ready-made solution. By transforming a flexible coalition into a coordinated procurement bloc, northern European allies can convert collective resolve into industrial power, and ensure that UK-led defence ambitions are converted into credible military capability.

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.

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‘Great power politics’ is a term that has been disconnected from much of daily life in free and open nations for the past eight decades. While great power competition has always been a part of the national psyche during this time – rearing its head repeatedly throughout the Cold War and more recently when discussing the relationship between the United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – the latest comments from Alexander Stubb, President of Finland, show that it is only now that politicians in free and open nations are publicly coming around to the idea that a certain degree of realism underpins relations between countries.

In Europe, this can be difficult to grasp given that American cultural influences and the European Union (EU) have now existed for multiple generations. However, of all 21st century theatres, Europe has probably one of the richest histories curated by realpolitik.

The EU’s 2026 ‘Made in Europe’ proposals are the latest in a line of diplomatic entanglements that make very clear the realpolitik forces shaping relations between the union and the United Kingdom (UK). Brussels is pushing for products within EU supply chains to have 70% of their components made within EU borders. As the British Chambers of Commerce has pointed out, this looks set to snub UK-based companies, upending possibly decades of supply chain relationships covering everything from missiles to microchips. It remains to be seen whether this requirement is simply designed to strengthen Brussels’ hand in any future negotiations, but as things stand, it would help Europeans to win commercial contracts over their British counterparts.

As Europe’s historic ‘offshore balancer’ – against continental hegemony by France or Germany – the UK has always found opportunity in this realpolitik world inhabited by free and open allied nations. The same window of opportunity is again open today.

Britain’s opportunity as ‘offshore balancer’

The security environment of 2026 has shifted the chessboard of European realpolitik to the high ground of nuclear posture, orbital infrastructure, and ease of doing business. As the EU pushes for strategic autonomy in the 21st century, the UK too has a hand to play in shaping continental politics.

Take the latest move from Paris. On 2nd March 2026, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, formally unveiled the ‘Dissuasion avancée’ (‘Advanced deterrence’) framework at the Île Longue nuclear submarine base. On the surface, this is a generous offer to shield European neighbours with French nuclear capability. In reality, while it supports pan-European security, it is a classic realpolitik manoeuvre, designed to cement France as the continent’s permanent security landlord.

This comes despite the Northwood Declaration of July 2025, which pitched British-French nuclear cooperation. It suggests that Macron’s plans for an ‘audacious’ era of European nuclear deterrence are more French than British-French in nature.

The UK’s opportunity here is in providing the deep-water intelligence and submarine surveillance that France cannot replicate, for example, in the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap. Britain’s power is not in the posturing of nuclear buttons, but in controlling the undersea intelligence architecture that keeps the continent’s security from buckling. The bottom line is that Britain is the only other nuclear power in Europe. France cannot ignore this.

Opportunities in orbit

This same logic applies to the frontier of space. While concerns over 2025’s EU Space Act regulatory framework risk blocking further progress on the continent, Britain has opted for agile commercialism. The £500 million investment, announced by His Majesty’s (HM) Government in March 2026 at this year’s Space-Comm Europe by the UK Space Agency, forms part of a budget of £2.8 billion committed to the sector through to 2030.

This ambition is not about state-led prestige; it is about infrastructure and unleashing entrepreneurial dynamism. Through SaxaVord in Shetland – one of only two vertical launch facilities in Europe – and heavy investment in in-orbit technology, Britain is positioning itself to be Europe’s first mover in a global market projected to be worth US$1.8 trillion (£1.4 trillion) by 2035.

British entrepreneur accelerators and venture capitalists should see the demand signals from HM Government here, recognising that space as a manufacturing, service-providing, and defensive sector is projected to play an increasingly central role in the daily lives of British citizens. Consideration should also be given to positive second-order effects laterally impacting other aspects of society that could stem from the sector’s maturity – for example, enhanced clean energy technology or life sciences discoveries which would further support HM Government’s ‘Invest 2035’ industrial strategy.

The European element

This brings us to ‘EU-Inc’; an attempt to create a single business entity to be used across the bloc. If executed well, this could create an economic model competitive to the Delaware Model.

Current developments suggest that the EU is not where it wants to be with EU-Inc. The latest proposals, originally leaked in March 2026, show that dispute resolution still defers to national courts. In short, rather than creating a ‘28th regime’, the EU risks creating 27 versions of EU-Inc. This falls far short of creating an attractive ‘one size fits all’ alternative to scaling in the US, which all too often many of Europe’s best and brightest end up doing.

By contrast, in the UK’s single national jurisdiction, a local founder can register a business from any county or devolved nation, and Britain comfortably looks like a more attractive place for startups. This avoids the ‘politics-first’ investment cycles that often quagmire capital flows across the continent.

Having ranked 91/100 for Business Entry in the World Bank’s Business Ready (B-READY) 2025 report; achieving second easiest place on the planet to start a business in 2025 by StartupBlink’s Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report 2025; and placing third in Europe in the Global Innovation Index 2025 (behind only Sweden and Switzerland), the UK is perfectly positioned to act as the ‘venture capitalist of Europe’.

Britain can allocate capital based on where the technology actually works, acting as a light-touch, offshore hub for the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and defence talent currently struggling under the weight of EU compliance. The UK can provide a faster, more agile ecosystem where innovative, high-tech talent can actually enjoy the fruits of their labours.

Conclusion

For now, Britain’s European future is not found in a seat at the table in Brussels, but in the leverage it holds outside of the EU. The UK’s blueprint for lasting cooperation with its European allies and partners is simple: be the indispensable offshore balancer. With strengths in entrepreneurship, orbital launch capability, and subsea infrastructure that powers continental security and economic sovereignty, Britain makes itself the partner that Europe cannot afford to ignore.

The final word is one of strategic realism. The future leaders of the UK yearn for closer alignment with its neighbours. However, like every nation, Britain still has to put its own national posture first. A stable and prosperous Europe is one where the UK leads from the front with other leading free and open European states, not behind, and provides the security, technology, and economic might that the continent at times struggles to provide for itself.

Dominic Selby is an exam-qualified chartered accountant, as well as an individual member of Chatham House and RUSI. He has a keen interest in international security, entrepreneurship and innovation, and holds a BSc in Economics and Political Science from the University of Birmingham.

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The Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) faces an increasingly contentious security environment amid conventional, nuclear, and sub-threshold threats from Russia. The United Kingdom (UK), as the JEF’s framework nation, should pursue a multilateral Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) network as a Joint Integration Option (JIO) to maximise its Atlantic Bastion, Shield, and Strike operational concepts while complimenting Nordic partners’ planning in the High North.

A2/AD is a well-established operational concept, intended to prevent an adversary’s entrance into, and freedom of operation within, a specific geographical space. Despite its association with the United States’ (US) thinking on Chinese and Iranian strategy, A2/AD is a universal concept, which leverages geography to achieve localised sea denial.

A JEF A2/AD network would therefore draw upon member states’ geography to integrate layered sensors, long range precision strike, naval combatants – including Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) – air power, and Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD). This would cultivate a tighter threat perception, a cohesive deterrence package, mutual support, and improved minilateral preparedness for emerging maritime crises, thereby maintaining the partnership’s first responder role but with a renewed strategic focus.

With an explicit rationale, the JEF could better support North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) escalation management by addressing smaller-scale conventional and hybrid threats, enabling the alliance to maintain a focus on high-risk strategic objectives, such as supporting Ukraine and conducting Enhanced Vigilance Activity (EVA).

Expanding the joint integration framework

Although JEF Operating Models are bifurcated as Joint Response Options (JROs) and JIOs, only the former has been utilised to support reactive activity against Russian aggression across the Joint Operational Area (JOA) of the High North, North Atlantic, and Baltic Sea.

Despite being bound by available resources, JROs have proven effective. NORDIC WARDEN, for instance, was activated just 13 days after the suspected Russian sabotage of the Estlink 2 undersea data cable in late December 2024. This eclipsed NATO’s BALTIC SENTRY response by a week, enabling the JEF to shape the operational environment to NATO’s benefit.

By tapping the unrealised potential of JIOs through an A2/AD network, the JEF could further codify capability procurement and integration, while simultaneously improving readiness and overall coordination. This would facilitate more regular and scalable joint military exercises, such as 2024’s Exercise JOINT PROTECTOR and 2025’s Exercise TARASSIS.

Implementing the A2/AD JIO

The JEF’s ability to maintain the conventional edge relies on the effective leveraging of land-based strike; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); and air combat systems, alongside surface and sub-surface combatants. As the key enabler, information sharing underscores all elements of an A2/AD network.

At the multilateral level, the group could create a ‘JEF Eyes’ intelligence agreement. In maintaining cohesive situational awareness, such an agreement would need to draw upon an expansive web of passive and active sensors, with additional intelligence sourced from the cyber and space domains. This would assist the JEF in hedging against US retrenchment from European security.

This intelligence would be integral to enabling precision strike through road-mobile anti-ship missile launchers, located within JEF nations’ territory to support the denial of adversarial operational freedom. Mobile launchers offer diverse flexibility for their deployment. However, a common denominator (one which the JEF should seize) is the ubiquity of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM).

The Naval Strike Missile

As the NSM is claimed to be ‘interchangeable between ships and trucks’, this provides the JEF with a common munition. Partnership-wide procurement would support interoperability, interchangeability, and supply chain cohesion. Doing so would also support diverse mission sets both on land and at sea – the latter enabled by the ongoing integration of NSM aboard British, Norwegian, and Danish vessels.

On land, NSM platforms can draw upon high operational mobility to conduct rapid deployments, even in remote environments. This was demonstrated in October 2025, when a Royal Air Force (RAF) A400M Atlas transport aircraft transported a two-seater tactical vehicle simulating the American Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS), armed with two NSMs, to a remote Norwegian island. Alternatively, JEF members may seek to follow Denmark in procuring the NSM Coastal Defence System: a lorry-based system equipped with four launchers.

Regardless of its form, mobile land-based systems will play a critical role in deterring adversarial action, whether concentrated near maritime chokepoints like the Danish Straits, or when drawing upon operational mobility to be deployed at range to High North coastlines.

IAMD and the Nordic Airpower Concept

In supporting this and the survival of local Command and Control (C2) infrastructure and strike capabilities, IAMD sensors and interceptors are another key aspect of A2/AD. This includes Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), which both NATO and the JEF lack when facing missile threats from the High North. Current BMD sees uneven coverage and significant capability gaps. Britain, for instance, will continue to lag behind until at least 2032, when the Sea Viper Evolution programme becomes operational. With no short term solution available, the JEF will have to depend on US-enabled NATO BMD capabilities, such as the Patriot PAC-2/3 and AEGIS Ashore.

To supplement ground-based IAMD focused on other aerial threats, the JEF should expand the Nordic Airpower Concept (NAPC) to drive further coordination and cohesion. Composed of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, the NAPC rests upon the ‘four pillars’ of ‘joint planning and command of air operations; coordinated development and use of Nordic air bases; enhanced joint situational awareness; and joint education, training, and exercises’. A JEF Airpower Concept (JAPC) would retain these pillars and Norway-based C2, while expanding the dispersed basing footprint to Iceland and Greenland for supporting air defence and policing further afield.

In expanding this pool of dispersed infrastructure, a JAPC could forward deploy a greater variety of aircraft to support an A2/AD network. At Keflavík in Iceland, for instance, the JEF should seek to station British and Danish P-8A multirole patrol aircraft permanently to supplement US European Command’s (EUCOM) deployment of two P-8As, and act as a replacement should America withdraw.

Building on the RAF’s experience of such a deployment, a move like this could encourage rotational deployments by Canada and Germany as NATO P-8A operators. This option could be supported further if the UK chooses to integrate P-8A-compatible boom probes on its Voyager aerial refuelling fleet for shared benefit.

Anti-Submarine Warfare

Comprehensive ASW is necessitated by increased Russian submarine activity in the High North, which has renewed focus on the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap and the North Sea. As ASW is predicated on detection, tracking, and potentially prosecution, an A2/AD network is bolstered by the deployment of a defending force’s own submarine capabilities.

Ranging from deep open ocean to shallower littorals, the GIUK gap and North Sea demand joint planning to accommodate the differences in endurance, range, and payloads of British nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) and Norwegian, Dutch, and Swedish diesel-electric submarines (SSKs). For JEF planners, this could mean utilising SSNs in a hunter-killer capacity at range, while keeping SSKs closer to allied coastlines for patrol, alongside unique missions including minelaying or special forces insertion.

As a key enabler for ASW, the JEF should develop its own sensor network, which can both draw upon and feed into NATO Maritime Command (MARCOM) ISR capabilities, centred around Uncrewed Undersea and Surface Vessels (UUVs/USVs) as eyes and ears within the A2/AD network. The UK can achieve this through utilising AUKUS Pillar 2’s alignment with NATO Standardisation Agreement (STANAG) 4817, which mandates UUV C2 interoperability between crewed platforms – such as Britain and Norway’s upcoming Type 26 frigates – and uncrewed systems.

With this, activity by JEF Maritime (JEF[M]) – the Royal Navy’s contribution to the JEF – could expand to form scalable task groups to supplement the High North-facing Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1). By continuing to act in a first responder capacity, JEF(M) could seek to capitalise on sea denial created by the A2/AD network to assert localised sea control, thereby facilitating wider SNMG1 operations, and mirroring 2023’s Operation FIREDRAKE. In addition to supporting NATO escalation management, this approach would deepen integration and interchangeability between subsurface and surface combatants, auxiliary vessels, and air wings.

Conclusion

The JEF’s growing strategic imperative in the High North necessitates the creation of a dense and scalable A2/AD network to deter diverse multi-domain threats from Russia. Although a considerable political undertaking, the UK should utilise its leadership position to give the minilateral grouping a strategic rationale to establish long-term interoperability and interchangeability through the JIO operational model.

By leveraging existing frameworks, such as AUKUS Pillar 2 and the NAPC, and pursuing novel arrangements like the suggested ‘JEF Eyes’, Britain should continue to capitalise on a shared threat perception to support collective deterrence at the NATO level.

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.

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The nuclear debate across the Euro-Atlantic has accelerated rapidly. The expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on 5th February 2026 removed the final remaining United States (US)-Russian strategic arms control agreement. This ended not only the last formal numerical limits on deployed strategic systems, but also the vital verification and risk-reduction measures that accompanied them. Concurrently, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, gave a speech at Île Longue nuclear submarine base in March in which he signalled a more outward-facing French deterrent posture, unveiling a so-called ‘forward deterrence’ doctrine aimed at dispersing French strategic assets across the continent.

Together, these developments force a reckoning that many European governments had long preferred to avoid: as the strategic environment worsens and Washington is increasingly drawn towards the Western Hemisphere and Indo-Pacific, how should Europeans respond – especially in terms of nuclear deterrence?

