Britain’s Defence Investment Plan Gamble

The troubled Type 45 Destroyer, whose replacement has been cancelled in the recent DIP, alongside a River-Class Patrol Vessel.

On June 30th, the long awaited Defence Investment Plan was unveiled following months delay. It marks the official launch of Kier Starmer’s 15 billion pound boost to the UK’s armed forces and military commitments at a 5 percent increase to Britain’s defence spending. Based on findings from last year’s Strategic Defence Review, the plan aims to modernize and adapt Britain’s armed forces for the wars of the future, claiming to “…energize the transformation of our Armed Forces to rebuild warfighting readiness…”. It features significant investments towards domestic defence industry, supporting British production, innovation and exports of new weapons systems and technology. Falling short of the 28 billion pounds requested by senior defence officials, for which John Healey recently resigned as Defence Secretary, the DIP has failed to resource the funding needed to meet proposals agreed upon in the Strategic Defence Review. The DIP has come under heavy fire by defence experts. As Dr. William Reynolds of Kings College surmises; “… Britain risks having lectured for increased spending without producing the goods.”

Nonetheless, the DIP does mark a significant turning point with notable potential for the growth of the UK’s domestic defence industry and armed forces. However, the plan presents great risk that cripples this potential. The DIP is gambling a significant sum of Britian’s future defence capabilities on greatly increased AI autonomy and investments at the expense of critical weapons systems, doctrine and domains. This is further exacerbated by the plan releasing in an overall chaotically written and poorly organized state plagued by corporate jargon. An argument is to be made that the current plan is lacking and fails to inspire confidence in the UK’s ability to defeat and overcome future threats in the wars of tomorrow. 

Summary

Summarized, the Defence Investment Plan outlines three categories of focus. The first is “Transforming our Armed Forces” which details how the UK will go about transforming and supporting the armed forces so it can best meet and combat future threats. The second is “Backing British” which covers the overall buildup of the UK’s defence industrial base and military. The final focus is “Stepping Up UK Leadership” which aspires to strengthen the UK’s ability to lead by example, able to meet its NATO commitments and support allies.  

These focuses provide sizeable investments towards the growth of UK’s armed forces and defence industry. Of note are the 9 billion pounds designated to fix issues with recruitment and morale over the next ten years, 5 billion pounds towards autonomous systems including a hybrid navy over the next four years, and a combined 22.5 billion pounds for improving the domains of land warfare, cyber/electromatic and space capabilities. Over 9 billion pounds have been secured for improving and modernizing the UK’s air power including the extension of the Typhoon’s service into the 2040’s and securing over 8 billion pounds to fund the Global Combat Air Programe (GCAP). Over 11 billion pounds have been designated for the replenishment of munitions. Additionally, the DIP includes a further 20 billion pound investment towards the Defence Nuclear Enterprise (DNE) as part of a much-needed effort to modernize and sustain nuclear deterrence. An overall emphasis has been placed upon creating jobs, skills and future talent within the UK. The DIP plans for the creation of 60,000 new jobs in the industrial defence sector by 2029/30.

Issues

The DIP’s focuses provide much needed steps in the right direction that are unfortunately overshadowed by questionable priorities, misguided investment decisions and flawed strategic conclusions. The most detrimental of these issues is the overemphasis on drone technologies and autonomous weapons systems at the expense of critical domains, specifically regarding the navy. The DIP highlights a new approach to naval doctrine and warfare with a new ‘hybrid navy’ which combines autonomous surface and sub surface vessels and AI alongside crewed warships and aircraft with a 1.5 billion pound investment. This hybrid fleet presents a load of issues and risks. Unproven autonomous systems are expected to replace a range of roles and blue water capabilities from missile defence to maritime patrolling. By committing to this path, the UK risks leaving itself without maritime critical capabilities and reach. 

Plans to replace the aging Type 45 destroyers with the next generation Type 83 have been scrapped. Instead, the Royal Navy is gambling everything around six future Common Combat Vessels. These CCV’s will act as central command hubs for the range of uncrewed systems and vessels to be built, working alongside the planned Type 26 and Type 31 frigates all connected by a Maritime Fighting Web. This leaves the RN without a future destroyer fleet which greatly restricts both offensive and defensive firepower at sea while diminishing the countries blue water reach, rapid response capacity, and overall naval deterrence. The function of destroyers is to be spread amongst smaller, and cheaper autonomous vessels digitally linked to the CCV’s. This concept reveals an immediate vulnerability in that it relies upon constantly secure data transfers, putting the entire fleet at increased risk of inoperability facing rapidly evolving cyber-warfare capabilities. The Type 91, Type 92 and Type 93 uncrewed missile platforms are expected to fulfil key roles in missile defence, anti-air, anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare.18 But autonomous systems of these vessels size and functions are completely unproven, to date merely conceptual. The operational range of autonomous platforms is limited compared to crewed counterparts, diminishing distances the UK can exert naval power. Furthermore, a recent MoD RfI implies that the Type 91’s remote launch silos don’t exist yet leaving the primary arsenal ship without the ability to us its arsenal. Finally, removing the crews from these vessels eliminates a vital support system. These vessels will still require routine maintenance, but now be required to either return to port or support ships for all maintenance needs and additionally possess no human factor to perform damage control tasks during and following combat. Billions are being committed to the hybrid fleet that could likely be far better spent on other domains in need of desperate improvement.  It remains to be seen whether this hybrid fleet is a feasible concept that can plug the current shortcomings of the Royal Navy.  

