The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), due to be launched by Keir Starmer on Monday, will be surprisingly radical, according to sources closely involved, and will be the most far-reaching reform programme for British security at home and abroad this century.
It will be the biggest shake-up of the nation’s defence and Armed Forces since the present Ministry of Defence (MoD) was formed in 1957.
The new review centres on two key concepts: the notion that all three fighting services should now be combined into one integrated force; and operations of all sizes should be enabled by a new “Digital Targeting Web”, which will connect weapons systems and speed-up decisions.
“Ways of warfare are changing – with the UK facing daily cyber attacks on this new front line,” John Healey, the Defence Secretary, said this week on a visit to the Defence Cyber Centre at Corsham in Wiltshire. “The keyboard is a major weapon in this new warfare.”
The future of the Ajax armoured fighting vehicle could be in doubt (Photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty)The SDR is based on the defence budget going up to 2.5 per cent of GDP, or around £70bn, by 2027. Discussions behind the review also recognise that the Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte, has said that all Nato members should aim to be spending around 3.5 per cent of gross national earnings on defence by 2030. Final figures for defence for the rest of this Parliament are likely to be announced by Rachel Reeves in the Spending Review on 11 June.
The review is expected to focus on an extensive reform agenda: cutting outdated legacy programmes; a reappraisal of nuclear programmes from nuclear submarines to nuclear weaponry; a new deal for industrial partnership and investment in defence; and a greater involvement with defence and the wider civilian community.
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“We want to make the whole running of defence more balanced and even,” Healey told me in Corsham.
The highest level of Britain’s defences is now run by a Military Strategic Headquarters, led by four key players: the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, currently David Williams; the Chief of the Defence Staff, currently Admiral Sir Tony Radakin; the National Armaments Director, currently Andy Start on an acting basis, and the Chief of Defence Nuclear, currently Madelaine McTernan.
The Chief of Defence Staff now becomes the most senior operational commander in the forces. Radakin is due to retire in September, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton, head of the RAF, is slated to replace him – something of a surprise as he has limited operational command experience.
The newly minted post of National Armaments Director (NAD) is intriguing – both for its novelty and the difficulties the Whitehall machine has had in finding a suitable candidate for the post. The NAD will be responsible for the nation’s arsenal, equipment and weaponry past, present and future. He or she will have to clean up the long-running disaster movie of defence procurement, a saga of huge cost, long delay and one or two pretty dud, and expensive programmes.
Several programmes and projects are down for a very sudden, and possibly unexpected, chop – so my defence department sources tell me. “There will be cuts – and pretty surprising ones,” one insider told me.
HMS Artful, an Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, at Faslane naval base in Scotland. (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty)High on the list must be the Ajax 40-tonne light tank – nearly 20 years in the procuring, and costing more than £3bn to develop. The MoD spokespeople assure me: “Ajax is going really well now.” Soldiers from the Household Cavalry Regiment still don’t like it, especially the excessive vibration. “It’s never going to really work,” one veteran of the regiment remarked. Another due for rough treatment is the RAF’s new Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft – which is now orphaned because the US air force is ditching its version of the programme, and spares will be scarce.
The Chief of Defence Nuclear faces a similar dilemma. The authors of the defence review recommend reassessment of the nuclear submarine programmes. These range from the Vanguard, and subsequent Dreadnought, class of strategic nuclear missile boats, to the Astute class of nuclear-powered attack submarines – and the plan to build at least 12 long-range attack subs under the Aukus treaty with the US and Australia. “The costs are simply running out of sight,” says the independent analyst Francis Tusa.
The jewel in the crown appears to be the review’s extra £1bn funding for cyber services, and the plan for the Digital Targeting Web. These were announced in a prequel to the SDR by John Healey in Corsham on Wednesday. He pledged an extra funding for Cyber Command, and a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command, to combat cyber and electronic warfare threats to British forces and British interests. It is all to be up and running with the new HQ and Cyber Command base and training academy at the MoD site at Samlesbury by 2027.
Healey visits the National Cyber Force at MoD Corsham, Wiltshire. He announced a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command, and the MoD will develop a Digital Targeting Web to better connect weapons systems and speed battlefield decisions (Photo: Ministry of Defence)The cyber force, already five years old, accepts recruits on a different route from the armed services. They don’t have to do rigorous fitness tests, or even wear uniforms. “They can do zig-zag careers, join us, leave and come back again,” says General Sir Jim Hockenhull, the head of Strategic Command. “We don’t expect people to stay much more than six or eight years – and it’s pretty good to be able to say, come and join us, be a cyber hacker, legally.” Salaries start at £40,000 a year.
We were given a glimpse of cyber force at work at the Global Security Centre in Corsham. They were plotting cyber and electronic warfare risks and threats, and communications around the task force being led through the Red Sea by aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales. “We work through sensors to effectors, from all the assets in the area – we’ve got civilian contractors, service men and women, cyber force recruits working at desks side by side,” a commander said, indicating a row of computer terminals below a huge wall of displays.
Starmer and Healey on a Vanguard class nuclear submarine as it returns to base in Scotland The future of the UK’s submarine fleet will be a major focus of the defence review (Photo: Simon Dawson/No 10)He said that the unit had on occasion mounted offensive cyber operations against known malware, usually from Russian crime syndicates. Over the last year they picked up 90,000 incursions of malware – 129 of them potentially deadly. A few years back they mounted a cyber offensive on Isis drone communications. Last year they mounted Operation Damascene Peacock to take down a Russian malware attack using the Rom Com and Rust channels. This aspect of the cyber war is intensifying by the day, an operator claimed.
Two other major chapters in the review will focus on partnership and innovation from industry – which might involve a separate investment fund or bond issue. This is to be enhanced in a further Defence Industrial Strategy update due this summer. There is also to be a section on the engagement of defence and the forces with society – especially on recruiting, reserves and the cadet forces. The combined number of reservists and cadets now outnumbers the combined number of full-time Armed Forces personnel.
The RAF’s E7 AEW&C is now orphaned because the US air force is ditching its version of the programme, and spares will be scarce (Photo: AS1 Nile Austin/UK MoD Crown/PA)The review has been authored and led by Lord Robertson – former defence secretary and Nato chief, who wrote Tony Blair’s groundbreaking 1998 Strategic Defence Review; retired General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the foremost military intellectuals, who pioneered the concept of the “integrated force”; and Dr Fiona Hill, former deputy US national security adviser, and chancellor of Durham University.
They have all helped with drafting and redrafting of the report. Their main message, and that of the new Cyber Command, is that the security of the UK is under constant threat from conventional subversion and non-conventional attack, mainly but not exclusively from Russia, and mainly but not exclusively by cyber.
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Much of the preparation of the 150 pages of the sometimes densely written report has been done in total secrecy, an omertá rare in Whitehall. All of the authors have agreed to the final text, and the Government will accept its recommendations. No one is expecting something to happen similar to events in Australia two years ago, when the government of Tony Albanese partially rejected a similar review.
The main objective is to prove to allies and foes that Britain is well up to managing its own defence against new and emerging threats, and defending the interests of its own people and its allies. Under Article 3 of Nato’s founding treaty, each ally must be capable of defending itself, and under Article 4, each must be able to combine effectively in the defence of allies. The verdict of our closest Nato allies on next Monday’s defence review will be interesting – to put it mildly.
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