Focusing on a novel supranational arsenal risks answering the wrong question. The answer lies not in a ‘Euro-nuke’ or new architectures designed to enable nuclear release. Rather, the real solution is to be found in the burgeoning British-German defence partnership. By building upon the Trinity House Agreement of October 2024 and the subsequent bilateral Kensington Treaty of June 2025, the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany are uniquely positioned to address the Euro-Atlantic’s most acute vulnerability: the lack of a sovereign, sub-strategic nuclear deterrent.

Washington’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific is no longer rhetorical. The reallocation of American naval assets to counter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is monopolising the availability of Virginia class submarines, leaving the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap increasingly reliant on British and European assets. Additionally, in an Indo-Pacific contingency, the US nuclear umbrella over Europe may be found wanting.

This is fundamentally a question of American availability rather than reliability. The US no longer prepares for even a two-front war, and Washington has been explicit that Europeans must assume primary responsibility for the defence of their own continent.

However, while conventional European rearmament is vital, it is fundamentally insufficient to deter a nuclear-armed adversary such as Russia. The unique destructive power of nuclear weapons compels a level of adversarial caution that conventional deep-strike or cyber forces simply cannot match. This necessitates a specifically European-led sub-strategic nuclear response capability.

In parallel, the UK and Germany have deepened defence cooperation through the Trinity House Agreement and Kensington Treaty. Meanwhile, Britain’s commitment to purchasing additional F-35A Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft and rejoining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) dual-capable aircraft nuclear mission marks a significant shift in posture, supplementing rather than replacing the Royal Navy’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD).

Beyond the ‘Euro-nuke’: Sovereignty and capability gaps

The challenge is no longer whether European NATO members should think seriously about nuclear deterrence: they already are. The true difficulty lies in designing an architecture that genuinely strengthens Euro-Atlantic security rather than merely duplicating existing structures. A fully fledged ‘European deterrent’ – a so-called ‘Euro-nuke’ – is often discussed as a single, obvious destination, yet it is fraught with distinct geopolitical, legal, and capability hurdles.

NATO’s nuclear architecture is deeply entrenched, with Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey collectively hosting roughly 100 American gravity bombs. Unsurprisingly, many allies question the utility of building a parallel European umbrella rather than adapting this existing framework.

The fundamental hurdle, however, is credibility. Extended deterrence is structurally fragile; the Kremlin may calculate that London or Paris would simply not risk domestic annihilation to defend NATO’s eastern flank. This anxiety is compounded by the US National Defence Strategy, published in January 2026, which prioritises the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, and mandates European conventional self-reliance. To prevent a European deterrent from being dismissed as a declaratory bluff, it must be underpinned by integrated command structures and verifiable operational planning.

However, the constraints facing Berlin, Warsaw, and other European capitals through their adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rules out the simple multiplication of new national deterrents without severe political consequences. It is equally unrealistic to expect London or Paris to surrender launch authority to a novel supranational body, such as a multilateral European nuclear security council: such a structure would struggle to move quickly in a crisis scenario.

As the NPT prohibits transfer of control, the constant requirement for consensus would collide with the need for immediate strategic signalling. While a smaller group – for example, the European Three (E3) of the UK, France, and Germany – could offer greater operational agility, excluding other frontline states – not least Poland – risks intra-alliance fragmentation. Nuclear decision-making is the ultimate expression of sovereignty, and must remain during a crisis. Any emerging architecture should therefore be built primarily around existing British and/or French forces.

Yet, these existing forces are currently undermined by specific capability gaps. The UK’s strategic deterrent remains formidable, with CASD maintained since 1969 and currently undergoing renewal as more sophisticated Dreadnought class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) start to replace the ageing Vanguard fleet. France also wields a credible strategic force, increasing its stockpile of nuclear warheads for the first time since the Cold War to maintain ‘assured destructive power’. It also retains an air-delivered nuclear component.

But the two arsenals are not interchangeable, and neither can independently provide the layered, calibrated, flexible deterrence historically guaranteed by the US. Britain’s principal vulnerability is the absence of a sovereign sub-strategic capability, while the French deterrent, although more flexible, remains functionally decoupled from NATO’s integrated nuclear planning frameworks.

This distinction matters because the core nuclear problem in Europe is not simply a matter of warhead counts; it is about credibility across the escalatory ladder. European strategic nuclear arsenals deter the gravest threats, but they may lack utility in fast-moving crises below the threshold of national survival.

Russia, conversely, possesses a range of sub-strategic nuclear systems and a doctrine designed to exploit ambiguity. Indeed, without a European NATO nuclear power explicitly committed and able to wield sub-strategic nuclear capabilities, a gap exists which an emboldened Kremlin may seek to exploit in the event of a crisis wherein the US is unable to intervene. If European governments are serious about a self-reliant posture, they must focus on the rungs of the ladder where gaps are most pronounced.

The British-German engine: Establishing a sub-strategic arsenal

The most practical route towards a European deterrent lies in complementing British and French strategic forces, rather than replacing them. The UK is central to this effort, possessing a capability no other European ally can easily replicate: an operationally independent strategic nuclear force assigned to NATO.

However, His Majesty’s (HM) Government should take the next step by rebuilding a British sub-strategic nuclear arsenal. Regenerating a sovereign sub-strategic capability would provide flexibility, close the asymmetry gap with Russia – the possessor of a wide array of nuclear forces at both the sub-strategic and strategic levels – reduce dependence on future US administrations, and reassure exposed allies.

This capability cannot and should not be pursued in isolation. Here, Germany is the indispensable partner. Berlin has the industrial and financial weight required to close the European capability gap in complex weapons production, and bilateral cooperation is already well established. A realistic division of labour would see the UK leading on warhead development and stewardship, while Germany and other willing allies finance and develop a sovereign, dual-capable delivery system, potentially linked to advanced deep strike programmes.

As per Trinity House, the two allies have already agreed to cooperate on developing an advanced deep-strike weapon. If this weapon is air-launched, the F-35A Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft and the future Tempest airframe (which Germany may join) could then deploy the new missile. Such a missile could also be ‘dual-use’ – i.e., both nuclear and conventional – to save time and cost. This approach reduces duplication, operationalises existing bilateral frameworks, and creates a specifically European capability without breaching the non-proliferation regime.

Securing the architecture: Political coordination and air defence

If the military logic is to fill the escalatory ladder’s missing rungs, the political corollary must be to establish structured consultation among allies most exposed to Russian coercion. With Macron and Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, agreeing to establish a high-level French-German ‘nuclear steering group’ and include German conventional forces in French nuclear exercises, it is now over to the UK to reinforce European NATO’s emerging nuclear architecture.

A European caucus within NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group offers a viable forum. Rather than replacing NATO, it would allow Britain, Germany, France, Poland, the Nordic states, and others, to align deterrence messaging, exercises, and operational planning.

Additionally, deterrence requires robust defence. If the UK and Germany assume larger roles in this architecture, they must better protect the infrastructure upon which deterrence depends. Defending British nuclear bases, German air stations, and the wider Command and Control (C2) network through Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) complicates adversary calculations and strengthens both conventional and nuclear credibility. As defensive systems become more capable, they should be employed to protect key assets.

Greater bilateral coordination could enhance broader frameworks, such as the European Sky Shield Initiative, which relies heavily on seamless integration. HM Government’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review already places considerable emphasis on IAMD and on the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) role in this architecture. Now, it should be connected more explicitly to the emerging European nuclear debate.

This does not amount to a call for a wholly separate, supranational strategic deterrent, nor does it imply discarding NATO’s existing arrangements. The expiration of New START and the worsening geopolitical environment have fundamentally altered the Euro-Atlantic political landscape. If European governments are to harden the outer perimeter of NATO’s nuclear shelter, London and Berlin must take the lead in rebuilding the missing middle rungs of the escalatory ladder.

The most credible way forward is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It is driven by a British-German engine: preserve British and French strategic deterrents, complement them with jointly developed nuclear sub-strategic options, and embed these mechanisms firmly within NATO rather than outside it.

James Rogers is Co-founder (Research) at the Council on Geostrategy.

This article is the result of a half-day conference held on 10th February 2026 with the kind support of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) UK and Ireland. This was the first in a series of events in 2026 that the Council on Geostrategy is organising in partnership with KAS to encourage closer defence cooperation between Britain and Germany.

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The contemporary operating environment is, without a doubt, the most complex facing European states in recent decades. His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of June 2025 places warfighting readiness as the core goal for the United Kingdom’s (UK) defence. With a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-first approach, warfighting in the Euro-Atlantic is prioritised, placing lower-intensity operations further from home into a subordinate position.

There are strategic trade-offs in prioritising Britain’s near-abroad threat environment rather than maintaining a broader global posture which aims to prevent or limit the impact of other crises. Scaling back global engagement might limit early-warning and crisis-management partnerships that enhance domestic resilience, for example.

The return of major conflict in Europe fundamentally alters the UK’s threat calculus. The reality is balancing other commitments with the significant risk of overstretch like never before. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has broken previous assertions that conventional mass capability was a thing of the past. Rebuilding mass and readiness for high‑intensity warfare is expensive, and effort-intensive at a level not seen since the Cold War.

What is readiness?

In its basic military form, ‘readiness’ refers to capacity, capability, interoperability, and sustainability. It occurs on three levels: operational, warfighting, and strategic readiness. ‘Warfighting readiness’ is how the system as a whole spins into action at scale.

A January 2024 House of Commons Defence Committee report, entitled ‘Ready for War?’, summarised the mixed picture of British military readiness as the following:

• Operational readiness: proven but with issues of overstretch;

• Warfighting readiness (the ability to deploy and sustain a force fighting at high intensity in multiple domains for a long period of time): in doubt; and

• Strategic readiness (the ability of the state to identify and use tools available to support a warfighting effort): ‘more of a concept under debate.’

In giving evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee in June 2023, Gen. Lord Houghton, former Chief of the Defence Staff, asserted that the British Armed Forces have maintained high levels of readiness for standing commitments (to domestic security and overseas non-discretionary tasks) and to contingent commitments (to allies and alliances, such as the commitment to deploy forces to NATO at varying levels of readiness). At the end of 2023, over 7,000 British Armed Forces personnel were deployed on more than 40 operations.

Modern warfighting, as experienced in the conflict in Ukraine, demands a different skillset across strategic, operational, and tactical levels, potentially to be sustained for years. It covers conventional; asymmetric; cyber; and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) capabilities across physical and non-physical domains in order to achieve tactical and strategic advantage.

The challenge is that high-intensity warfare requires depth of specialised expertise rather than breadth, which is what most analysts suggest the UK has previously attempted to do. Difficult choices need to be made regarding the British Armed Forces: are they expeditionary in outlook and activity, or should they invest in warfighting in Europe?

Political will and military readiness

In recent years, numerous voices have pointed to capacity and capability constraints affecting the UK’s ability to upgrade its warfighting readiness. Fiscal challenges continue to constrain the meeting of strategic objectives. Despite the recent uplifts in defence spending as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), decades of neglect and contraction will take years to rebalance, not to mention the impacts of a flatlining economy and higher inflation.

In 2025, HM Government announced an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2027 and 3% during the next Parliament. However, there is an estimated £17 billion deficit between the funding promised in the government’s broader Spending Review and the cost of delivering the defence programme and implementing the 62 recommendations of the SDR.

Media coverage of Britain’s latent response to the growing crisis in the Middle East and the time taken to deploy HMS Dragon have brought these issues into the spotlight – HMS Dragon being the only Type 45 destroyer out of six that could be made operationally ready to deploy to the Mediterranean at short notice. HM Government’s resolve, and the readiness of the Royal Navy to defend sovereign territory in Cyprus, have garnered attention. The herculean efforts to ready HMS Dragon, which was undergoing scheduled maintenance in dry dock six days prior to deployment, underscores the commitment and ‘readiness’ of Royal Navy crews.

Defence Planning Assumptions (DPA) set out the size (and numbers) of operations the military might be required to undertake; the types of operation; where they may occur (including distance from permanent bases); and which allies or partners with whom they may be conducted. DPAs are based on the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) assessment of the strategic environment and threat, while trying to ‘optimise the force we have to respond to those threats in the best possible way’. There is wide acknowledgement that this process has become more difficult as the world has become increasingly volatile.

Operating versus warfighting

For 20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was thought that direct military intervention was required to stabilise, rather than exclusively war fight. As recently as 2021, the Integrated Operating Concept sought to move the military beyond traditional warfighting into a continuous cycle of persistent engagement. It sought to differentiate military activity between ‘operate’ and ‘warfight’, indicating that warfighting would be ‘a tool of last resort.’ While the Integrated Operating Concept was published prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was only officially withdrawn in June 2025.

The conflict in Ukraine has fundamentally altered all assumptions and presented a significant challenge for the prioritisation of activities, in addition to the need for an agile force structure to undertake such a wide range of deployments. To this end, Gen. Sir Patrick Sanders, then Chief of the General Staff, admitted that delivery against a wide range of DPAs, while simultaneously preparing for peer-on-peer warfighting, is a mammoth task. Gen. Sir Roly Walker, current Chief of the General Staff, has set a date of 2027 for the reorganisation of ground forces.

Challenges of transitioning to warfighting readiness

Preparing for warfighting readiness is a long-term commitment. The UK’s forces have increasingly become a small, high-end force. The alternative is to resource the British Army sufficiently with the capacity to train later reserves, backed up by a system of rapid mobilisation, large stockpiles of weapons and equipment, and the mobilisation of dual-use technologies.

There remains, however, the niggling question concerning ambitions aligning with available resources (not just financial) and the pace required. 2030 is only four years away. For years now, academics, experts, and former military personnel have been publicising the numerous long-term investment issues in recruitment and retention of service personnel, equipment, and contracts and procurement. The UK also requires sustained investment in its homeland industrial base to achieve warfighting readiness. This includes making use of existing manufacturing capability in other industries.

Despite the perfect storm of challenges, none of them are unfixable with time and proper investment. Programmes such as the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) and AUKUS – both already underway – will go a long way to future-proofing technological requirements.

Warfighting: A whole-of-society approach

A further challenge is readying British society for the compromises and difficult decisions outlined in the SDR and National Security Strategy (NSS) in preparation for readiness against war and crises more broadly. It has become difficult, for Western Europeans in particular, to envision war in Europe, let alone war for Europe. It will be difficult to break the mentality that war happens elsewhere, involvement is optional, and consequences at home are limited.

In 2017, Gen. Mark Milley, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, popularised the sentiment that ‘nations fight wars, not just armies.’ War requires total societal commitment, a state’s resources, and the people’s will – not solely military effort. Transitioning to warfighting readiness requires political, economic, societal, and military transformation. The British public is a long way from ready.

Iran’s blocking of the Straits of Hormuz underscores the UK’s vulnerability to strategic shocks, and is indicative of the general lack of resilience and civil preparedness for what lies ahead. Crises are becoming more frequent, and are no longer exceptional. Conflict in the Middle East should reinforce the idea that readiness is not only the responsibility of the British Armed Forces.

