It would perhaps be wise, therefore, to explore the issue of increasing defense spending. Three questions could usefully be answered: why spend more, and then the related questions of what and how the money will be spent? The “why” seems obvious, given that a ground war is raging in Eastern Europe. But since it began focusing on the Donbas in April, Russia has seized territory equivalent only to the size of Greater London. Moscow is now trying to replace the huge losses it suffered for these meager gains. Even if he makes further gains, his army is already badly battered, bleeding and weakened. Given the impact of sanctions, why should it be valid to assume that the Russian military could regain its pre-Ukraine capability, let alone a size and capability that would allow it to threaten NATO? We should ensure that Russia is defeated in Ukraine instead of planning to spend fortunes in the future on defenses that may never be needed. What has been clearly revealed, however, is that the West has allowed its stockpiles of munitions and the industrial capacity to store them to atrophy to dangerous levels. Instead, it has invested in excellent war platforms – ships, aircraft, tanks – to put on display, of which it has very few. But having a top-of-the-range rifle and no money for bullets doesn’t intimidate your opponent. What Ukraine also proved, again, is that ingenuity and the will to win trumps ‘Gucci’ gear. Ukraine has innovated with commercial drones and geospatial intelligence, linked to reservists with laptops via Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, who can then use their intelligently dispersed artillery to target Russian forces. Is this value for money? or, stated as a principle of war, economy of effort. Ukraine does economy of effort well. The peacetime defense budget is around £4 billion. The UK is £44 billion. The brutal truth is that the DoD and the Services have a poor record of efficient or effective procurement, so any requests for more money must be accompanied by plans to address structural and cultural failures in deploying imaginative forces and effective procurement. Our NATO allies are showing us that there are other ways beyond our cozy military-industrial complex to build effective national defenses. Finland has a £7 billion defense budget and only 21,000 regular service personnel. But it has a trained and equipped immediate reserve capable of fielding 285,000 troops, including Europe’s largest artillery force outside of Russia. Given a little more, it has about 900,000 available. He has war plans to defeat a Russian invasion that are costed, resourced and practiced. It is not a model to be slavishly copied – the UK has different strategic responsibilities – but it does demonstrate that there are other ways of conceiving an effective national defense force. No one has a full understanding of the lessons of Ukraine yet. But there is much that we can already discern that must shape our Armed Forces and their attitude. Nuclear weapons have proven their centrality in defining strategic terms – we are not doing enough of our nuclear contribution to NATO. China is a much bigger strategic competitor, by several leagues, than Russia. The emerging ideas of information age warfare have been proven in Ukraine: you can be found and hit faster and at greater range than ever before. Cheap but smart weapons seem to have achieved some supremacy on expensive platforms. Reengineered “civilian” technology can meet military needs at a fraction of the cost. All of these factors require us to rethink the established military modus operandi. So yes, we may have to spend more on defense because the world is not safe and stable. But before we waste money to reinforce yesterday’s ways of fighting, let’s first appreciate where the real future threat comes from. Let’s make sure our modernized “theory of victory” is capable of matching it and can hold its own with our allies in a real conflict. Then let’s figure out how to buy what we need, not what the Services want, to put resources behind this winning theory and in a way that’s less wasteful than has become the norm. Only then can we cost and justify any increase in defense spending. It is unlikely to be a round number as a percentage of GDP. Air Marshal Edward Stringer CB CBE is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange and former director general of Joint Force Development
