Britain said yesterday it would radically change its approach to defence to address threats from Russia, nuclear risks and cyber-attacks by investing in drones and digital warfare rather than relying on a much larger army to engage in modern combat.
Responding to US President Donald Trump’s insistence that Europe take more responsibility for its own security, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged the largest sustained increase in British defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
But with limited finances, the government’s plan envisages making the army more lethal, not larger, by learning from Ukraine, where drones and technology have transformed the battlefield.
Defence Secretary John Healey said Britain’s adversaries were working more in alliance and technology was changing how war was fought.
“Drones now kill more people than traditional artillery in the war in Ukraine and whoever gets new technology into the hands of their armed forces the quickest will win,” he said.
Starmer commissioned a Strategic Defence Review shortly after he was elected last July, tasking experts including the former Nato boss, George Robertson, and a former Russia adviser to the White House, Fiona Hill, with formulating a plan for the next 10 years.
Despite cuts to the military budget in recent years, Britain still ranks alongside France as one of Europe’s leading military powers, with its army helping to protect Nato’s eastern flank and its navy maintaining a presence in the Indo-Pacific.
But the army, with 70,860 full-time trained soldiers, is the smallest since the Napoleonic era and the government has said it needs to be reformed given the growing strategic threats.
James Cartlidge, defence policy chief for the opposition Conservatives, said the government had failed to prove it could finance the review’s recommendations, meaning it had ‘dodged the big decisions’.
Under the plan accepted by the government, Britain will expand its fleet of attack submarines, which are nuclear-powered but carry conventional weapons, and will spend $20.3 billion before the next election, due in 2029, on the replacement of the nuclear warheads for its main nuclear fleet.
It will build at least six new munitions plants, procure up to 7,000 British-made long-range weapons, and launch new communication systems for the battlefield.
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