Conclusion

The UK stands at a crossroads. The SDR and NSS heralded a major strategic change by prioritising warfighting readiness and a NATO-first approach as a means to deliver a force ready to fight peer adversaries in Europe. Significant challenges lie ahead in the realisation of British warfighting readiness, not only in overcoming or working within fiscal constraints, but in the depth and speed of the transformation needed to be ready to meet the key dates of 2027 and 2030.

What does this mean for existing long standing commitments and the UK’s response to crises? A deeper question therefore involves the balancing of current commitments with the prioritisation of warfighting readiness. Prioritising warfighting readiness by 2030 will inevitably require the scaling back of other international commitments. From the current standpoint, existing longstanding commitments will continue to be supported, but cut back to involve as few assets as possible. An uneven balance of sorts will likely be maintained.

In the realities of the contemporary security environment, the choice may not be an either/or. It may become increasingly difficult to prioritise against mounting and more frequent crises. This becomes, in effect, a continuation of the less than ideal status quo: falling back on the ‘can-do’, pragmatic approach that epitomises British service personnel – doing what they can with whatever resources they have.

In Defeat Into Victory, Field Marshal William Slim observed the challenge faced by Gen. Harold Alexander in the early stages of the Second World War: that he ‘found himself in the normal position of a British general at the start of a war – called upon to carry out a task impossible with the means provided.’ There is no reason not to break this unproductive habit in the 21st century.

Dr Anisa Heritage is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Her research focuses on changes in the international order and international security, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region.

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

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

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In November 2025, the United States (US) published its National Security Strategy (NSS), which stated that the Trump administration ‘will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere’. This includes protecting the homeland and access to key geographies. The US would ‘deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities’ and prevent its adversaries from owning or controlling ‘strategically vital assets’.

This was referred to as the ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine. The Department of War reaffirmed this approach with the National Defence Strategy (NDS), released in January 2026. The NDS asserted that ‘American interests are under threat in the Western Hemisphere’, and that the corollary is a ‘common-sense and potent restoration of American power and prerogatives in this hemisphere, consistent with Americans’ interests.’

Most discussion about the Trump corollary focused first on what it meant for the Western Hemisphere. This, however, misses critical context – the linkage of security and stability in the Western Hemisphere to potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. For this administration, the two theatres are inextricably linked. Understanding this is vitally important for evaluating what – if anything – the United Kingdom (UK) could or should do in response to the new strategic posture of Donald Trump, President of the US.

Washington’s hemispheric focus

America has long assumed that it held primacy over the Western Hemisphere, but, in practice, it has maintained inconsistent and uneven attention on regional affairs. Instead of sustained engagement and commitment, Washington’s focus was fleeting, and almost exclusively linked to periods of crisis and instability. Domestic political issues, such as immigration and the war on drugs, have driven most engagement in recent years, rather than a concerted policy prioritisation.

In this diplomatic and economic vacuum, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was able to take advantage, expanding its own reach in and across Latin and South America. The US’ distraction throughout the two decades of the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’ proved to be a boon for Beijing. Through financial largesse accompanied by few (if any) expectations or requirements, the PRC secured access to critical minerals, rich fishing waters, and infrastructure projects which increasingly caused the Western Hemisphere to fall within Beijing’s practical sphere of influence in lieu of the US’ rhetorical remit.

By (re)asserting American interests in the region, the Trump administration hopes to ensure defence and security in its own backyard. By effectively closing the southern border and deploying law and immigration enforcement authorities, the President has succeeded in largely halting illegal immigration. The US has also taken the fight against drug traffickers to waters off the coast of South America, striking suspected narco-vessels. This is only part of the administration’s calculus.

If the Trump administration can increase its access to regional energy assets, such as in Venezuela – offsetting the depletion in the US’ strategic oil reserves – and critical minerals and rare earth elements (which are overwhelmingly controlled by the PRC), Washington will in turn reduce its exposure to hydrocarbon market instability from the Persian Gulf and on supply chains controlled by Beijing. Done successfully, this could decrease the need for future American interventions in the Middle East, and ensure that the US can better weather the potential impact of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific over Taiwan on the American economy, thereby allowing it to intervene with less strategic risk. This is now, of course, complicated by the secondary effects of Operation EPIC FURY against Iran.

The US also aims to secure strategic geographic territory in the region by denying it to the PRC and, to a lesser degree, Russia. The Panama Canal is the central transportation linkage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The possibility that Beijing could directly or indirectly control the canal or its operation is an unacceptable risk for Washington.

The Euro-Atlantic theatre

The diplomatic furore that resulted from Trump’s attempt to secure Greenland masked its strategic relevance. Greenland is vitally important for controlling access from the Arctic into the North Atlantic – the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap. Control of these waters allows the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to monitor and track Russian submarines, as well as containing the Kremlin’s strategic assets from departing their Arctic bastion. Greenland is also vital real estate for the missile defence architecture of the US homeland, hence Trump’s firm stance on his desire for sovereign control of the island to hedge against losing access in the future.

Given these considerations, the first policy priority for the UK is to ‘keep calm and carry on’. The doctrine, such as it is, does not target Britain or its immediate interests. If anything, the Trump administration has worked to ensure His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s seat at the table. The UK’s presence at the convening of the Western Hemisphere’s defence chiefs reflected a recognition by America of Britain’s interests in the region.

This is unlikely to change. The UK has personnel embedded in the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South, working daily with the US on counter-narcotics operations in the Western Hemisphere, and this continues as business as usual.

The likelihood that significant friction or policy conflict will result between Washington and London in the region is limited. There is certainly room for conflict over specific elements of the policy as it is applied, as evidenced by the temporary suspension of intelligence from British sources in the targeting of narco-traffickers in the Caribbean. Indeed, HM Government’s focus on the rule of international law could set up further conflicts of a similar vein (such as was the case over Iran). This is, of course, an issue for Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, and not Trump, who has demonstrated little (if any) interest in international law – a position that is unlikely to change.

The military buildup of naval and military assets ahead of the operation in Venezuela notwithstanding, the impact of American force deployment in the Western Hemisphere on broader global engagements is likely limited, at least in the near term. The issue is not so much power projection against Latin and South American countries, but rather the assertion of the US’ interests through measured presence and deployment, and periodic joint exercises and training with partner militaries.

In terms of force deployments, the Trump administration’s likely calculus is based on a greater assumption of responsibility for the NATO defence and deterrence mission by the European members of the alliance, which necessitates reduced American presence in the Euro-Atlantic. This enables the belated rebalance to the Indo-Pacific. Given the threat picture in Latin and South America, the requirements for presence there are well below what would be comparably necessary in the Euro-Atlantic, or indeed the Gulf region.

The frictions resulting from the Prime Minister’s initial decision to deny the use of British bases in support of the American offensive operations against Iran reinforces the importance of the second key consideration – finding ways of aligning with Washington’s objectives that are politically palatable for 10 Downing Street. This is fundamentally about determining the art of the possible given competing priorities, while also reaffirming the UK’s credibility in Trump’s eyes (the only figure whose perspectives ultimately matter in the administration). Such credibility has suffered markedly owing to the dissonance at the start of Operation EPIC FURY.

Options for collaboration

Increased cooperation on some of the underlying challenges the Trump corollary seeks to correct would strengthen the bilateral relationship and benefit Britain. The diversification of critical mineral and rare earth element sources and the development of non-Chinese controlled supply chains through investment (both diplomatic and financial) in Latin and South America would address a key concern of the White House, while also providing economic benefits to the UK.

A practical effort from HM Government, and one that would be welcomed by Washington, would be the pursuit of defence and security in Britain’s own primary theatre of operations – the Euro-Atlantic, as identified in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) – thereby enabling the US to pursue its own activities closer to home. This is effectively what the White House is pursuing: as the NDS notes, America is ‘sensibly and prudently pressing and enabling US allies and partners to take primary responsibility’.

Here, there is an area of overlap that will benefit both countries – Greenland and the North Atlantic. HM Government’s deployment of assets as part of ARCTIC SENTRY is a prudent move, illustrative of this concept in practice, and something already baked into the SDR. Additionally, this has the added benefit of addressing security in key strategic terrain also identified in the NDS.

There is also natural overlap on space-based cooperation between the two nations, as well as the Trump administration’s ambitions for ‘Golden Dome’: the continental missile defence system which the President seeks to field. The US$185 billion (£138.3 billion) programme will offer opportunities for UK-based defence companies, and bilateral cooperation could aid British national interest in enhancing its meagre Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) capabilities.

While the US has prioritised the Western Hemisphere in its policy documents and through preliminary actions, it remains to be seen how much policy effort and energy Washington will dedicate to implementing the Trump corollary further. Operation EPIC FURY and its regional expansion, to say nothing of other emergent geostrategic issues (precipitated by Trump or otherwise) could well consume greater American focus, making the corollary somewhat moot for the remainder of the President’s term in office.

Joshua C. Huminski is an International Fellow and the Council on Geostrategy, Senior Vice President for National Security and Intelligence Programmes, and Director of the Mike Rogers Centre for Intelligence and Global Affairs at the Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

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

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The June 2025 speech by Gen. Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the General Staff, at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) laid out an ambitious vision: ‘double then triple the fighting power of our land forces, by 2027 and 2030 respectively’, to be achieved through increased lethality, digital integration and ‘growth through transformation’. It is intellectually compelling, operationally sound and strategically necessary.

The question is whether it is funded, whether it forces the hard choices it implies, and whether the British Army can close the gap between its stated ambitions and its actual resources. Within this, the key question is whether the Army can construct a credible force able to fight and deter threats effectively, or if it will continue with an unsustainable narrative that yields minimal results.

The current state of the British Army

At present, the Army consists of around 73,000 regular soldiers and about 30,000 reservists, all funded by a defence budget of approximately £57 billion. This budget not only supports the Army, but also covers the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force (RAF), nuclear deterrence and personnel costs, leaving little room for extensive military expansion. Thus, the expectation that the Army can maintain multiple divisions is questionable.

Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine emphasises the importance of scale and preparedness in modern warfare, as well as the advances in modern technology. Success requires not just military strength, but also societal commitment, resilience to losses and the ability to sustain production over time. However, the United Kingdom (UK) is unlikely to mobilise at that level unless faced with a significant threat to national security. The British Army must therefore operate within the limits of what it can realistically sustain.

Vision for the future

Sir Roly proposes a transformative approach to how the Army operates, emphasising capabilities that can deliver effective results without requiring massive troop numbers. His plan focuses on enhancing military efficiency through innovative technologies and integration rather than relying solely on traditional methods of deployment.

Sir Roly also talked about the ‘20/40/40’ concept outlined in 2025’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The concept is a more tech-driven approach, where 20% of combat capability will be traditional platforms such as tanks, artillery and attack helicopters; 40% will rely on expendable, autonomous systems such as loitering munitions and kamikaze drones; and the remaining 40% will consist of reusable, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled assets such as surveillance drones that can operate with or without human input.

This model aims to reduce costs associated with traditional military assets while still delivering impactful results. Even so, the feasibility of this transition currently hinges on allocating sufficient financial resources and personnel. The current budget – and the much-delayed Defence Investment Plan – simply does not provide enough leeway to implement this ambitious vision without making sacrifices.

The 20/40/40 concept also raises the question of what happens when the survivable 20% is damaged, destroyed or killed? After all, the enemy gets a vote, and will also employ large numbers of autonomous and attritable weapons. Alongside enhanced lethality, the need for Counter-Uncrewed Aerial System (C-UAS) capabilities which can keep up with evolving threats is increasingly urgent.

Addressing the challenges

The current structure of the British Army is constrained by financial realities, which do not appear to be improving at the moment. While Sir Roly has set ambitious goals, the available resources do not align with these aspirations. A practical assessment suggests that maintaining two operational divisions is becoming increasingly challenging, and there is no second echelon, let alone a third. A more feasible approach may involve focusing on a single, well-resourced division which can balance operational needs with budget constraints while the other division provides a second echelon.

The Army should also strengthen essential support roles, such as logistics (including medical capacity) and intelligence functions, which are critical to successful operations. Across European North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies, there is a widely acknowledged gap in the depth and breadth of the enablers required to conduct modern, high-intensity fighting, especially as the United States (US) – the traditional provider of such capabilities – reviews its posture in Europe.

Strengthening these functions – outside of the elements discussed in the 20/40/40 approach – will be key to unlocking the fighting potential of allied armies as they grow in size. Poland alone will soon field 24 combat brigades plus hundreds of thousands of reserves. The ability to provide meaningful enablers or support functions would greatly bolster the UK’s influence within the alliance.

Specialist forces, including units designed for training and partnerships with allied nations, play a vital role in ongoing strategic competition, although they should be carefully prioritised against pressing threats. Additionally, maintaining minimal expeditionary capabilities allows Britain to respond to crises affecting its interests, even if on a smaller scale. Such capabilities should not aim for global power projection, but enabling effective deterrence against immediate threats.

Legacy platforms without a transformation path consume budget that should fund autonomous systems. A 50/50 split between crewed and autonomous systems is the correct strategic direction. However, it requires explicitly naming which traditional programmes will need to accept reduced procurement numbers. Ajax, Boxer and recapitalised Multiple Rocket Launch Systems (MLRS) may all be necessary, but the quantities should be determined by what the transformation model actually requires; not by what was originally planned before autonomous systems changed the calculus.

Finally, as recently reported by the Parliamentary Defence Committee, the UK also needs to consider its commitment to its NATO Article Three duty of maintaining a comprehensive plan to resist armed attack. The committee’s report argues that both homeland defence and the protection of British Overseas Territories have fallen behind the threat environment, and need to be resourced properly.

Optimising reserves

Reconfiguring the Army Reserve to focus on specialist surge capabilities rather than broad mobilisation is crucial. Instead of attempting to maintain infantry battalions that cannot operate effectively, reserves should be centred around areas where civilian skills can significantly expand military capacities during crises. This includes sectors such as medical services, logistics, cyber operations, engineering and civil-military cooperation.

However, this will require His Majesty’s (HM) Government to commit more resources. The SDR only promised to grow the number of active reservists ‘by 20% when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s’ – which is not soon enough.

The industrial base gamble

‘Growth through transformation’ is compelling, but operationally uncertain. Creating thousands of jobs in AI, robotics and software could genuinely transform both fighting power and the UK’s defence-industrial base.

However, this assumes that industry delivers viable attritable platforms at promised cost and scale; that perpetual prototyping accelerates, rather than fragments, capability development; that risk capital invests beyond the initial £400 million earmarked in the SDR despite inevitable programme failures; and that export markets materialise for British autonomous systems in a competitive global market. Project ASGARD demonstrates proof of concept with 20 industry partners. Scaling this to corps level and building a sustainable industrial base is a different challenge entirely – and one without precedent in recent British defence procurement.

The gamble is worth taking. But, it requires honest acknowledgement of risk, fallback plans if industrial transformation underperforms and sustained investment beyond initial allocations when perpetual prototyping encounters inevitable setbacks. Transformation cannot be an excuse to avoid the hard choices about legacy programmes. It must happen alongside them, not instead of them.