While drones have demonstrated their lethality in naval warfare as demonstrated by Ukraine in the Black Sea, the hybrid navy takes drone dependence too far, threatening the Royal Navy’s capacity to face future threats. The conditions of the Black Sea are not the same as the North Atlantic and drones remain unproven in the open ocean. Here, the UK is going all in on conceptual ideas that have yet to see any basis of testing and proven capability. To gamble so much on this hybrid fleet could very well sink the Royal Navy and completely annihilate the UK’s future capacity to defend itself and allies.  

Another issue in the Defence Investment Plan presents is that of ground-based air defences (GBAD). The U.K. is facing a widely recognized shortfall of GBAD capabilities with severe deficiencies in both medium (MRAD) and short-range (SHORAD) systems. The Army currently operates between four to seven batteries of the Sky Sabre for MRAD20 which are not enough to handle defence of the UK and its commitments abroad. SHORAD capabilities are depleted following the bulk of the Stormer fleet and large numbers of Starstreak MANPADS being donated to Ukraine. Furthermore, the UK possesses no surface based air and missile defence (SBAMD) which provide the long range capabilities necessary for intercepting ballistic missiles. A simulation run on at the UK’s Air and Space Warfare Centre testing the countries air defences resulted in what ex Air Commodore Blythe Crawford described as “…not a pretty picture.” at RUSI’s IAMD conference last year.

The DIP does little addressing air defence vulnerabilities. Only 790 million pounds have been committed to enhancing integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) capabilities. This is not enough to fund production for appropriate numbers of new systems. Over half the funding is going not towards new air defence batteries, but rather the replacement of dated C2 sensors and development of a new Integrated Air, Space and Missile Operations Centre. Only 350 million has been assigned towards doubling the number of Sky Sabre batteries. This falls well short of the numbers required to fulfill air defence needs of the UK and its commitments abroad. Given that a single, complete Sky Sabre battery costs an approximate 210-250 million pounds it is puzzling how this number was deemed appropriate, even if the plan is just to integrate more launchers to the existing batteries. Only one line in the DIP concerns long-range SBAMD. There is a claim of commitment towards upgrading Type 45 destroyers with long range ballistic missile defence capabilities by 2028, but it fails to state how this will be done or funded. As currently proposed, the funding commitments towards improving GBAD will leave the UK perfectly capable of detecting and tracking air threats with improved C2 and the new Operations Centre, but void of the capacity to engage and defend against these threats. Even if the investments towards GBAD prove adequate, the UK still remains completely vulnerable to ballistic missiles with no concrete plans for long range SBAMD. 

Progress

While the Defence Investment Plan features significant points of concern, it does provide rather effective plans towards patching some other key industrial and military vulnerabilities. Chief among these are the planned investments towards scaling and modernizing the UK’s nuclear deterrent. In total approximately 63 billion pounds have been secured towards the expansion of capability elements covering submarines, warheads, nuclear fuels and industrial skills. A win for the Royal Navy are the plans for strengthening the submarine fleet. Submarine manufacturing is set to expand between 2025/2026 and 2029/2030 with a 6-billion-pound investment. Expected to enter service by 2030, four nuclear powered and armed Dreadnaught submarines are under construction at Barrow-in-Furness. These submarines will greatly bolster the UK’s continuous at sea deterrent (CASD). Up to twelve SSN-A nuclear powered, conventionally armed attack submarines are to be built, with construction beginning next year. Sticking to a commitment announced in the SDR last year, 15 billion has been allocated for the UK’s nuclear weapons program. Further investment has been designated for establishing a Nuclear Fuels Program. All of the above will fall under the Defence Nuclear Enterprise which currently accounts for 18 percent of the total defence budget and is receiving a 20 billion pound boost. The DIP places the UK in a significantly capable position to support and extend the reach of its nuclear deterrent. Moreover, the investments towards the nuclear defence sector better enable the UK to keep up with and meet nuclear threats posed by adversaries.  

In addition to the expansions planned for the nuclear field, UK airpower is slated to see notable improvement. The DIP has secured over 8 billion in funding for GCAP over the next four years, ensuring that the next generation fighter will see service. This alleviates previous concerns from Japan and Italy that the UK was looking to pause funding or delay the program. GCAP will provide the UK with a domestically made, cutting edge stealth fighter that greatly increases the lethality of the Royal Air Force. The program will also lessen the dependence on the American F-35 in future which serves to strengthen the UK’s ability to take charge of its own defence.  

Ultimately, the Defence Investment Plan is mired by its combination of lacking and misappropriated funds. While the DIP sets forth commendable action towards nuclear deterrence and domestically developed air power, it neglects critical domains such as air defence in pursuit of unproven technology which risks leaving the UK defenceless against the threats of the future. The DIP displays that policy makers have taken a number of wrong lessons from the war in Ukraine which have negatively shaped decisions. Given that extra funds are unlikely to become available, a reassessment of priorities is required. It is paramount that the UK redesignate finances from the hybrid fleet towards improving air defence. The increasing prevalence of long-range drones, aircraft launched glide bombs and ballistic missiles in conflict make this critical. Gambling so much on conceptual doctrine utilizing untested systems is a waste of already tight finances at too great a risk for failure. Until the concepts and systems of the hybrid fleet have seen proven results in testing, it cannot remain such a committed focus. There is great potential within the DIP to effectively finance and secure the UK’s national defence. It merely requires a reappraisal of priorities and shift of certain funding towards other areas.  

Matthew Horvitz - Intern, St James’s Foreign Policy Group