Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that Britain must be prepared to enter conflict within 1,000 days, citing Russia's expanding military capabilities. He said the UK has three years to strengthen its defences alongside NATO partners, as adversaries could be positioned to strike by 2030.
Warning over state-sponsored terrorism
Streeting highlighted the continuously escalating danger of "state-sponsored terrorism" from hostile nations that could target UK infrastructure. His warning follows the introduction of the Government's Be Ready campaign, which helps Britons navigate a national emergency. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said unforeseen incidents "are becoming more common."
Writing in The Telegraph, Streeting cautioned that Britain's adversaries could be positioned to launch an assault in the near future, particularly as Moscow intensifies its hybrid warfare against NATO. He wrote: "Our adversaries' willingness to harm us is not new. What has changed is their capacity. By 2030 their force strength and war economy could put them in a position to attack. That gives us a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win."
Call for national preparedness
Streeting added: "To prevent the worst, we have to prepare for it. My defining priority is to make sure that this country is ready to fight and win a war." The Be Ready campaign was not prompted by any "particular piece of intelligence," but rather focused on enhancing "national resilience" more broadly, he emphasised.
Britons have been urged to stockpile sufficient emergency provisions to last three days during a crisis. Households have been encouraged to maintain stocks of bottled water, cash and food in case of an emergency. Streeting previously said: "Terms like 'hybrid warfare' and 'grey zone threats' do not accurately capture or convey to the general public what I prefer to describe as 'state-sponsored terrorism'.
Households urged to stockpile supplies
"It's really important that we ask households and businesses, are they prepared? Are they ready? Do they know how they would respond in the event of everyday challenges that might manifest themselves?"
Streeting said: "In the face of those threats, which are not hypothetical but real, and not somewhere else but increasingly here, we have to step up and take seriously our national resilience as well as our national defence." The Prime Minister told the BBC: "It's not about panicking. It's about just taking sensible measures to have enough in the house to tide you over should there be a difficult situation."