A strategic approach to the future

The future path for the British Army requires aligning its ambitions with practical realities. Sir Roly’s vision represents a forward-thinking initiative that could enhance military readiness through innovation and strategic improvements. However, turning this vision into a reality calls for significant commitment and a willingness to make difficult decisions about funding and resource distribution.

For the vision to become a reality, HM Government should show political courage and make tough decisions. It is essential that military leaders provide an honest assessment of their capabilities and make choices that align with realistic assessments of risks and resources – as Sir Richard Knighton, Chief of the Defence Staff, has openly stated, there is a £28 billion shortfall. This may mean curtailing certain commitments and capabilities that are less effective in serving the UK’s strategic interests.

The focus could be on developing a single, robust division capable of taking on critical operations, while simultaneously improving key support capabilities. The second division could be considered as a second echelon force at a reduced readiness level. Additionally, there is a need to consider homeland defence seriously, along with the other services, and develop a meaningful plan to meet Article Three requirements.

This strategy reflects a genuine commitment to fulfilling Britain’s responsibilities within NATO while maintaining flexibility for crisis management. Ultimately, the British Army should assess its abilities candidly, and be willing to prioritise what is essential to ensure long-term effectiveness.

At this crucial juncture, the Army must balance its aspirations with the realities of its funding and capabilities. Of course, should the level of defence investment HM Government is willing to provide grow, and timelines be brought forward, then plans could look beyond the approach outlined here. The proposed vision from Sir Roly presents an opportunity to rethink the future of military readiness through innovative approaches and better resource management. However, achieving these goals requires political will, clarity in decision-making and a commitment to recognising the true landscape of military needs.

By making focused investments in a streamlined structure, the British Army can fulfil its commitments more effectively. This requires accepting that not all existing roles or capabilities can be maintained as they are if the Army is to enhance its overall effectiveness. The way forward should be centred on realistic expectations and a cohesive strategy to ensure the British Army remains a relevant and capable force in a complex global environment.

Rory Copinger-Symes CBE retired from the Royal Marines as a Brigadier, having served with US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) in Hawaii from 2016 to 2020. He is a Senior Adviser to Bondi Partners and SecureCloud+, a Non-Executive Director at Halo International Group and an associate with Quirk Solutions. He serves as a Trustee of the Royal Marines Charity and runs the Commando Spirit alcohol brand.​​​​​​​​​

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

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This article forms the second part of a two-part series on rethinking rearmament. The first part, focusing on industrial requirements, can be read here.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies have declared a collective target of spending 5% Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence and security by 2035. By then, if the alliance attains its goal, the nations combined will spend US$4.2 trillion (£3.1 trillion) each year.

Private finance of all kinds is lining up, from venture capital to pension funds. They hold differing risk and tenor appetites, and as such appear to offer great opportunity for nations willing and able to manage such capital injection. Financing options that have not existed for decades are appearing, as are genuinely novel initiatives.

However, the single customer – the state – is challenged by finance, process and accounting. These are difficulties distinct from those faced by private companies, but they weigh heavily on how business can be done.

Some big numbers, although they can be bigger

European NATO deploying 3.5% of GDP solely on defence amounts to an additional US$350 billion (£258 billion) annually. If all NATO nations reach 5%, the combined additional annual defence and security spend will be US$2.7 trillion (£1.9 trillion).

5% of GDP is undoubtedly considerable. However, Ukraine currently spends nearly 35% of its GDP on defence, similar to the Allies’ expenditure throughout the Second World War. In wartime, such effort is not a matter of reallocating public spending within a fixed budget, but of mobilising the economy for national survival. Against that benchmark, a 5% peacetime commitment can be understood as a form of insurance: not to ‘compete’ with civilian activity, but to prevent a far costlier mobilisation from ever becoming necessary.

Such enormous investments in a single industry bring serious risks in terms of inflation, waste and corruption. These must be managed alongside the pressure to rearm at speed. The United States (US) is working to a 2027 deadline, based upon its assessment of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) intentions towards Taiwan.

NATO has no stated dates, but much reporting indicates a similar – if not shorter – threat horizon from Russia. Although the alliance is beginning to address the deficit, the Kremlin’s mobilised industry is producing ammunition at least twice – and up to four times – as fast as NATO nations combined, and around double the rate in more complex machinery, such as tanks, Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) and drones.

Spend, baby, spend

There is money available, and there is pressure to rearm — so where is the bottleneck? Several structural factors militate against rapid capital deployment and a sustained increase in defence production. The most fundamental is the state’s difficulty, as a near-monopoly buyer, in committing quickly and credibly to higher levels of spending.

Episodic demand and political reluctance to spend on defence have, over time, hollowed out industrial capacity. Production lines have closed and skills have atrophied. Layered on top of this are persistent cultural inhibitions towards defence spending, which manifest as punitive financing conditions and bureaucratic constraints ill-suited to long-term industrial investment.

Many free and open nations’ governments, notably those of the United Kingdom (UK) and France, have extremely constrained budgets. However, in 2025, Britain announced an expectation to spend 5% of GDP on defence and security against NATO’s agreed target date of 2035 (should financial conditions allow for this), with the projected split being 3.5% of GDP earmarked for core defence spending. France will increase spending at a similar rate, though from a base of 2% compared to the UK’s 2.3%. These two countries, and several others in NATO, are simultaneously grappling with decades of underinvestment, years of inflation and a need to modernise and expand their armed forces.

Debt levels vary across NATO, as do the levels of repayment. Britain spends around 7.7% of its GDP on interest payments; France around 3.4%; and Turkey around 11%. With such variation, some nations are showing less reluctance to spend and more imagination in how to service the payments. The Netherlands has proposed a ‘freedom tax’ on both citizens and businesses, which it anticipates will contribute an extra 25% to its defence budget. Germany has exempted defence spending above 1% from its debt brake calculations, and by 2030 will almost double its spend to €160 billion (£139.5 billion).

As repeatedly learned, the bond market has a vote in what it regards as responsible and necessary borrowing and spending. It will also price military competence and credibility, because this secures the stability for a flourishing economy. Resilience, stability and security require investment, but equally they attract it.

Failure to demonstrate these characteristics will cause capital to flee. In an increasingly unstable world, genuine military strength and resilience should bring investor confidence, and thus economic power.

This virtuous circle can be challenging to start. Genuinely new concepts for financing government spending include sovereign-owned international defence financing banks, akin to the World Bank. This idea hinges on being backed by many states and attaining a AAA rating. Such an institution would lend weight to the credibility of increased borrowing for defence spending.

This is not a temporary fix, and will not solve all the challenges facing free and open nations, but it is a long-term initiative that can deliver serious change to their defence industries.

Build it and they will come

Free and open nations’ defence industrial capacity can also benefit from such an international bank. Coupled with the proposed institution’s AAA rating, its defence focus and expertise will allow it to provide debt or guarantees to allied defence industry at reasonable rates, acting as a backstop lender to banks and institutions traditionally unwilling to take greater risk. This missing link in the flow of capital to companies has been documented extensively. Properly financing the companies doing the work is critical to energising industry.

In addition, industries with no historical links to defence could be encouraged to find one. As previously elaborated in the author’s previous article on military requirements and manufacturing, many industries have the skills and capacity for military equipment. To unlock this, requirements must become less bespoke, and be constructed with knowledge of existing machinery. Automotive manufacturers, for example, are expanding into defence manufacturing, as they did in the Second World War.

The valley of death and historic hangovers

Any investment fund follows its own guidance for returns and the types of investments desirable and permitted. Venture capital and private equity have different risk and return profiles to each other, which in turn differ from those of pension funds and private credit. Ultimately, all defence turns on a single buyer and its issuance of contracts.

The Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) procurement processes (like those of many other countries) not infrequently stifle – sometimes to the point of failure – defence companies possessing great technology and people for want of a contract. These contractual deserts must be addressed, and the responsibility for changing buyer behaviour and risk tolerance lies in the National Armaments Director (NAD) Group.

In the private sphere, many institutions, including British banks, have explicitly excluded defence from their permitted investments. The Financial Conduct Authority frequently receives criticism that its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) guidelines proscribe defence – so much so that it issued a statement in early 2025 to explain that it saw no such constraint.

As such, adding ‘Security’ to ESG has been suggested. However, ‘ESSG’ is at least as likely to devalue the entire classification as it is to attract more capital, as the kinds of investors who prize high ESG scores are often those who wish to exclude defence industry. More pragmatic approaches have expanded ‘Social’ to include national resilience – possibly a middle path.

More worryingly, accounting rules have changed after a series of private finance initiatives and public-private partnerships which were seen as poor value for money. These now effectively rule out meaningful long-term financing ambitions for infrastructure and equipment. Modern accounting rules – including International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 16 lease standards – frontload the recognition of long-term commitments on the public balance sheet. While cash payments may be spread over decades, the associated liabilities are recognised upfront, immediately worsening reported debt and fiscal ratios.

As infrastructure or fighter jets, for example, endure a long time and have very small residual value, huge sums must be spent in very constrained periods. The accounting treatment creates a powerful disincentive for governments to enter into long-term defence contracts or innovative financing structures, even when doing so would be economically rational.

Without wading further into accounting and cash flow rules, it is enough to understand that rules which seem sensible for private companies that could default are not perfectly suited to the construction of national public infrastructure. The sovereign is the ultimate risk-taker and financial backer, and should be able to manage its long-term financing obligations differently. Furthermore, state-owned bodies, such as the National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank, could also offer new capital and management strategies. It is not impossible to generate revenue from nuclear shipyards, but the state will need to think and act differently.

A battle of wills

To paraphrase the Great Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, much will come down to a question of will. The levers are held, but using them effectively will require government, civil service and private capital to act differently. Often, free and open nations find themselves respecting accounting practice or procurement processes as if they were atomic weights. To incorporate this vastly expanded capital requirement, and indeed availability, much will need to change – but only the rules of defence finance, not the laws of physics.

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 HM Government or the Ministry of Defence.

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The growing security concerns across Europe have intensified the debate over how states organise defence cooperation. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the persistence of sub-threshold threats and growing demands on military readiness have highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of existing multilateral frameworks, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU).

The potential of minilateral collaboration has been highlighted further amid speculation about a possible decrease in the United States’ (US) presence in Europe and shifting security arrangements around Greenland. In this regard, like-minded minilaterals have gained more prominence in addressing regional security concerns, their strength lying especially in their greater flexibility and speed of decision-making.

What the JEF gets right

In the Northern Hemisphere, and particularly in the Baltic Sea, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) has undoubtedly presented its strategic and operational importance in addressing security challenges for over a decade. Starting as one of three ‘Framework Nations Concept’ arrangements at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales, it represents a high-readiness, flexible framework where a pool of military capabilities can be used for conducting different operations.

Comprising ten Northern European nations, the JEF was designed to be capable of responding quickly to crises across the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea. Its ability to conduct rapid consultations and deploy forces at short notice provides deterrence against adversaries – namely Russia – and reassurance for allies. According to Hanno Pevkur, Minister of Defence of Estonia, the JEF’s importance lies in its ability to respond rapidly. Beyond existing capabilities, a similar understanding of threats provides a solid foundation for fast decision-making.

Over the past few years, the JEF has been adapting to evolving security concerns with the aim of clarifying its unique contribution to regional security, especially in areas where large multinational formats have failed to respond with the speed and relevance. Lately, the focus has been on sub-threshold actions, especially amid intensified activities by Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ in the Baltic Sea.

The challenge with sub-threshold threats is that NATO, while possessing a comprehensive military toolbox for countering military threats, does not have all the means needed to counter sub-threshold activities, which combine both military and civilian aspects. On their own, minilateral formats such as the JEF have the potential to become very effective and responsive in dealing with such threats.

In November 2023, the JEF activated its Joint Response Option – which focuses on sub-threshold threats – for the first time, following damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia. The patrolling of JEF warships in the Baltic Sea clearly contributed both to deterrence and reassurance. There is still significant potential to leverage minilateral efforts in the ‘grey zone’, especially in connection with protecting critical undersea infrastructure.

Furthermore, there seems to be potential for combining efforts in other areas as well. In November 2025, JEF defence ministers signed an agreement to enhance the minilateral’s partnership with Ukraine. This aims to provide training for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and to foster closer collaboration on protecting critical underwater infrastructure, drones, battlefield medicine and methods to counter disinformation.

What can limit the effectiveness of minilaterals?

It is necessary to acknowledge that smaller cooperation formats also have their limitations. One of the key challenges lies in the limits of operational capacity. While smaller frameworks can improve coordination and responsiveness, they remain dependent on national force readiness and availability.

For most European allies, long-term underinvestment has resulted in a hollow force structure, scattered military readiness, a strong focus on lighter forces and innovative capabilities. Most armed forces in Europe struggle with personnel shortages, insufficient stockpiles and delayed procurement programmes. Even with a significant increase in defence budgets, readiness levels would still take years to match needs and expectations.

Another underlying constraint is the lack of sovereign enablers, including strategic lift, intelligence, and advanced Command and Control (C2) capabilities. In practice, this makes many minilateral groupings dependent on either a particularly capable leading nation within the format, or on the implicit support of a larger external power.

The decisions to increase defence spending, such as the joint commitment by alliance members at June 2025’s NATO summit in The Hague to raise spending to 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), largely remain as political slogans in many countries. While all the Baltic states have already committed to meeting this spending, the United Kingdom (UK) – the JEF’s leading nation – has committed to reaching 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2027, with an expectation to reach 3.5% by 2035; the agreed deadline for the investment commitment from The Hague.

The Netherlands has accepted the commitment but has not provided any timelines. Defence capacity building is a persistent, long-term effort, and assessments indicate that even with sufficient military investments, providing the necessary capabilities to replace American contributions would take years.

Nevertheless, there is ongoing strong trust in NATO as a cornerstone of collective defence in Europe, but it is evident that implementing its new generation of regional defence plans, adopted at the NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023, requires coherent integration of national, multinational and minilateral efforts. While minilaterals can increase overall readiness through joint exercises, and are seen as a tool for rapid response, there is a risk of fragmentation if military activities are not synchronised properly with NATO planning.

Importance of minilaterals in supporting Ukraine

The enhanced partnership initiative portrays another area where minilateral cooperation has demonstrated potential during the past several years. Since 2022, smaller coalitions of willing states have played a decisive role in coordinating military assistance, training and capability development for Ukraine. These groupings have often been more agile in accelerating equipment delivery, as well as in more focused capacity-building initiatives.

Another example of a well-functioning minilateral formation is the IT Coalition. Launched in 2023, this coalition coordinates and delivers practical support to Ukraine across Information Technology (IT), cyber and digital resilience. Its primary focus is enhancing Ukraine’s capacity to maintain secure communications, digital C2 and cyber defence during wartime.

