The UK should urgently accelerate plans to spend more on its armed forces or risk being vulnerable to the kind of missile and drone attacks seen across the Gulf and in Russia’s war against Ukraine, an author of the government’s defence review has said.
General Sir Richard Barrons told Sky News this meant politicians would have to make “very difficult choices” to shift investment away from peacetime priorities such as health and welfare but that – following the eruption of war between the US and Israel against Iran – the world has become even more dangerous than when his review was published last June.
The Ministry of Defence has faced questions about how ready it is for conflict after failing to be able to deploy a single warship rapidly from Portsmouth to bolster the defences of two British sovereign bases in Cyprus, amid threats from Iranian missile and drone strikes.
HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer – the only piece of kit in the British arsenal capable of shooting down ballistic missiles – will only depart for the eastern Mediterranean in the coming days, at least a week since Sir Keir Starmer announced the deployment.
By contrast, the Royal Navy was able to rush two aircraft carriers and multiple other warships from the UK within three days of Argentina invading the Falklands in 1982.
General Barrons said the Strategic Defence Review, which set out how to rebuild the UK’s hollowed-out armed forces after decades of decline, recognised “that we live in a much more threatening world, where the risks to the UK are potentially existential”.
It recommended the need to invest more in defence, while also being mindful that this would involve “some very difficult choices” about what areas of public spending would have to suffer as a result.
“The world since the review was published has just got more difficult, so the urgency is greater,” the former senior military officer said.
“The government is going to have to find more money sooner … If we don’t, then we could feel like the people in Dubai and Bahrain … and Kyiv.”
Iran’s retaliation to US and Israeli strikes has included waves of missiles and drones fired at neighbouring Gulf states, while Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has subjected the entire country to deadly bombardments for more than four years.
“We need to do a much better job of being able to deter that [kind of threat] and see it off if it happens,” General Barrons said.
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As set out in a Sky News and Tortoise podcast series called The Wargame, successive British governments took what was called a “peace dividend” after the Cold War ended in 1991, switching money out of defence and into areas such as health, welfare and the economy.
The move saw the size of the Royal Navy, army and Royal Air Force shrink significantly along with wider national resilience.
To give a sense of what has been lost, Sky News tracked the decline of the regular military from 1983 – a year after the Falklands War, when NATO allies were still maintaining large standing armed forces to face off against the then Soviet Union – and now.
In 1983, Britain had 321,000 full-time service personnel, split between 72,000 in the navy, 159,000 in the army and 90,000 in the air force.
Two decades later, long after the Cold War had ended but when the UK joined the US in invading Iraq under then Prime Minister Tony Blair, the nation had 207,000 service personnel, with 42,000 in the navy, 112,000 in the army and 53,000 in the RAF.
The latest data released by the Ministry of Defence for last year, however, show these figures now stand at 125,680 members of the full-time armed forces, comprising 27,820 in the navy, 70,300 in the army and 27,560 in the RAF.
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Spending on defence as a proportion of GDP has shrunk as well, with Britain allocating 5% for the military in 1983, compared with 2.5% in 2003 and just 2.3% now.
Sir Keir has said his government will inch up defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by next year and has set an “ambition” to lift the level to 3% of GDP by the next parliament – which lasts until 2034.
However, there have been reports that he could make this move – which would cost taxpayers billions of additional pounds – by 2029, five years early.
