What is the best approach for the new Strategic Defence Review to take?
The Big Ask | No. 04.2024
The United Kingdom (UK) finds itself in a volatile geopolitical environment, confronted by the most significant geopolitical threats since the end of the Cold War. To ensure that Britain is able to overcome the challenge, the new government has announced a ‘root and branch’ Strategic Defence Review (SDR).
This is not the first strategic reset in recent British political history, with previous governments conducting several defence reviews since 2010. So, in this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: What is the best approach for the new Strategic Defence Review to take?
Benedict Baxendale-Smith
Researcher, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London
As a pillar of the Labour government’s approach to UK defence, the recently announced SDR is billed as the ‘first of its type.’ Directed by independent experts who will focus solely on challenges facing the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the SDR differs from the whole-of-government approach taken by the 2021 Integrated Review and its ‘refresh’ in 2023.
Since the latter’s release in March last year, the global security environment has deteriorated further, with the conflict in Gaza and Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea marking just two further developments.
The SDR, and MOD planning more widely, face the central dilemma of threats out-pacing requisite funding. Therefore, the SDR must quickly assert its balance of assessment in assessing threats in the near or far abroad, across the short or long term.
Primarily, and despite the increasing belief that war looms in Europe, the SDR must strike an equal balance between Britain’s ability to ‘fight tonight’ and meet the long-term challenges ahead – a dichotomy arguably driven by geography.
Therefore, despite the government’s perfectly valid ‘NATO-first’ defence strategy, this should not come at the cost of the UK’s ability to engage with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
As Lord Robertson asserts, Britain faces a ‘deadly-quartet’, and as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine demonstrates, European and Indo-Pacific defence challenges are often inextricably linked.
Neil Brown
Distinguished Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
Given that time is of the essence, the new SDR must adopt the geopolitical outlook set out in the Integrated Review Refresh, and the strategic context laid out in the MOD by Dr Rob Johnson. Given the imperative of delivering a credible national deterrent, and of contributing meaningfully to the deterrent capabilities of strategic alliances such as NATO, the review must prioritise the restoration of the UK’s expeditionary capability, ignoring false choices such as any narrow geographical approach which overlooks the connected and increasingly coordinated threats coming from Russia, Iran, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and North Korea.
The urgency of the current situation should be addressed by building on Britain’s strengths such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, which leverages UK framework capabilities valued by ‘frontier Europe’ to build an effective European pillar of NATO. Likewise, building on Britain’s presence in the Middle East (actually the western Indo-Pacific) – an important strategic transport and energy hub – is vital for UK engagement with the Islamic world and a fragile region on Europe’s doorstep (thus a source of enduring migratory pressures), and which is increasingly contested by Russia and the PRC.
The SDR should also reimagine Britain’s defence industrial base as the sixth domain and reframe defence spending as critical investment, the defence pillar of the UK industrial strategy, enabling national endeavours such as in nuclear technology, and triggering private sector investment in technology to optimise new access to the United States’ (US) market enabled by AUKUS Pillar II in particular.
Sir Michael Fallon
Secretary of State for Defence (2014-2017)
How often does Britain need a new strategic defence review? This is the fourth in nine years. What doesn’t need reviewing are the threats: Russia wages war in Europe, Iran, North Korea and the PRC are increasingly authoritarian and revisionist, while Islamist terrorism remains a threat – all are now combining against global democratic values. So, how does the UK strengthen its military and enhance its alliances to deter them?
What is essential is secure long-term funding, and a fixed timetable towards spending at least 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence by 2030, with the country’s defence industry given forward investment plans, and freed of artificial Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) restraints.
Predicting future conflict is not easy. The 1998 SDR gave Britain two aircraft carriers: neither has been able to help in the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea. Ukraine shows us that better missile defence, cyber and drone technologies are more important than platform numbers. Beyond these the UK should be developing, with partners, the capabilities where Europe remains over-dependent on the US: heavy lift, long-range missile systems, air-to-air refuelling. In the Indo-Pacific, Britain should widen AUKUS Pillar II to bring Japan and South Korea into a democratic alliance of defence technologies.
Domestically, the UK needs a leaner, more lethal military. Time’s up for under recruited battalions, duplicated enablers, rank enrichment and a sprawling estate. Today’s forces need to be smarter and sharper than ever – but they must have the right level of investment. 2.5% of GDP within five years is the minimum.
Paul Mason
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
The SDR should begin from the assumption that war against a peer adversary is possible by 2027. Then, before it goes anywhere near force structures, postures and priorities, it should acknowledge two meta-challenges: 1. The changed tempo of military innovation; and 2. The multi-dimensional nature of conflict.
The UK’s preparedness to adapt to these challenges should be subjected to an unflinching assessment. For example, the PRC’s militarisation of scientific research into critical emerging technologies means democratic and open countries may need not one equivalent of the Manhattan Project but perhaps a dozen, and our potential adversaries are already ahead of us.
Instead of the linear evolution of defence technologies, such as occurred during the Second World War, the UK should expect sudden and non-linear mutations – demanding that extreme agility be built into Britain’s own science, research and development and procurement institutions, and greater readiness to learn on the battlefield (including from defeat).
