Britain’s armed forces face a dramatic change in tactics with the announcement of an extra £15 billion ($19.90 billion) in the national defence budget that will equip troops with machines on future battlefields.
The lessons learnt from the wars in Ukraine and the Gulf have had a direct impact on the UK’s long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP), with high-level resignations over underfunding of the military.
An extra £1.5 billion has been found after John Healey quit as defence secretary and a large proportion of that will be spent on a major overhaul of Britain’s drone programme, it was announced on Tuesday.
The navy’s 60,000-tonne aircraft carriers could well serve as airbases for the Royal Navy’s new jet-powered drones.
Troops will also learn to fight alongside attack robots and aerial drones of the kind that are dominating the Ukraine battlefield, where the “front line” has now extended to 30 kilometres or more.
That war and the Iran conflict have demonstrated that the modern battlefield is “fast, lethal and relentless”, the DIP stated. What the forces needed was a fusion of personnel and machines to build a “new kind of combat team that competitively fights with and against drones”.
The substantial impact of Iran’s Shahed-136 kamikaze drones on Gulf infrastructure and the performance of interceptors taking out its ballistic missiles had also led Britain to rapidly revise its near negligible air defences.
The uplift will bring UK defence spending to 2.7 per cent of gross domestic product, with a 3 per cent target set for 2030.
Drone force
An “immediate priority” for what the DIP called the “integrated force” was to become a major drone force.
“Speed is decisive,” it said. “Learning the lessons from Ukraine, this transformation will provide defence with a cheaper, more lethal capability that provides the integrated force with greater mass.”
As part of the UK's “largest ever drone investment”, £5 billion will be spent on building a drone army by 2030.
Foremost will be transforming the navy from manned vessels to a “hybrid navy fleet” that will include the Type-91 uncrewed missile ships, extra-large uncrewed underwater vessels, as well as the development Project Pantheon under which jet drones will operate alongside F-35s taking off from the carriers.
With drones accounting for up to 90 per cent of Russian casualties in Ukraine, the need for kamikaze-type weapons was vital for ground forces, with £210 million invested alongside £400 million on “other expendable autonomous systems”.
Given the vulnerability of helicopters in current warfare, the Ministry of Defence appears to have shifted away from relying solely on its expensive Apache attack helicopters; under the £220 million “Project NYX”, armed drones will now accompany them.
It will also invest £150 million in uncrewed ground vehicles – robots with guns – that are proving effective in Ukraine.
Air defence deficit
“The Iran war has fundamentally changed the Middle East and reinforced the priority on integrated air and missile defence,” the report said.
Given Britain’s major vulnerability to missile attack – it has no Patriot advanced interceptors – it will now spend millions on upgrades as the conflict in the Middle East has “demonstrated the critical importance of integrated air and missile defences”.
The UK was left particularly embarrassed when a drone struck its sovereign airbase on Cyprus in March, exposing a lack of missile defence investment.
Its foremost system is the Sky Sabre. It is effective but not present in great numbers, particularly with batteries deployed to the Gulf, but the DIP promised a doubling of the Sky Sabre's launchers.
To combat the menace of Shahed drones, Project Presagium will oversee the investment of £750 million in short-range drone protection for the UK homeland and its overseas bases.
Furthermore, “obsolete” radars alongside command-and-control systems will be replaced in a £400 million overhaul.
Building on the apparent combat success of lasers against drones and cruise missiles, £490 million will be invested in the Dragonfire directed-energy weapon, bringing it into service on Type-45 destroyers by next year.
Britain will also spend £770 million on a joint project with Germany to produce a “deep-strike weapon” with a range beyond 2,000km.
Middle East learning
“We can see that in the Middle East with what Iran has been able to deliver with its Shahed and other munitions that have been firing at our allies and our bases there, that's one of the reasons why we're investing more in air defence,” Defence Minister Luke Pollard told The National.
It was not only the lessons from Ukraine but also that Russian tactics for penetrating air defences had been passed on to Iran to assist in its attacks. “A key part of what we've seen during the preparation of this document is lessons learnt in Ukraine being applied to the Middle East,” he added.
But he did not dismiss suggestions that the new plan meant Britain would play less of a role “East of Suez”, as it focused on defending the High North against Russia.
The plan also promised that in the Middle East, Britain “will maintain and build key relationships through our persistent military footprint in the region”.
Mr Pollard also argued that the £15 billion extra investment announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer was a “substantial increase in the attractiveness of UK defence exports”.
Much of the new funding has come from taking money away from the UK’s road-building and energy projects.
Officials also promised that defence would be in the unusual position of being the “top priority” in the next spending review but were unable to confirm if that would remain the case if, as expected, Andy Burnham becomes the next UK prime minister.
