Britain aims to be ‘warfighting’ ready
The Cable | No. 22.2025
Welcome to the 45th Cable, our weekly roundup of British foreign and defence policy.
On the afternoon of 1st June, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) carried out one of the most audacious and potentially impactful long-range strikes in modern military history. Over a year in the making, SBU operatives smuggled short-range drones into Russia and attacked multiple air stations. These facilities housed Russia’s strategic bomber fleet; Ukraine damaged or destroyed a currently unknown number of these high-value targets. While the sight of Russia’s strategic bombers – used to pound Ukrainian targets, including civilians – on fire is to be celebrated, the use of new technologies in the hands of capable and innovative operators should send shivers down the spines of military planners in the United Kingdom (UK) and its allies. They are not immune from such attacks, either.
Welcome back to The Cable!
If you want peace, prepare for war: The UK gears up for a generational challenge
Announced on 16th July 2024, the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has finally been published. The 144 page report assesses the strategic environment in which the British Armed Forces must operate, before providing 62 recommendations – which His Majesty’s (HM) Government has accepted – to make them more capable, focused, lethal and effective. At the launch event held in Glasgow, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, stated that:
The threat we now face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable…Than at any time since the Cold War. A step-change in the threats we face demands a step-change in British defence…We will never gamble with our national security.
Setting the strategic scene, the review states that the world is beset by growing ‘multipolarity’ and ‘intensifying strategic competition’, compounded by rapid technological change. Russia is highlighted as an ‘immediate and pressing threat, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a ‘sophisticated and persistent challenge’, and North Korea and Iran as ‘regional disruptors’. The review notes the growing alignment between these revisionist states – a key threat to British interests.
To counter this challenge, the SDR recommends that Britain’s military needs to pivot to ‘warfighting readiness’ and adapt to new ways of fighting. To do this, the review recommends that HM Government:
Place the nuclear deterrent at the heart of national security, underpinned by £15 billion for the sovereign warhead programme as part of the renewal of the existing Trident nuclear deterrent;
Commit to a ‘NATO first’ policy, while retaining global partnerships such as AUKUS and the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP);
Invest £6 billion in munitions production, including six new factories with an ‘always on’ production pipeline, with an additional £11 billion annual budget for equipment;
Increase Britain’s missile production capabilities and build 7,000 long-range missiles;
Create a ‘hybrid’ Royal Navy of high-low capabilities, combining 12 SSN-AUKUS submarines and more destroyers and frigates with autonomous vessels and transformed carriers; and
Develop a more electronically interconnected force, and allocate 10% of the equipment procurement budget to novel technologies, with a focus on advancing artificial intelligence (AI), cyber and autonomous system capabilities.
While the recommendations outlined in the SDR are conceptually sound, it lacks detail on the number and speed at which new capabilities will be procured. Although HM Government has confirmed its plans to increase defence spending to 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2027, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) needs more resources to meet the review’s recommendations. Even plans to increase investment in defence to 3% of GDP by the end of the next Parliament might not be sufficient, but HM Government’s hand could be forced with reports that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will move toward a new defence spending benchmark of 5% of GDP at the upcoming summit on 24th June.
Key diplomacy
Last week, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, visited Norway and Iceland to discuss enhancing Arctic security cooperation with both nations:
In Iceland, the Foreign Secretary travelled to Keflavik Air Base, where Royal Air Force (RAF) jets have supported NATO air policing missions. Additionally, Lammy announced a new UK-Iceland scheme to use AI to monitor hostile activity in the region.
In Norway, Lammy visited British and Norwegian ships jointly patrolling the Arctic to detect and deter potential threats. He also travelled to the Svalbard Archipelago to meet UK scientists collaborating with Norwegian partners to tackle climate change, which is a driver of the new geopolitical challenges in the Wider North.
A delegation of five Labour MPs – members of the Labour Friends of Taiwan – landed in Taipei on 25th May to build closer ties with the island nation. The group met senior government officials, unions, businesses and civil society groups to ensure that strong communication and ties are upheld between Britain and Taiwan.
On 1st June, Lammy travelled to Rabat, Morocco, for the fifth session of the Morocco-UK Strategic Dialogue. Following the talks, Lammy and Nasser Bourita, his Moroccan counterpart, announced that the two countries will enter an Enhanced Strategic Partnership, with both ministers reaffirming their mutual commitment to deepening collaboration across ‘all dimensions; political, diplomatic, security, economic, cultural and people-to-people exchanges’. Of particular note are agreements to ‘strengthen maritime collaboration’, increase defence industrial cooperation and enhance efforts to unlock renewable energy projects.