Estonia plays a pivotal role as a co-leader of this coalition, alongside Luxembourg. It facilitates support for Ukraine in funding, procurement and expertise-sharing, prioritising rapid delivery and operational relevance. Assistance provided encompasses secure IT infrastructure, communications-related digital solutions, cyber-military engagement and tools to improve situational awareness.

Estonia’s decision to pledge 0.25% of its GDP to military assistance for Ukraine has high strategic importance but, as a small nation, even with this extended effort, the promised military assistance will only amount to about €100 million (£87.3 million) per year over the next four years.

Minilateral initiatives can be beneficial to amplify the impact of such efforts, and the IT Coalition has thus far met the expectations: in just two years, €1.1 billion (£960.4 million) was raised. Furthermore, this pledge not only supports Ukraine, but also strengthens the overall security architecture in Europe by fortifying the continent’s defence innovation ecosystem and enhancing long-term technological competitiveness through lessons learned on the battlefield.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the potential of minilateral cooperation in bolstering NATO and EU efforts towards strengthening regional security have been valuable. Worth mentioning are the following positive benefits:

• Targeted responses to sub-threshold threats: The JEF’s capability to activate responses to sub-threshold threats quickly positions it as a vital asset in the Baltic security landscape, complementing NATO’s broader military capabilities;

• Enhanced flexibility and rapid decision-making: Smooth decision-making and rapid responses are crucial for addressing the multitude of security threats, especially sub-threshold ones, and safeguarding critical infrastructure; and

• Agility in supporting allies and partners: The success of smaller coalitions in supporting Ukraine has been very valuable to Estonia, which has been devoted to supporting Ukraine as long as it takes to achieve victory, and whose contribution has been amplified through minilateral engagements.

However, there are also still some limitations to keep in mind with such formats:

• Operational capacity limitations: While minilateral arrangements such as the JEF offer promising frameworks, they often face limitations in operational capacity stemming from each nation’s existing military capacity;

• Risk of fragmentation and overlapping: This is especially relevant in relation to direct military engagements, which must be synchronised with NATO to prevent overlap and confusion in the operational practices; and

• Long-term commitment requirements: Building effective defence capabilities through minilateral cooperation is a persistent, long-term effort that may not yield immediate results.

Minilaterals have become indispensable components of Northern Europe’s security architecture. Their flexibility, speed and political cohesion make them well-suited to addressing the demands of a rapidly changing threat environment. The success of initiatives such as the JEF demonstrates how smaller frameworks can complement NATO by enhancing readiness, interoperability and regional deterrence.

However, their effectiveness ultimately depends on the availability of national forces, sustained investment in capabilities, and careful alignment with alliance planning and command structures. When aligned with NATO’s collective defence efforts and embedded within a coherent strategic framework, minilaterals have the potential for significantly strengthening collective defence, crisis response and resilience – against both conventional and sub-threshold threats.

Nele Loorents is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS). Her areas of expertise include NATO and US security and defence policy, transatlantic relations, and deterrence and defence posture in the Baltic region.

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

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World leaders have recently concluded the latest Munich Security Conference, Russia continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the policies of the current United States (US) administration are increasingly perceived to threaten international peace and stability. In this context, critical maritime security threats loom larger than ever.

Such threats are increasingly interconnected and sophisticated, with the conflict in Ukraine in particular increasing pressures on global energy supplies. This has resulted in Russia deploying a ‘shadow fleet’ of vessels to evade economic sanctions, and leading directly to attacks on undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

As two of the most exposed island nations sitting at the western fringes of Europe, and with large maritime territories spilling out into the northeast Atlantic, the United Kingdom (UK) and Republic of Ireland appear particularly vulnerable in the face of such threats – not least because a significant proportion of the world’s undersea cables and pipelines either pass through or close to their waters. Given mutual dependencies, as well as evident capacity constraints on Ireland’s side, deeper bilateral cooperation between both countries to counter existing and emerging maritime security threats is ever more essential.

Such cooperation is well-established, and strongly valued from both sides. It builds on shared geography, history and practical necessity. Nevertheless, at the start of 2026, Britain and Ireland are at a turning point. With an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on bilateral defence cooperation expected imminently, and with Ireland also currently finalising its first National Maritime Security Strategy (NMSS), there are clear indications of new approaches and investments from both nations in mutual and cooperative efforts to counter maritime threats.

British and Irish maritime developments

Following a report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy from September 2025, His Majesty’s (HM) Government subsequently announced that it intends to establish a new Undersea Infrastructure Security (UIS) Oversight Board, chaired by the Cabinet Office, to set strategic direction across diverse government departments responsible for the operation, security and resilience of undersea infrastructure, among other aspects.

Such commitments came after HM Government had announced details of its ‘Atlantic Bastion’ programme, designed to strengthen protection of undersea cables in the North Atlantic. This programme seeks to combine the use of autonomous vessels, deployed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology alongside more traditional warships and patrol aircraft, creating an ‘advanced hybrid force’.

On the Irish side, in anticipation of the publication of the NMSS, there have already been announcements on investments in new technology, including towed sonar arrays to monitor threats to undersea infrastructure. Given obvious capacity constraints, however, much of Ireland’s focus has been increasingly multilateral in orientation – for instance, the Irish Naval Service’s Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) LÉ William Butler Yeats participated in a Passing Exercise (PASSEX) with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) warships off the Irish coast in an effort to improve interoperability between available assets.

These efforts have been much more noticeable in intelligence sharing and data gathering. For example, Ireland decided to join NATO’s Individually Tailored Partnership Programme (ITPP) in 2024. For similar reasons, in April 2025, the Irish Defence Forces also joined the European Union’s (EU) Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE). This seeks to improve information sharing across maritime authorities between Ireland and other EU partners in order to detect threats to critical undersea infrastructure.

Of course, this kind of defence collaboration is a sensitive subject within Ireland, with many perceiving it as a threat to the nation’s policy of military neutrality. As Ireland increasingly adopts a ‘collective security’ approach, cooperating in European and NATO-led initiatives, Irish leaders have been careful to point to cooperation with other militarily neutral states, such as Switzerland, to highlight how important multilateral defence collaboration can still go hand-in-hand with an ostensibly neutral geopolitical standpoint.

The future of British-Irish maritime cooperation

It is clear that collaborative efforts between the UK and Ireland will be increasingly essential to ensuring maritime security in the North Atlantic, particularly as both countries cooperate further in infrastructure development and investments in future technology, and increase their energy interconnectedness. This is especially reflected in the outcome of a joint summit from March 2025, where Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, and Taoiseach Micheál Martin sought to strengthen cooperation in maritime security, with a particular focus on the protection of critical undersea infrastructure.

The subsequent joint statement closed with a commitment to the establishment of a UK-Ireland 2030 Steering Group, led by the Cabinet Office and Department of the Taoiseach. The Steering Group also complements existing cross-border institutions established under the auspices of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. This makes clear that the kind of joint investment and regulatory alignment anticipated – in particular to further the offshore energy sector – will depend upon joint cooperation in data gathering and intelligence sharing to counter the security threats to such infrastructure.

These commitments will find expression in the imminently anticipated bilateral defence MOU, which is expected to highlight an increased focus on, inter alia, joint military training and education, as well as within Ireland’s forthcoming NMSS. The NMSS itself will likely place the greatest emphasis on enhanced commitments to multilateral cooperation in this area.

The expectation is that the commitments will soon bear fruit. Indeed, proposals from the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly have suggested the necessity of establishing a joint statutory Cables Protection Commission, with the aim of monitoring and securing critical subsea infrastructure. It was recommended that this body include representatives from government and defence, as well as owners of undersea assets. Alongside comprehensive mapping of such infrastructure, the Commission would oversee monitoring patrols and efforts to enhance resilience of undersea infrastructure through the intermeshing of communications networks.

Moves like this also signal the importance of a final plank to efforts to shore up maritime security regarding undersea cables and pipelines. To monitor and protect such infrastructure adequately, progress should be made on engaging properly with other government departments and processes, such as in relation to maritime planning authorities. Private sector actors should also get involved due to ownership of undersea assets as well as in terms of efforts to enhance monitoring and surveillance more broadly across the maritime sector.

None of these priorities will be delivered easily. However, it is clear that there has never been as much political impetus and institutional momentum for the UK and Ireland to work together to meet these challenges.

Dr Richard Collins is Professor of International Law and Dean of Internationalisation and Engagement in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests coalesce around the law of the sea, global governance and international institutions, with a particular focus on maritime borders and dispute settlement.

This article is published in association with Queen’s University Belfast as part of the International Sea Power Conference 2025.

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The United Kingdom (UK) and Norway have significantly deepened their defence relationship since 2024 through a strategic partnership spanning bilateral agreements, industrial cooperation and coordinated operations. The Lunna House Agreement, announced on 4th December 2025, establishes an interchangeable British-Norwegian Type 26 Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) frigate fleet, and formalises joint operations to protect undersea critical infrastructure – reflecting heightened Russian maritime activity in the North Atlantic and convergent threat assessments.

Industrial measures include Norway’s purchase of at least five Type 26 frigates from BAE Systems via a £10 billion programme – the UK’s largest warship export deal by value – and deeper collaboration on missiles, torpedoes and uncrewed systems. Key factors also include improved interoperability, rapid reinforcement and resilience to sub-threshold threats.

But what are the drivers of this maritime partnership, its components, and overarching consequences for British, Norwegian and European defence?

Strategic drivers

Both countries explicitly anchor defence and naval cooperation in their shared membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – which remains the cornerstone of their respective security – and the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). Yet, the rationale goes beyond common membership of the transatlantic alliance.

Indeed, British-Norwegian defence integration is driven by a shared geography and convergent threat assessments in the High North and North Atlantic, including the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap. These constitute key operational areas due to their proximity to Russia’s maritime approaches and core nuclear bastion.

The necessity of monitoring and deterring Russian naval activity across NATO’s northern flank – alongside the imperative to protect the undersea cables and pipelines that underpin Europe’s economic and military connectivity, but remain vulnerable to sub-threshold attacks – are key determinants of the partnership, calling for joint patrols and synergistic efforts.

Components of the maritime partnership

Bilateral cooperation framework

The British-Norwegian defence partnership was crystallised in December 2024 with the Joint Declaration on the Norwegian-UK Strategic Partnership. The two countries committed to deeper bilateral defence cooperation ‘across all domains’, joint capability development and enhanced interoperability. The declaration stresses cooperation in NATO and the JEF, and resilience against sub-threshold threats – including cyber, espionage and disinformation.

February 2025’s Joint Statement on Enhanced Defence Cooperation was oriented towards a multifaceted and ambitious defence agreement. It prioritises defence industrial ties, interoperability and interchangeability, intelligence sharing, defence of critical infrastructure, countering sub-threshold threats, and High North and North Atlantic strategic cooperation. It also confirmed co-leadership of the Maritime Capability Coalition supporting Ukraine – in particular in relation to minehunting capabilities – and highlighted longstanding Arctic training ties between the Royal Marines and the Marinejegerkommandoen (the Norwegian Marines) as well as Norway’s participation in the UK’s Carrier Strike Group 2025 deployment.

Finally, the Lunna House Agreement established a combined fleet of at least 13 Type 26 frigates (eight for Britain, the aforementioned minimum of five for Norway) to operate interchangeably, with shared maintenance and common standards. Their purpose is to hunt Russian submarines and protect undersea infrastructure.

Both countries reaffirmed NATO as the cornerstone of transatlantic security, integrating bilateral efforts with alliance deterrence and defence posture in the High North. Similarly, the JEF remains a prominent framework for rapid, scalable operations with like-minded northern European allies, while the Northern Group provides political-military coordination across the region.

Defence industrial cooperation

Within the parameters of this partnership, defence industrial cooperation holds a central role, in particular the Type 26 frigate programme. Norway’s purchase of the frigates is expected to support around 4,000 British jobs and more than 400 suppliers, advancing interoperability and long-term joint life cycle sustainment. The programme underpins the Lunna House Agreement’s interchangeable fleet concept and common ASW standards.

In addition, the UK’s adoption of Norway’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM) strengthens the common munitions baseline, while Sting Ray torpedo collaboration aims to enhance stockpiles. The joint development and adoption of autonomous maritime systems is pursued under NATO’s High North efforts, and will constitute a cornerstone of British and allied lines of defence against Russia’s sub-threshold attacks in the maritime domain.

These programmes highlight a shift towards strengthening the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (DTIB) by reducing fragmentation, sharing upfront costs and developing mechanisms to shield European allies from the effects of geopolitical volatility on the defence sector.

Operational cooperation

The British-Norwegian defence partnership does not stop at political intent, strategic alignment and industrial cooperation; it extends to operational cooperation. In the North Atlantic and High North, the UK and Norway prioritise joint ASW patrols in the GIUK gap, expanded maritime surveillance (including P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft operations), and protection of undersea cables and pipelines, citing a reported 30% increase in Russian vessels near British waters over two years.

The combined frigate fleet will operate with shared facilities and logistics, enabling rapid deployment and reinforcement across the North Atlantic. The Royal Norwegian Navy will also contribute to future UK-led Carrier Strike Group deployments, reinforcing long-term maritime integration.

Implications for defence policies and postures

The Lunna House Agreement operationalises interchangeability at fleet level, aligning with British objectives to step up European security and consolidate industrial bases while also enhancing deterrence and defence against Russian naval threats. The adoption of NSM and common ASW logistics improves munitions resilience and through-life support across British-Norwegian fleets.

This constitutes a first, but substantial, step towards reinforcing broader European defence. It contributes directly to the UK’s security and defence objectives in the High North and North Atlantic. Moreover, it sends a strong political message to both the Kremlin – ‘we are ready to face aggression’ – and Washington – ‘we can develop bold solutions to strengthen European defence’.

For Norway, the Lunna House Agreement formalises shared infrastructure and potential prepositioning, strengthening national and allied crisis response capacity and posture. The acquisition of Type 26 frigates and an expanded British presence in the High North increases maritime reach, rapid reinforcement options and Arctic readiness, which is consistent with Oslo’s long-term defence plan.

Mitigating risks and actionable next steps

Usual DTIB bottlenecks (e.g., schedule, cost, supply chain, workforce) are expected to expand in the context of expansive order books throughout Europe as a result of new NATO defence pledges and capability targets. Addressing these requires robust governance and aligned requirements.

Both Britain and Norway signal government-to-government oversight and shared maintenance facilities to mitigate risks. Yet, the question that remains is how not to overwhelm the UK’s DTIB, already saturated in response to increased orders.

To overcome bottlenecks, Britain should expand and modernise shipyard capacity while guaranteeing workload and training pipelines; invest in apprenticeships and reskilling programmes to build a mobile, highly skilled workforce; and strengthen supply chain resilience through strategic stockpiling, dual-source qualification and stress-testing surge plans. At the political level, it is crucial to develop mechanisms to stabilise budgets; streamline innovation contracts; and ensure governance and delivery benchmarks. This creates an integrated ecosystem linking government, industry, academia and regional hubs.

