The former head of the RAF, Air Marshal Edward Stringer, has warned that increased defence spending in the UK is being 'eaten up by the Ministry of Defence’s overdraft', with the country’s military footprint shrinking at a critical moment. His report for Policy Exchange, titled 'The Say-Do Gaps in Defence', highlights that the UK gets far less 'bang for its buck' than competitors, with front-line forces continuing to shrink despite headline budget increases to 3 per cent of GDP.
Stringer’s intervention comes just days after Sir Keir Starmer committed to sending UK troops to Ukraine as part of a coalition of the willing. However, the former air marshal warns that no single formation in the British military is currently sustainable in combat as a sovereign entity. He noted that the British Army now has just 14 howitzers in total, the Royal Navy has been unable to put more than one attack submarine to sea for a while, and the RAF had to send training unit pilots to sea to guarantee certification of the F-35 Force on the carrier.
The report is the third warning by a former member of the UK’s military top brass in less than a week over resources not matching commitments. Earlier, Lord Stirrup, another former air marshal, outlined how the UK had become too reliant on nuclear weapons for deterrence, which he said was not scaring Vladimir Putin. Sir Richard Shirreff, former Nato deputy supreme allied commander, said allied forces would need at least 50,000 troops in Ukraine to deter Russia, while the Army currently has fewer than 75,000 personnel.
Stringer also warned that the UK had become too reliant on America and not its own sovereign capabilities. He said: 'During the period of American-policed “rules-based international order”, we increasingly relied on borrowing off the Americans while making cuts to vital capabilities. The optics of occasional tactical excellence obscured the increasingly hollow nature of our sovereign capacity.' He added: 'The tide has gone out and we can now see that the UK military was not wearing any trunks.'
Next week, a debate is set to be held in the Commons on the beleaguered Ajax armoured vehicle project, with the government likely to come under pressure after some £6 billion spent on its development. Stringer’s report underscores a stark 'say-do gap' between political rhetoric and the reality of the UK’s relative military weakness.