Defence
John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, has announced the creation of a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command, and a £1 billion investment in a ‘pioneering battlefield system’. As part of the new investment, the MOD will develop a Digital Targeting Web (DTW) to connect weapons systems better in order to enhance battlefield intelligence and decision making for targeting threats. The SDR recommends that the MOD should deliver the DTW by 2027.
According to reporting by The Sunday Times, HM Government is reviewing the potential to enhance the UK’s nuclear deterrent by acquiring sub-strategic nuclear weapons launched from F-35A Lighting II Joint Combat Aircraft. If confirmed, it would represent the largest shift in British nuclear posture since the decommissioning of the WE.177 nuclear bombs in 1998. While the SDR does not recommend the acquisition of such a force, it does recommend enhancing Britain’s contribution to NATO’s collective deterrent. It also recommends the acquisition of F-35A Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft, though ‘to provide greater value for money’.
Last week, the fifth and largest UK-led Ukraine trade mission in Kyiv took place. 51 British, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Latvian defence companies travelled to Ukraine to deepen defence industrial partnerships with the country, and to scale up support for Ukraine’s defence needs while also strengthening supply chain resilience.
Environment and climate
Global temperatures could cross the 2°C threshold of warming for the first time in the next five years, according to new analysis carried out by the World Meteorological Organisation. According to this research, between 2025 and 2029, annual temperatures will likely be between 1.2°C and 1.9°C higher than pre-industrial levels, with the five-year mean set to exceed 1.5°C.
How Britain is seen overseas
The German Marshall Fund released an opinion piece on the recent UK-European Union (EU) Summit, stating that it marked a significant step towards improved relations and renewed trust between the two powers. The author also argues that the summit demonstrated that for Britain, a reset with the EU need not come at the expense of its other strategic objectives and relations with other key nations, such as the US and India.
How competitors frame Britain
TASS reported on a statement from the Russian Embassy to the UK, in which it condemned HM Government’s plans to establish a cyber command, claiming that it will ‘raise the stakes in its fight against the mythical Russian threat’. The Embassy further warned that ‘London’s preparations for the use of its offensive cyber potential against Russia is fraught with a large-scale confrontation…with hardly predictable consequences…’ A tough pill to swallow, considering the vast number of cyber attacks the Kremlin has carried out against British targets.
TASS also interviewed Alexey Pushkov, Senator of Russia, who claimed that Britain is ‘planning to wage a long “cold war” with Russia’ following the emerging details of the SDR. Pushkov also declared that the UK ‘will never reach the level of…the US, Russia and China’. After the destruction of much of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, can the country even consider itself a major power?
The value of defence reviews
With the publication of the Strategic Defence Review – the third defence review in four years – over 140 additional pages have been added to the 700 or more published since 2010, outlining British defence and national security strategy. Since that year, the UK has published more than nine strategic defence and national security reviews, including the:
National Security Strategy (2010)
National Security Strategic and Strategic Defence and Security Review (2015)
Integrated Review (2021)
Defence Command Paper (2021)
HM Government also plans to publish a new national security strategy just before NATO’s Annual Summit in June.
What all reviews since 2021 share in common is that they have failed to detail the number of platforms and capabilities needed by the British Armed Forces. The details are sketchy, incomplete, or are at best partially costed. The National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2015 was the last to attempt that, and the cost of the capabilities were not fully outlined in it either.
In this respect, the SDR is no different. While it cites some of HM Government’s intentions in relation to procurement – e.g., ‘up to 12 SSN-AUKUS’ nuclear attack submarines, or £15 billion for the modernisation of the nuclear deterrent – it fails to provide a comprehensive overview of all the different capabilities which Britain requires.
It seems that the UK has come to see defence reviews not as instruments to appraise and cost in detail the requirements of its armed forces, but more as a way of signalling HM Government’s interests and intentions to domestic and international audiences.
In this respect, the SDR appears to have two objectives: firstly, to indicate the Labour government’s geostrategic posture – ‘NATO first’, but ‘not NATO only’ – and secondly, to signal to the British people that conflict, even war, is becoming more likely, necessitating a broader response. In a world defined by intensifying strategic competition, this is no bad thing.
But without a clear statement of allocated funding and a breakdown of the specific platforms and capabilities needed, both allies and competitors may think that Britain is using defence reviews to hide the fact that the emperor has few clothes. Over to HM Treasury!
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