One of the key challenges for the defence partnership will be to approach cooperation comprehensively across multiple domains and dimensions. Beyond traditional surface combatants, the agenda should integrate uncrewed systems, counter sub-threshold warfare measures, cyber resilience and disinformation mitigation. An integrated British-Norwegian sub-threshold warfare capability framework should operate across geographic and military domains (although with a strong maritime component) to reinforce national, regional and European defence.

Achieving coherence requires a framework that links operational posturing with technological innovation and information security while ensuring interoperability and burden-sharing. Efficiency will depend on clear governance structures, joint capability roadmaps and mechanisms for rapid decision-making that align national priorities with collective objectives. This will eventually enable the partnership to address Russian threats while remaining agile in the face of evolving challenges.

Ultimately, as well as deepening British-Norwegian defence cooperation, the agreement could serve as a blueprint for enhanced wider British-European defence and security cooperation in order to address capability and operational gaps against maritime and sub-threshold threats.

Prof. Basil Germond is the Co-Director of the Security Research Institute at Lancaster University, and Professor of International Security in the School of Global Affairs.

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This article forms the first part of a two-part series on rethinking rearmament. The second part, focusing on defence financing requirements, can be read here.

The United Kingdom (UK) and European nations are finally beginning to rearm properly. However, Britain maintains military programmes with exquisite specifications and delivery many years, or even decades, away. These programmes require bespoke manufacturing to meet exquisite military requirements; a luxury of nearly four decades of conflicts without true time pressure – for Clausewitzians, these are ‘limited’, as opposed to ‘unlimited’, wars.

Those who set military requirements are unhabituated to considering time, cost or manufacturing capacity. Industry expects a separate defence pipeline, and for military budgets to pay for the plant and equipment investment. The Covid-19 pandemic dispatched similar considerations in medical equipment manufacture and procurement, where prompt and effective solutions were imported from other manufacturing sectors. The Second World War saw the same. Now, under both time and financial pressure, there is opportunity to energise these ideas in defence.

Hope is not a valid course of action

After the First World War, experienced American officers assumed industrial transformation would simply need a declaration, and production would switch to wartime. The United States (US) Army even had a term for it: ‘M-Day’, or Mobilisation Day. The idea – not a plan – was that reserves would appear, machine tools would begin producing rifles and the logistics chains would fall into place. One hears echoes of this delusion now – that once the ‘real’ crisis arrives, industry and society will transform on cue. Many months, or years, are required to convert to war production, even at full power.

In defence circles, one hears occasionally that only established and experienced defence companies are capable of the scale and expertise to design complex weapons. This attitude becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as only very large companies have the financial endurance and the lobbying depth to elongate a military capability programme long beyond its operational relevance. Simplified requirements which fit existing manufacturing capabilities, drawing from all industrial capacity – not just defence – can help to dispel this.

Military requirements should therefore be made with knowledge of industrial capacities. Industry can only thrive if it helps guide these requirements. Strongly emphasising speed of delivery brought success during the Covid-19 response, accepting good enough and largely ignoring the perfect. These changes come from positive decisions: direction to accept higher risk, using new acquisition practices and working to iron-clad timelines.

Who knows large-scale manufacturing?

The fastest pivots during Covid-19 were by non-medical plastics and printing companies to produce surgical masks and gowns. Designs rapidly iterated and best practice surged ahead of regulation. The same was achieved with more complex systems, such as ventilators. Designs were developed and swiftly built by partnering with the aerospace and automobile industries. Spirit Aerosystems, General Motors and Ford, having never built such devices, partnered with ventilator producers and increased production by 100 times within six months.

Manufacturing partnerships during the pandemic echoed the late 1930s, when the American automotive industry became the core of Allied military production, starting with a significant cash injection from the UK and France. In 1938, the two nations ordered US$350 million (US$8 billion, or £5.8 billion in 2025) of military equipment from US companies, amounting to 15% of their defence budgets. This was because their domestic military productive capacity was inadequate. Even though the two nations had refocused domestic industry to war production years before, they still could not service their own demand.

Too small an appetite

Today, Britain and European nations are constrained by both productive capacity and demand. The defence budget of the UK, historically 4-6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is now approaching 2.5%; too small to support the scaling of many businesses. Equally, defence-specific manufacturing is insufficient to service military requirements.

Britain should therefore design and build products which can leverage existing manufacturing capability in other industries. As in the Second World War and Covid-19, the military will need to collaborate with industrial expertise, and His Majesty’s (HM) Government should facilitate the participation of a wider swathe of industry. The resultant capabilities will be better, and the UK will make more of them. This increases their military value, decreases their cost and makes them more likely to be sold overseas.

The required transformation can only come from mass-production know-how, which then was found in the automotive sector. Fast-moving defence companies, such as Helsing, have partnered with automotive manufacturers to exploit mass-production expertise. This approach is also dual-use; the military components will be modular or software, easily inserted from elsewhere.

The required element from the Second World War

Military requirements are often expected to endure for decades, and are not made with knowledge of the potential of manufacturing and materials. Long-term capability forecasting was never realistic in conflict, and is now also highly unrealistic in peacetime. Rapid technology development and the low cost of highly capable consumer systems, from engines to lasers, means frozen specifications are a recipe for irrelevance.

Further technological pressures weigh on defence: that of software-defined weapons and precise autonomous mass. The solution is modular, off-the-shelf technology to permit rapid iteration. A place for exquisite capabilities will remain, but such capabilities are rendered unusable without mass, and mass is unaffordable unless it is simple.

In August 1940, the US Army gave the specifications for its M3 Grant tank to automobile companies that had never built armaments before. They soon dramatically changed the military-specified materials, components and process. Armour was welded instead of riveted, a process deemed impossible by US Army engineers. The aircraft-specification engine was replaced with automobile engines. The principles applied were common tooling and part reduction via a commercial workforce. The technological and materials developments, imported to defence from elsewhere, led to the most prolifically produced American tank – the M4 Sherman.

Before our very eyes

The US is driving competition through open architecture and modularity, reducing costs and improving capability. Government Reference Architectures, non-proprietary interfaces, and an assumption of modular and spiral development has widened the scope of American military procurement. Political boldness has brought new competitors to market by facing down lobbying and increasing departmental risk appetite.

Many small changes have helped, but the most consequential has been a focus on speed of delivery. Air-to-surface missiles from new competitors, such as Anduril’s Barracuda-500, Zone 5’s Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) and Leidos’ Black Arrow, came to market 3-4 times faster (less than 1-3 years) than traditional cruise missile programmes such as Tomahawk and the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), which take 8-12 years. Simplified and reduced specifications and processes (i.e., increased risk) have brought this impressive speed.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) potent military development is fuelled by deep collaboration under its military-civil fusion strategy. It has shown that highly complex and cutting-edge military projects, such as the Shenyang J-35, a fifth-generation stealth fighter, can be co-developed. It incorporates originally civil-use technologies, from semiconductors to infrared sensors, which have been spiral-developed for military use. Not dissimilar from the F-35 Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft, the J-35 is approximately half its cost.

Free and open nations should take note of this fusion of manufacturing and civil-military development. Even with no direct military confrontation, the PRC’s products are attractive exports, and as Ukraine and India have done, Britain will likely eventually meet them on the battlefield.

Not quite a crisis – but don’t waste it

The key difference between a pandemic and geopolitics is the nature of the enemy: Its capacity for actively disrupting what people do. Military specifications are too complex, driving slow development cycles and expensive manufacturing. Cross-industry collaboration was re-proven in Covid-19, but the UK should not wait for a crisis for defence to begin these practices.

Not only does broad collaboration speed development, but it also lowers cost, which will make British equipment more attractive for export. The US is driving competition through open architecture and facing down vested interests. Combining this with industrial best practice and driving speed through simplification can free the UK and its European allies and partners of their production constraints and drive further innovation. This is Britain’s moment, and it should be seized.

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 HM Government or the Ministry of Defence.

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The challenge in geopolitics is not a lack of an engaged readership, but making international security relevant to those preoccupied with daily life. Under-30s in Europe, facing affordability crises and rapid technological change, often fail to see how profoundly responsible international security is for their way of life. This particularly affects their willingness to stand up for their country, and their ability to express gratitude for liberal democracy – both increasingly important as we enter an increasingly multipolar world.

The United States’ (US) recent National Security Strategy (NSS) can be framed as a golden opportunity for European nations – particularly the United Kingdom (UK) – offering a chance for the next wave of British and European talent to drive efforts to revitalise military, industrial and entrepreneurial sovereignty on the continent. However, there is no guarantee that it will be seized.

Yet, there is a chance for major things to happen in European nations, with big winnings up for grabs. As mentioned in the NSS, Europe’s share of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell from around 25% to 14% since 1990. In per capita terms, since 2000, real disposable income grew almost twice as quickly in the US than in European countries. Thus, a historic opportunity exists to reclaim Europe’s economic position in the world in such a way to secure a prosperous, self-sufficient continent.

Opportunities to step up

The NSS is the latest instalment in the saga of American retrenchment from its post-Second World War globalist posture. It selectively reallocates foreign policy resources away from Europe towards other theatres in the name of US ‘national interest’. This ‘step back’ provides Europeans with the opportunity to ‘step up’ in several ways, some of which can already be seen.

The US continues to urge its ally nations to increase defence spending, the latest threshold being 5% of GDP by 2035 following the June 2025 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit in The Hague. The boom in private capital flowing into defence projects over 2025, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) startups within Germany and the UK, indicates that European nations are ready to meet this. But this industry will require a continuous flow of new talent, new ideas and new technology to stay ahead of adversarial states.

Britain has historically maintained an economic advantage in defence compared to its continental peers – for example, BAE Systems is the only European defence company consistently ranking in the global top ten. The UK also has a track record of leading efforts to speak out against adversarial actions, such as its early vocal support for Ukraine and leading role in the Coalition of the Willing.

This has been driven by several factors, important among them geography. Britain has long fared as a versatile maritime power and ‘island neighbour’, fortuitously uninhibited by the causes of squabbling and policy gridlock that has, at points, prevented decisive buildup in this space on the continent.

Therefore, within European countries’ opportunity to revitalise their military posture, there is still an opportunity for the UK to lead on supplying new talent, new ideas and bold new technologies to this pillar of economic sovereignty. The next generation of British talent should embrace the country’s longstanding defence posture and ensure that the UK continues to stand up for its values.

Despite retrenchment, the NSS still outlines a desire to expand American access to critical minerals. This explains the emergence of the ‘Pax Silica’ alliance of Donald Trump, President of the US. With Britain and the Netherlands currently the only European signatories, this could become an area of tension as the rest of the free and open European nations look set, at least for now, to miss out.

Resource independence is an area of relative weakness for Europe. RESourceEU, the European Union’s (EU) equivalent to Pax Silica, launched in late 2025 to establish relationships with resource-heavy countries, has allocated just €3 billion (£2.6 billion) of investment in 2026. By contrast, Pax Silica has approximately US$100 billion (£74.6 billion) available for deployment. While European nations are not known for their sovereign critical mineral supplies, enough do exist to get the conversation going on greater resource self-sufficiency.

Here, the UK has a choice.

It can continue toeing the American line, or it can choose to work more closely with its allies and partners in Europe, eventually able to shun Pax Silica. Additionally, Pax Silica capital is designed to give the US a ‘first mover advantage’ in mineral capabilities in signatory countries. On the one hand, this looks like Foreign Direct Investment – which it absolutely is – and will bring local jobs. But in the context of the NSS, it should be seen as intending to serve one thing in the long term: American national interest. Britain’s national security architecture (which does include economic security) should not be sold out to an increasingly unreliable ally.

All of this provides a window of opportunity for the next generation of Britons and Europeans to step up and create their own networks to secure domestic supply chain resilience, ignoring America’s Pax Silica. This will be vital in achieving regional independence in the race to ‘go green’ and implement sovereign AI strategies.

Concerns over ‘Big Tech’ influence on US policy towards Europe should be met with homegrown alternatives. Replacing the likes of Palantir, OpenAI or Microsoft infrastructure will not be easy, or in every case necessary (or even desired). But, in an era of greater regionalisation, bright minds from the generation which has grown up with this technology should see the current transatlantic turbulence as an opportunity to get inventive and propose alternatives.

In 2025, the UK minted more unicorns – startup companies valued at over US$1 billion (£745.5 million) – than in 2023 and 2024 combined. This monumental track record blows other European countries completely out of the water, and demonstrates the opportunity for British entrepreneurial spirit to play not just a central role in European technological sovereignty, but a leading one.

The UK is uniquely positioned to bring high quality, high value-add propositions to the European markets which continental partners would struggle to match. Its biggest asset are the ambitious, determined bright minds who have grown up seeing what does and does not work.

The implications of a Democrat presidency

Predictably, senior Democrats have ‘slammed’ Trump’s NSS. But US retrenchment is part of a longer-running theme of an eroded Pax Americana since 1991. The current geopolitical era exhibits some degree of ‘power vacuum’, where one superpower – the US – steps back, but another cannot step up to take its role on the world stage – e.g., the European Union (EU) or the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This creates uncertainty about what rules everyone should be playing by, and who might be the next global authority.

In this world, European nations taking responsibility for themselves, regardless of the future stripe of the US administration, will serve to bolster their resilience against this uncertainty and support the case for their place in the world. The opportunity for the next generation to step up is therefore not one which will last just a few years, but one which supports a revitalised British and European paradigm in military, industrial and entrepreneurial posture.

The rationale for Europe stepping up

First, European populations are ageing. As this happens, we generally become more risk averse. Therefore, in not having new talent step up, European nations risk sleepwalking into ‘over-seatbelting’ themselves with regulation and quagmiring themselves economically. Proud, entrepreneurial spirit is the only way European nations can shake the old adage of ‘America innovates, China imitates, Europe regulates’.

Second, polarity is changing. The last 80 years have seen a world of a more limited polarity; ebbing and flowing with the influence of great powers. Obviously the US, Russia and European nations have had the podium. But the next 80 years are set to be much more multipolar, encompassing the rise of the PRC, India and ‘middle powers’ with increasingly rich populations who will demand more sway in global institutions and higher standards of living. This will create pressure on the ability of global institutions to agree on a ‘single’ way of doing things, which free and open nations grew accustomed to in the aftermath of the Cold War, but which they failed to back adequately.

Conclusion

To sum up, European nations need to think big, be enterprising and take more responsibility for their own industrial, entrepreneurial and military prowess. If they do not, they risk losing out on living standards and global influence in a multipolar world. The UK, with its unique strengths and democratic history, is poised to lead on this front.

But, who better in British and European society to do that than those for whom it is all to play for? A generation fuelled by ambition and a desire to live with purpose and have impact in this world?

So, to the next wave of British and European talent – go and get stuck in. You never know, it might just be the thing you were looking for.

Dominic Selby is an exam-qualified chartered accountant, as well as an individual member of Chatham House and RUSI. He has a keen interest in international security, entrepreneurship and innovation, and holds a BSc in Economics and Political Science from the University of Birmingham.