We have just begun to understand the weapons of war as a ‘system of systems’. We should now do likewise for conflict itself: the UK’s adversaries have multiple means to achieve ‘winning without fighting’ – from ‘grey zone’ operations to weapons of mass effect: in response British defence itself needs to become a ‘complex adaptive system’.
Only once these meta-problems are calibrated should the SDR move to the design of a response. It should ask: what might the armed forces and their socio-economic support systems look like three years into a conventional conflict with a peer adversary? And how does the UK design resilience and scalability into its systems in order to survive?
Jennifer Parker
Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University
While understandable that a new government will want to put its stamp on the nation’s defence policy in a significant period of international upheaval, it must avoid undermining Britain’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific. While the parade of UK defence reviews in quick succession has created paralysis in some areas of the defence policy apparatus, the focus on the Indo-Pacific since the 2021 Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ has been a strength of British defence policy that has far exceeded expectations.
The UK’s Indo-Pacific focus covers all aspects of national power, from the diplomatic, economic to the military. But a key element of this focus has been in the maritime domain, from the basing of two offshore patrol vessels in HMS Tamar and HMS Spey in Southeast Asia to AUKUS Pillar I and Carrier Strike Group deployments.
A war in Europe, with no endpoint in sight, underpinned by Russian threats of nuclear escalation will reasonably garner considerable attention. While the UK’s immediate focus will be on the European continent and the direct threats Russia poses, it must remember that much of its economic interests lie in the Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific, which accounts for 60% of the world’s GDP and 60% of the world’s population, is primarily a maritime construct. For the UK to be effective in protecting its economic interests in the Indo-Pacific region, the SDR will need to ensure that Britain continues to provide a maritime contribution to support maritime security in the Indo-Pacific.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Minister of the Indo-Pacific (2022-2024) and Secretary of State for International Trade (2021-2022)
Britain is more globally insecure than it has been for decades. From the growing authoritarian nexus to the challenges of migration created by climate change and failed states.
So what must the new defence review focus on? The critical path is protecting British economic security. The country’s goods and energy moves globally through critical maritime chokepoints, while data and services move via cables crisscrossing the globe, mostly undefended. Meanwhile, British trade is threatened by tariff wars developing as relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the US and the European Union (EU) are increasingly strained.
As a result, Britain faces many global maritime threats. Therefore, the Defence Review Team must work with His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury to assess those risks honestly. Covid-19 cost the UK taxpayer £400 billion because the machinery of government was not prepared. Britain cannot afford for that to happen on the economic security front.
So what does real preparedness look like for the MOD? It is about ensuring Britain’s hard power tools are fit for purpose; with the right personnel to deliver that hard power, and it is about ensuring the UK has a healthy and trusting partnership with industry.
Long-term investments need to be made by deliverers and industry, but they require the government to shoulder the risk and then delegate responsibility for delivery – a relationship which has not been working. This issue needs to change fast if the UK’s world class innovative defence industry is to succeed in enabling the defence of Britain’s economic security.
Part of this is ensuring Ukraine’s victory. If Britain does not do enough, it will have been as if it had done nothing. Enough is not a precise number, it is whatever it takes to secure the UK’s interests.
So for this defence review: the strategic threats are known, but the big challenge is to get HM Treasury to understand them too, and therefore invest enough to enable British preparedness.
Adm. The Lord West of Spithead
Member of the House of Lords and First Sea Lord (2002-2006)
The government has made a clear manifesto commitment to conduct a SDR setting out the path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence – to enhance NATO, renew the nuclear deterrent and support Ukraine. While clearly rectifying the ‘hollowing out’ of the British Armed Forces and replenishing weapon stocks is essential, it is important that the Review doesn’t ignore the fact that Britain is an island nation.
The UK’s future wealth and security depends on the sea and access to the trade, energy and data that flows on or under it – likewise, Britain’s overseas territories depend on access to the sea – and the Royal Navy has to protect it all. Therefore, maritime security, from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, will matter more than ever as we move into a very uncertain future. For these reasons in the Review the government should prioritise naval investment and focus on the maritime domain.
To protect British and NATO interests and help uphold the free and open international order at sea, the Royal Navy is required to become sharper, with more warships and submarines, clear planning of industrial war potential (shipbuilding and weapon supply chains) and enhancements to platform durability and lethality. Additionally, the UK should lead efforts to enact sea control in the Euro-Atlantic to protect Britain’s maritime lifelines and support NATO, while also contributing towards sea denial in the Indo-Pacific to deter the PRC from using military power to assert dominance in the region – and beyond.
The case for enhanced investment into the Royal Navy is made even more compelling by the growing strength of European NATO allies on land and the limits of their strengths at sea. The accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO and Poland’s army expansion programme alone will see 20 army brigades added to NATO’s terrestrial strength. There is no such naval growth.
For this naval expansion, the SDR top priorities should be:
De risk nuclear submarine programme SSBN (Dreadnought build), new warheads and SSN (deliver last Astute class and start production of AUKUS SSN);
Maximise potential of aircraft carriers i.e. deliver the full air wing including Crowsnest;
Increase escort numbers and improve their offensive armament; and,
New Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels.
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