“The investments described in this document represent planned and future priorities, reflecting assumptions at the date of publication. The figures presented are indicative rather than precise cost estimates. They do not constitute binding commitments and are subject to the Government’s approvals processes, affordability considerations, and contracting procedures. Figures have been rounded and, therefore, may not sum. The programmes described are at different stages of maturity. Consequently, the status, scope and timing of individual programmes may change. They may be reprioritised, deferred, re-scoped, or cancelled”.
All you need to know about the Defence Investment Plan, p.78
The defence DIP
July 1st. Reading Britain’s much-delayed and depressing DIP, aka Defence Investment Plan, one could be forgiven for thinking that Sir Keir Starmer, and his partner-in-soft power Richard Hermer, have sabotaged the British armed forces. A feeling that was reinforced when I heard Starmer wants to do the same to NATO by becoming Secretary-General. First, we had the Chagos Islands fiasco and the attempt by Starmer and Hermer to give away a strategically vital military base to China ally Mauritius.
Now, we have a little bit of everything but not much of anything/how much threat can we afford, Defence Investment Plan. A ‘plan’, if one can call it that, which cuts and ‘invests’ in the wrong things. Critically, the DIP also reveals that not only does Starmer have no defence strategy, having all but abandoned the 62 recommendations of the Strategic Defence Review. It also suggests his belief in international law and soft power is such that he is determined to cripple Britain’s hard power.
Future war
Let me give you a flavour of future war in the mid-2030s and beyond which will be in my forthcoming book “Future War in the Indo-Pacific” which a real defence investment plan with a ten-year defence planning horizon would address. Future war will be Quantum war. ‘QW’ can best be understood as the hyper-acceleration of interactions of a huge number of facets at immense speed to the point at which the interaction takes on an instantly adaptive and proactive life of its own virtually or completely independent of the commander. That is the future war the Americans, Chinese and even Russians are working on but which the country with the world’s third largest AI economy has chosen not to.
Starmer says he wants to use drones to create a robotic mass to offset the lack of human mass from which the British armed forces suffer. Drones are indeed one part of the future force that will be needed by the mid-2030s if military mass and rapid manoeuvre across huge space are to credibly deter and defend. First, Britain will buy the wrong drones. The current generation of drones are simply a development stepping stone to what is coming – AI-drone swarms able to operate across the multiple domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge and autonomously test and penetrate defences. Second, drones are at best so-called ‘loyal wingmen’ that need warfighting hubs from which to operate. They will force multiply the parent force but only if acting in conjunction with a command hub built on real fighting power.
Cutting our nose…
This is the critical failing of the DIP. To cut the next generation Type 83 destroyer and Type 32 frigates for fewer and cheaper platforms to fund £5 billion of drones is utterly self-defeating. Those drones could only be used to effect in the warfare of the 2030s IF they have advanced AI-command hubs such as the planned Type 83 and Type 32 frigates. Ships that must also have sufficient anti-air and anti-sub-surface capabilities themselves to defend against an enemy’s unmanned autonomous systems.
Why the Navy? Field Marshal Lord Richards with whom I wrote The Retreat from Strategy (republished in paperback this coming September), published a powerful letter in The Times last week in which he, a soldier not a sailor, said that Britain was faced with a series of hard defence choices that this Government refuses to confront. First, under current spending plans Britain can either afford a bespoke and extremely expensive nuclear deterrent OR an advanced expeditionary conventional military capable both now and going forward, but not both. Second, Britain can either duplicate what the Finns, Germans, Poles and others are doing on NATO’s Eastern Flank through a Continental Strategy, or develop a Maritime Strategy based on a Super Joint Expeditionary Force with a clear focus on the increasingly contested and vital North Atlantic. It cannot do both. Look at a map!
More smoke and errors
The DIP is yet more smoke and errors. Starmer even suggested that Britain would be spending 4.2% GDP on defence by 2030, which revealed the extent of his deceit. He could only have plucked that figure out of the air by combining 2.7% GDP on defence by 2030 (not the 3% as promised) with the NATO commitment to spend 1.5% on so-called ‘resilience’.
The only truth is that Starmer has chosen to ignore the threats the Strategic Defence Review clearly identified in the hope that the defence disaster he is engineering will happen on someone else’s watch. The best interpretation one can give to this lamentable document is that it is Starmer’s spiteful payback to a country which did not back him. The worst is that it is an act of sabotage of Britain’s armed forces by a man ideologically opposed to the very idea of Britain as a military power.
Legacy?
This wretched Defence Investment Plan is a fitting legacy for this wretched prime minister for it has his fingerprints all over it. It ducks the hard policy choices Britain’s government must make top meet its first duty to the people – the defence of the realm. Having failed to cut welfare costs and the madness that is the Net Zero obsession Starmer has chosen to starve the armed forces of some £18 billion of the £28 billion needed simply to stand still. The DIP is also a con. Forget the headline $15 billion of investment. At least $5 billion is old money renamed, an old Treasury trick.
Thus, far from boosting Britain’s defences there is a real terms cut of £10.5 billion and an unfunded £4.5bn (which he will leave for Crash and Burnham to find), which will be the real headlines of this charade which both allies and adversaries will take away. Yet more short-term deceitful politics dressed up as innovation with the long-term reduced simply to deferring current cost. Starmer’s greatest conceit and deceit is that the DIP claims to invest in Britain’s defence today and Britain’s defence tomorrow. It does neither of those things and is little more than an act of sabotage.