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In October 2025, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) published its revised Maritime Strategy; a political statement designed to deter adversaries while reassuring allied nations and their publics. Inevitably, commentators have paid significant attention to the contribution of the alliance’s maritime elements to deter and defend members states’ interests in the event of full-scale peer conflict. From the nuclear Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) to conventional forces drawing upon the unique attributes of maritime forces, the revised Maritime Strategy is clear: NATO’s sea-based forces are ‘Always on watch – ready to fight’.

Russia is given primacy as a source of maritime threats facing NATO. Additionally, terrorism and international criminal organisations utilising the maritime environment for profit also receive attention. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), although a more distant threat given its Indo-Pacific location, is also present in the strategy.

The emphasis that the strategy places upon non-traditional, sub-threshold security threats is significant, with references to these throughout the document. Destabilising and disruptive actions targeting free and open nations’ infrastructure, alongside drugs and weapons smuggling and human trafficking, all receive attention – as does the ‘shadow fleet’ operated by sanction-avoiding states.

The security significance of the North Sea

The North Sea has served as a vital means of communication and trade for centuries. Today, it is a crucial source of energy – and consequently wellbeing – for Western Europe’s citizenry through its vast oil and gas reserves. While these remain critical energy sources, the North Sea has strategic importance in Europe’s energy future and the transition to sustainability. It hosts some of the world’s largest offshore wind energy systems, which in turn offer potential for hydrogen production, and local geology offers potential for offshore carbon storage.

For the communities surrounding the North Sea, energy production has generated tens of thousands of jobs in technology, engineering and construction – as many onshore as offshore. In an increasingly volatile era, the energy provided by the North Sea region is critical to Europe’s societal security.

Both now and in the future, the North Sea energy system relies upon complex integrated systems. Oil and gas platforms, offshore wind turbines and internet communications require a vast array of undersea cables and pipelines, offshore nodes and landing sites. As shown in Box 1, nowhere is this more evident than in the Humber Estuary:

Box 1: Case study of the Humber Estuary

Situated at the centre of the United Kingdom’s (UK) North Sea littoral, the Humber Estuary is the largest port complex in Britain, and a hub for North Sea maritime communications. It has a vibrant and vital offshore renewables industry, which has led to it being known as the UK’s ‘Energy Estuary’. It hosts oil terminals and storage, ferries and cargo movement alongside landing hubs for undersea cables and pipelines connected to the North Sea energy network.

In total, 25% of Britain’s energy requirements flow through the Humber region annually. Drax Power Station, located near Selby, is the UK’s largest power station and source of renewables, generating 5% of Britain’s power and 10% of its renewables. Without the port at Immingham, however, it could not function.

The Humber Estuary also provides access to ports deeper inland than any other river in the UK. At the centre of the vast estuarine complex is Kingston-upon-Hull; a city with a rich maritime history. The University of Hull shares this history, and today adds to it with its ambition to create a fairer, brighter, carbon-neutral future for all through sustainable maritime and energy security.

As well as being transit points for cargoes and people, North Sea ports provide support vessels to this maritime infrastructure. However, these ports, and critical energy infrastructure, are incredibly vulnerable to disruption by Britain’s adversaries.

The sub-threshold threat

Through its Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (GUGI), Russia has one of the most sophisticated deep-sea operations, enabling continuous and persistent activity in and around the North Sea. Dedicated to covert deep-sea intelligence gathering and sabotage, GUGI has excellent technological capabilities, especially in deep-sea submersibles, as well as a capable array of surface support ships. However, it is not the only – nor arguably main – threat to offshore infrastructure.

In recent years, sub-threshold attacks on offshore infrastructure have increased around Europe. Perhaps most noteworthy is the damage to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022. Nevertheless, the Baltic Sea in particular has seen several other disruptive attacks, including on the Balticconnector pipeline in October 2023; the BCS-interlink between Sweden and Lithuania, and the C-Lion1 between Finland and Germany in November 2024; the Estlink 2 cable between Finland and Estonia in December 2024; and the TV and radio cable off the coast of Gotland in January 2025.

Additionally, in February 2025, new damage to the C-Lion link was discovered, and after the shadow fleet vessel Boracay was boarded by French forces in October 2025, an extra twist came with extensive drone activity that resulted in the closing of Danish airports. Notwithstanding these examples – and they are not exhaustive – the shadow fleet represents unrealised potential.

There are thousands of shadow fleet vessels operating under false flags, manipulating Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) via renaming and false registry. Ostensibly designed to avoid sanctions – especially in transporting oil – they offer a wide range of other attributes, including movement of illicit cargoes such as drugs and weapons, and movement of persons, military or otherwise.

Russia operates the largest global shadow fleet, but it does not do so alone. It is suspected that most of the disruption previously noted was carried out by Chinese vessels, utilising a relationship which sees Russian shipping acting reciprocally for the PRC off the coast of Taiwan and elsewhere.

It is important to note that ‘suspected’ is the keyword here. In none of the noted activities was an actual suspect proven to any legal standard. Plausible deniability is key to sub-threshold action.

NATO in the North Sea

At the launch of NATO’s revised Maritime Strategy, Safe Seas – a leading research network dedicated to maritime security and ocean governance – reported that the alliance had undertaken the widest dissemination of the strategy among stakeholders in the maritime security community. It also noted that NATO draws increasingly upon data generated by industry.

This is significant. If the intelligence necessary to attribute disruptive attacks is to be generated, a whole-of-industry approach is required. At the most basic level, intersubjective agreement is necessary to establish what needs to be protected, how it should be protected, and by whom. While commercial operators have this information, intersubjective agreement is not always reached – as highlighted in a Joint Committee on National Security Strategy report.

NATO’s ultimate goal behind such an approach is to gain persistent maritime situational awareness; the basic requirement for any effective maritime security structure. In this regard, alliance engagement with stakeholders should be contextualised with its actions elsewhere, such as the establishment of the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell at NATO Headquarters in Belgium and the Centre for Critical Undersea Infrastructure at Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) in the UK. Another important act is the development of the ‘Mainsail’ project, which aims to nurture the persistent maritime situational awareness vital to generating necessary maritime intelligence.

Technology will be critical in generating intelligence and data for offshore and subsea infrastructure. However, it is important to note that when considering surface activity around critical undersea infrastructure – as well as ports and land-based critical infrastructure – traditional human intelligence remains vital. This is also true of threats generated by terrorist and cross-border criminal activity.

Here, a problem arises. All too often, workplace personnel are unaware of what to look for, and whom to inform when discrepancies arise. Large swathes of ports and other facilities are open, with limited security. For security staff and police tasked with protecting onshore infrastructure, the creation of secure, reliable networks to generate and process information are vital to gathering the necessary intelligence to deter and thwart disruptive attacks.

All of this requires a whole-of-industry approach to security and intelligence gathering. British policymakers cannot focus solely on offshore and undersea issues. Liminality is a key feature of maritime security problems; considering maritime security as an offshore issue in isolation is futile.

Dr Christopher Martin is Senior Lecturer in War Studies and Contemporary Security in the School of Criminology, Politics and Law at the University of Hull. He was awarded the Julian Corbett Prize for Research in Modern Naval History in 2005, and his book The UK as a Medium Maritime Power in the 21st Century was shortlisted for the UK Maritime Foundation’s Mountbatten Award in 2017.

This article is published in association with the University of Hull as part of the International Sea Power Conference 2025.

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The United Kingdom (UK) stands at a generational inflection point. As the United States (US) reasserts a muscular approach to geopolitics in the Western Hemisphere, and as Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) seek to reshape eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific, Britain must decide whether it will shape events or be shaped by them. Nowhere is this choice clearer than in the North Atlantic.

Washington’s renewed focus on Greenland, driven by great power rivalry with Russia and the PRC, has brought the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap into acute relief. Greenland, a self-governing island under Danish sovereignty since 1953, holds vast reserves of critical minerals. In an era where maritime supply chains underwrite military strength, the GIUK gap has become the epicentre of strategic competition.

Britain is situated at the southern end of the GIUK gap; one of Europe’s two key critical maritime chokepoints alongside the Strait of Gibraltar. More than just shipping lanes, these are strategic nodes: Gibraltar governs access to the Mediterranean and Suez Canal, while the GIUK gap determines Russia’s ability to access the Atlantic from the Arctic and the US’ ability to reinforce Europe. Both are core spheres of British influence.

‘Spheres of influence’ are often dismissed by Wilsonians as a relic of imperialism. Yet, this principle has guided the UK’s statecraft for centuries: preventing a single power from dominating the continent and threatening Atlantic Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs). From the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada to the defeats of Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler, this logic endured. It rests on an immutable truth: in a multipolar world, interest must take precedence over ideals. Britain must relearn this lesson and apply it to the North Atlantic.

What the North Atlantic needs now is a security framework bringing together those whose prosperity and sovereignty depend directly on the GIUK gap: the UK, the US, Iceland and Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands). Britain should construct a ‘US-GIUK gap treaty’ grounded in working proactively – not reactively – towards ensuring one another’s national security interests are no longer neglected.

The US’ recent security concerns over Greenland are well-founded, as Russia continues militarising its Arctic territories at pace, increasing its illicit maritime trade in sanctioned oil across the North Atlantic (funding its full-scale invasion of Ukraine), and Beijing takes more and more interest in both commercial and military activity in Greenland. Previous American pushback against Chinese investment plans for Greenlandic airports, fearing dual-use by Beijing, are not without precedent, as seen in Cambodia and Tajikistan – both regional strategic allies of Beijing.

A new defence treaty between the GIUK gap nations and Washington – a ‘Foroe Doctrine’ – would rightly recognise that North Atlantic security is a shared responsibility. Named in recognition of the Faroe Islands’ centrality to the GIUK gap and echoing the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, it would recognise the North Atlantic as a distinct security space in which the four signatories hold responsibility for stability, resilience and deterrence of the region.

Its purpose is to keep the US in, not out. The surest way to keep unilateral rhetoric towards Greenland off the table is to channel American power into a cooperative architecture. As Thomas Jefferson enunciated of the UK’s support for the original Monroe Doctrine two centuries ago, ‘Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm; with her on our side we need not fear the whole world’. In the same spirit, a Foroe Doctrine would bind Washington to a North Atlantic compact, turning Greenland from a potential object of contention into a pillar of collective resilience.

To secure American buy-in, and avoid duplicating existing frameworks such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the treaty should deliver operational substance. It should operationalise a model that the US has applied successfully in the Indo-Pacific – playing the PRC at its own game. Similar to the ‘Squad’ – a quadrilateral security framework comprised of Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the US, designed to increase interoperability and protect partner Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) against Chinese aggression – a US-GIUK gap model could field a hybrid, multinational white hull coast guard. Under British leadership, this force would:

• Monitor and protect Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI);

• Interdict illicit maritime activity and ensure ‘shadow fleet’ sanction enforcement;

• Provide a route to market for industry-developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) sensors and autonomous platforms to enhance detection;

• Operate in extreme Arctic environments; and

• Provide a persistent, scalable presence below the threshold of armed conflict.

The framework for such a renewed doctrine should encompass a new UK-led, JEF-compliant military task force, forward-deployed on a permanent rotational basis in Greenland, and separate to the existing American and Danish military operations on the island. This task force should be centred around British and Danish troops providing the first line of deterrence against any future incursion or annexation by a foreign power.

Such a deployment should evolve within five years to include a naval and air base on the island to be able to scale up troop numbers in times of crisis while still maintaining a permanent presence. It should include a Royal Navy frigate making regular anti-submarine patrols around Greenland, and a discussion on how to replicate NATO’s air policing mission in Iceland, with Icelandic authorities working alongside British, Danish and American counterparts to provide a similar capability on Greenland.

This strategy would deliver three immediate benefits. First, it strengthens the UK’s strategy by reinforcing the Royal Navy’s ‘Atlantic Bastion’ concept across the full spectrum of armed conflict. It also opens market access to Denmark, Iceland and the US for the development and testing of bespoke defence capabilities in a climatically hostile environment, driving innovation and interoperability. By incorporating Denmark, it further extends anti-submarine capabilities and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) westward, securing the GIUK gap and constraining Russian access from the Arctic. This approach not only enhances deterrence, but positions Britain as the indispensable actor of North Atlantic security.

Second, it would improve the defence of Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland – territories increasingly exposed to Russian and Chinese interference but lacking the military capacity to counter it alone. Iceland, with no standing military, would particularly benefit from a consistent presence. Deploying multinational white hull convoys to dominate the GIUK gap, supported by US Coast Guard key enablers, such ‘cutters’, would provide an asymmetric advantage in enforcing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) against Chinese and Russian military and commercial vessels. Iceland’s experience in the ‘Cod Wars’ emphasises a hard truth: maritime disputes do not necessarily favour the stronger military. This approach would also mirror the PRC’s Indo-Pacific strategy, denying Beijing any credible counter-narrative.

Third, it demonstrates to a sceptical Washington that Europe is stepping up, and not only to secure its own region. By defending maritime approaches to the American East Coast, it is acting in the interests of US national security – reaffirming Britain as America’s strategic partner of choice in the North Atlantic.

The criticism should not be that the US sought to revive a ‘Monroe Doctrine’ for the 21st century, but that European nations failed to offer one of their own. For major powers, spheres of influence never went away. The Europeans’ failure was not that Washington considered a Monroe-style doctrine for the Arctic, but that they lacked their own doctrine. In that vacuum, unilateral rhetoric supplanted collective resolve. A Foroe Doctrine would correct this imbalance, anchoring Washington to a mutually beneficial compact which asserts responsibility and sovereignty, deters interference and reminds of a lesson which European nations were quick to forget: the immutable reality that geopolitics ultimately rests on power.

Robert Clark is a Visiting Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and a Fellow at the Yorktown Institute in Washington D.C. He served in the British Army for 10 years.

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As conflict and discontent unravel the guiding assumptions of liberal globalisation, geopolitical competition for control over physical infrastructure, technologies and resources increasingly shapes the future. The scales have fallen from the eyes of those in free and open nations who believed that the temporary post-1989 period of peace and harmony meant that their nations could survive on services alone.

A post-liberal political economy is emerging, whereby national and economic security are intertwined. In November 2025, His Majesty’s (HM) Government outlined how the United Kingdom (UK) will position itself in this changing context with the long-awaited Critical Minerals Strategy (CMS).

States are rebuilding their industrial bases to secure supply chains as global trade fractures, seeking to acquire the material foundations of digital transformation, re-establish their defence manufacturing capability and energise the Net Zero transition by accelerating green industries. In particular, access to the metals and materials which drive digitalisation, decarbonisation and defence reindustrialisation are determining who makes and who breaks the future of capitalism.

The new focus on sectors such as critical minerals as part of these transformations expresses a shift from an ‘anywhere’ economy of services and global supply chains to a ‘somewhere’ economy based on resources and assets rooted in place. It has emerged that these resources and assets are no longer seen straightforwardly in terms of the contribution they make to sustainability, but in terms of their strategically pivotal role in security.

