Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that Britain must be ready to fight and win a war within around 1,000 days, citing Russia's growing military capacity as a key threat.
Writing in The Telegraph, Streeting said the UK has three years to improve its defences alongside NATO allies because adversaries could be ready to attack by 2030. He described the threat of "state-sponsored terrorism" by hostile countries targeting infrastructure as ever-increasing.
Be Ready campaign launched
His warning follows the launch of the Government's Be Ready campaign, which aims to help Britons get through a national emergency. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said unexpected events "are becoming more common."
Streeting 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."
He 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."
National resilience measures
The campaign was not triggered by any "particular piece of intelligence," but rather about improving "national resilience" more generally, Streeting stressed. Brits have been told to stock up on enough emergency supplies to survive for three days in the event of a crisis, including bottled water, money, and food.
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'."
He added: "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?"
Wider context
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."
Burnham 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."