The first Critical Minerals Strategy was published in 2022. Against a backdrop of pandemic and great power rivalry, it set out plans for supply chain security over metals and materials, largely through the prism of international trade and development rather than domestic production – something continued in the early pronouncements of the current government.

The first iteration of the Modern Industrial Strategy, for example, had little to nothing to say about the subject. As a consequence of a substantial weight of consultation responses received on that initial Green Paper, the revised version recognised the existence of critical minerals clusters in every corner of the country and, crucially, their capacity to generate high‑wage, high‑skilled jobs in working-class communities. Most significantly, the Strategy also carved out space for minerals, metals and other materials through a new definition of ‘foundational industries’ that underpin the eight more exclusive growth‑driving sectors which anchored its original iteration, including digital, energy and defence.

The National Security Strategy, published in June 2025, subsequently reinforced the central role that critical minerals can play within a strategic reset. Critical minerals are explicitly named as a key terrain on which competition to shape the future of science and technology will play out, with ‘national champions’ stimulated by private-public partnerships becoming an increasingly prevalent model for how countries secure access and advantage.

The new CMS consolidates these forward steps. While the previous iteration centred on securing international supply for the green transition, the new version broadens the scope beyond sustainability to focus on the security granted by sovereign capability and offers a vision for how mineral wealth can build the UK’s power and influence in a fractured world. Minerals such as tin, copper, lithium, nickel and tungsten are presented as essential to Britain’s national security in terms of defence, economic resilience and capacity to play a leading role in the digital and green transitions.

To support this potential, the CMS commits to domestic extraction, refining and recycling as pillars of sovereign capability – not only with respect to sustainability, but in search of security amid an epoch of conflict and competition. The designation of ‘criticality’, in the case of critical minerals, is determined as much by geopolitical constraints on supply as it is by the physical availability of the materials themselves. The requirement to account for geopolitical, ethical and ecological risks in how the UK procures and produces minerals central to decarbonisation, digital transition and defence demands that Britain and its allies and partners source them from closer to home where possible.

Importantly, the new CMS sets out an ambitious target that 10% of national demand be met domestically and, in what marks a significant development upon the previous version, advances commitments on stockpiling for defence purposes. The UK’s geology is here a source of potential strength and advantage.

In Britain, sources of critical minerals span the length and breadth of the country. In particular, Cornwall – home to the Critical Minerals Challenge Centre – is a historical hotbed of world-leading mineral wealth which demonstrates the UK’s potential across three key resources with applications in everything that powers and protects the country; from energy infrastructure to defence technology.

Lithium grabs a lot of the headlines, but Cornwall has globally and regionally significant tin reserves. Tin mining ceased in 1998, but the forces of ‘deglobalisation’ and the search for ethically and ecologically higher-standard inputs has made plans by firms such as Cornish Metals to restart operations newly viable. The CMS presents tin as a ‘growth mineral’, committing to work further to fill the so‑called ‘midstream’ of smelting and refining capacity so that more of the value chain can be captured within British borders, reducing reliance on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and realising more of the potential worth of the product domestically.

This is just one of the ways in which the new CMS surpasses the previous focus on exploration alone by pledging to scale up domestic production, processing and stockpiling of minerals. For instance, lithium – present in high concentrations in Cornwall’s ‘clay country’ – now has an explicit domestic production target to be reached by 2035.

This aspiration is supported by the Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, released alongside the Modern Industrial Strategy, which gave a starring role to critical minerals insofar as domestic production and processing of lithium and nickel is seen as crucial to reducing reliance on overseas supply for battery technologies. A long-promised Circular Economy Strategy looks likely to reinforce this by setting out how critical resources and raw materials are used and reused within the wider reindustrialisation of the UK’s economy, as well as reducing Britain’s reliance on importing raw materials.

Most relevant to the defence and security dimension are the strategically important reserves of tungsten centred on Cornwall and its border with Devon. Tungsten is a resource pivotal to advanced manufacturing and defence production, but whose supply mostly comes from the PRC and Russia. Like tin, it was mined historically, but its fortunes were tethered to the threat of war and conflict owing to its utility in arms production – for instance, as an alternative to depleted uranium in shells.

In the current climate, companies such as Cornwall Resources are set to see significant international interest as the struggle intensifies to stockpile tungsten, with the potential for the UK’s output to anchor trade agreements with trusted allies such as the United States (US). Clearsighted about Britain’s own need to stockpile such assets, the CMS’ expansive definition of ‘growth minerals’ puts on stream a more supportive financial and policy environment for tungsten producers in order to safeguard sovereign capability.

The minerals sector is strategically central to national interest, but also rendered unstable by the speculative dynamics which drive it from exploration to extraction. In light of this, the CMS tentatively positions HM Government to adopt a more activist and interventionist approach to securing supply akin to that seen in the nascent new state capitalisms of the post-Cold War era, from the US to the PRC.

Local companies, such as Cornish Metals and Cornish Lithium, have seen HM Government take a multi‑million pound stake in their operations via the National Wealth Fund. Such investments represent a cautious step towards the robust state action which increasingly defines the governance of sovereign supply of resources among allies and adversaries alike.

It remains to be seen whether the UK can support and even subsidise national champions of its own. The £50 million committed to state investment in the CMS is a start, but is relatively small next to existing National Wealth Fund investments. As such, there will be a need to select recipients carefully in pursuit of greater scale and concentration in order to avoid money being spread too thinly. However, by kickstarting a conversation about the role of the state in realising the opportunity to secure supply of critical minerals, the CMS undoubtedly represents the right direction of travel.

Frederick Harry Pitts is Associate Professor in Political Economy and the Future of Work, and Head of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus. He is Deputy Director of the Centre for the Public Understanding of Defence and Security and a Co-Investigator of the UKRI Critical Minerals Challenge Centre and ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures.

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This Memorandum consists of two parts. Part 1 explains the importance of establishing a bastion in the High North to Russia and Britain; Part 2 explores how the UK can build the strongest version of its ‘Atlantic Bastion’.

Leading, fighting, winning

A more forward approach to the Royal Navy’s ‘Atlantic Bastion’ would require a number of changes to today’s posture, many of which are already being actioned. Integration will be key. The High North, from the Norwegian Sea to the Kola Peninsula, is a littoral environment, containing the borders of three North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies. The British Armed Forces will need to work together more closely, and even closer with Norway, Sweden and Finland, than they already do.

The Royal Navy cannot build a bastion alone. Royal Air Force (RAF) capabilities, including airborne surveillance, fighter cover, tankers and Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA), will play a significant role. The British Army – alongside the Royal Marines – will also be needed to operate in the mountainous and littoral environment of the High North to bolster the bastion.

In the battle of the bastions, the Royal Navy will play the leading role in containing Russia’s High North capabilities. Its tasks would be centred around forward patrolling of the Bear Gap to keep Russian naval platforms at a safe distance from targets in the United Kingdom (UK) and Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) in the North Sea. It would also contribute to the gradual destruction of Russia’s Anti-Access/Aerial Denial (A2/AD) network in the High North to expose the Northern Sea Route to interdiction and hold at risk key military sites.

Patrolling the Bear Gap will be challenging. It will be done under the nose of Russian air and missile power, and the maritime environment (i.e., sea state and temperatures) is extreme. Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) platforms will require staying power against both the Russians and the environment. Only those NATO platforms which are built for peer naval conflict will be able to contribute, but the list of said platforms is currently too short.

An additional point worth considering is the transit times from bases in the British Isles to the High North. Given the capabilities of the Royal Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), Britain should discuss the use of Olavsvern in northern Norway for Astute class submarines. As a forward operating base, Olavsvern could help the Royal Navy boost the amount of time its submarines can remain on-station, though this would of course require investment to realise. The trip from the Barents Sea to Faslane and back is around 100 hours at 30 knots; to Olavsvern and back is fewer than 20 (plus time for reloading in both cases).

In a more forward vision of Atlantic Bastion, the role of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers grows in importance. During the Cold War, the United States (US) Navy would ‘hide’ its carriers in Norwegian fjords, cleared beforehand by ASW platforms and then closed off via naval mines. Vestfjorden was a particular favourite due to its size and location; in the far north of Norway, it is 155 kilometres (km) long and tens of kilometres wide.

Operating from Vestfjorden, the carrier airwing would be able to contribute to dominating the overlapping zones of the two bastions: Murmansk is 695km away; well within the 830km combat radius of the F-35B Lighting II Joint Combat Aircraft. This importance only grows when considering the limited number of airbases in the High North across Norway, Sweden and Finland, and that those which do exist are known locations which could face heavy attacks, forcing them to be evacuated until Russia’s ability to attack them has been reduced.

From the carriers, the airwing can play several roles. Firstly, as a stealth aircraft brimming with sensors, F-35B Lightning IIs can be positioned within closer range of Russian weapons than most other platforms. Whereas mass use of attritable platforms might fulfil similar roles in some theatres, given the logistics challenge of continually resupplying said systems to the High North, stealth has a premium over attritability.

Carrier F-35B Lightning IIs could then queue in other aircraft to launch weapons from a safer distance. With air-to-air missiles, the carrier’s airwing can also provide aircover for ASW ships operating in the Bear Gap. When they eventually receive their own stand-in – or ideally stand-off – weapons, they could contribute to Suppression or Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD/DEAD) and strike operations. As the hybrid airwing takes shape, further opportunities open up – for example, ASW drones can help to cover the Bear Gap.

During Exercise TALISMAN SABRE in summer 2025, HMS Prince of Wales achieved 16 sorties in a day with 19 aircraft onboard, and in Exercise FALCON STRIKE achieved 36 sorties in a day with 24 aircraft onboard. This may not seem particularly high, but other examples put it into perspective. The French Navy’s Charles De Gaulle carrier averaged 11 sorties per day in 2011 off the Libyan coast, and the Ukrainian Air Force – having been forced to operate in a more survivable, but less efficient, dispersed manner – averaged 25 sorties per day between February 2022 and August 2023. The airwing therefore should be able to achieve 36-72 fast jet sorties daily (up to two per 36 airframes, depending on a wide number of variables), plus a number of uncrewed system sorties.

This would be a massive boost to NATO airpower in the High North, where the RAF would be operating at long distances and regional allies would be operating in a dispersed manner. In the near future, carrier strike groups should find the time to exercise in this manner; the manner in which they intend to fight. Positioned in Vestfjorden, the airwing should see how many sorties it can generate, demonstrating to the Kremlin what it would have to contend with.

However, the strength and capabilities of the carrier airwing will not be sufficient on their own. Close coordination with the RAF will be necessary to achieve the desired level of superiority in the High North. Domain awareness will be bolstered by the E-7 Wedgetail, the radar of which covers over 400km. The P-8A Poseidon MPA brings a suite of ASW capabilities, and Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft can shuttle both long-range air-to-air missiles and cruise missiles to the region. However, the range at which these platforms will have to operate is extreme. It is roughly 2,000km to Bear Island from RAF Lossiemouth – roughly the same distance from RAF Akrotiri to Yemen.

Tanker support from its 14 Voyager tankers will be vital to sustaining the RAF’s contribution. Given the limited numbers of P-8As and E-7s on order, the ability to maintain a persistent presence will be a challenge. Providing the RAF with boom refuelling capabilities should be a high priority. It is also worth noting that in its air campaign against Iran in June 2025, Israel’s seven tankers averaged between them 100 air-to-air refuellings each day. Crew fatigue quickly became a problem.

Maritime strategy does not only involve the sea and air – the role of amphibious and land forces must also be considered. While the Royal Navy and RAF are already thinking about integration in the High North, the Royal Navy’s discussions with their land counterparts have barely occurred. The UK Commando Force (UKCF) – predominantly formed of the Royal Marines and attached Army Commandos – comprises the bulk of Britain’s cold weather warfare specialists, conducting regular training in Norway at Camp Viking. The UKCF offers a mobile and flexible littoral force to complement sea and air power – assisting in protecting the coastal ‘flank’ of northern Norway, taking and holding vital ground alongside occasional raiding.

However, the UKCF is currently not optimised for such a task. Firstly, its ability to deploy from the sea en masse has been severely curtailed by the lack of available amphibious warfare vessels. Secondly, the UKCF lacks long-ranged weaponry which could menace Russian forces at distance. As such, it should explore possibilities for acquiring long-ranged missiles, able to be launched from light vehicles.

Outside the Commandos, further consideration should be given to the role of the British Army, which has been intensifying its activity in Scandinavia. Particular note should be made of the Ranger Regiment and 16 Air Assault Brigade. The Ranger Regiment is a special operations-capable force designed for strategic reconnaissance and partner-building, which has been conducting significant training with Nordic allies. Rangers would play a key role in early responses along NATO’s eastern flank, potentially including activity which supports maritime efforts such as integration with the UKCF, counter-hybrid and saboteur activity, and supporting local forces along the Russian border and coastal regions.

16 Air Assault Brigade is Britain’s primary rapid reaction force, and in times of crisis would likely be the first major UK land force deployed to the High North. It could add significant firepower to the contested zone, such as its own organic artillery or the British Army’s Apache Attack Helicopters – the latter a capability which none of the Nordic nations operate. However, it should be noted that these forces are currently allocated to the theatre-agnostic Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, and hard choices would have to be made regarding resource allocation and availability.

Integration with Nordic allies is paramount, both in strategy and interoperability. The UK’s approach intersects with Norwegian defence plans and is illustrative of how a greater British focus on the Bear Gap creates deeper synergies with regional defence plans.

This is where the UK’s leadership through the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) is crucial. Continuing the expansion and depth of JEF training exercises, exchanges and minilateral meetings, as well as closer procurement coordination, will be a key avenue to deepening the relationships with Nordic nations and trialling strategies and tactics for successfully contesting the High North. The recent UK-Norway Defence Agreement is exactly the kind of action which is needed.

Ensuring the dominance of the British-led Atlantic Bastion will be one the most significant contributions to deterrence in NATO. It will safeguard the alliance’s nuclear forces; defend critical infrastructure, and SLOCs vital to the economic prosperity and defence plans of alliance members; and hold at risk key Russian economic and military interests.

Yet, following years of underinvestment and the Kremlin’s continued emphasis on its High North capabilities, much work needs to be done to ensure the UK’s dominance. Through a combination of ensuring the emphasis of Atlantic Bastion as currently envisioned is moved ‘upthreat’, and the Bastion (in its wider and more integrated interpretation) is provided with a primacy on funding priorities, this will be possible.

Such an effort cannot be undertaken by the Royal Navy alone. It will require political leadership in British defence policy to make Atlantic Bastion a national defence priority. Clear maritime superiority must be reacquired.

William Freer is a Research Fellow in National Security at the Council on Geostrategy and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre.

Matthew Palmer is a former British Army Officer, the Sir John Moore Adjunct Fellow at the Council of Geostrategy and a Richmond Fellow of the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. He also writes in a personal capacity at Cracking Defence.

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