Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
The Telegraph.
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To claim this special double roses offer, go to 1-800-Flowers.com slash ACAST. That's 1-800-Flowers.com slash ACAST. We've changed from wars of choice of where we have an option to perhaps moving into a space where we don't. And that's why this defense review is so important.
To the Middle East now and more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battlelines. It's Monday, 2nd of June, 2025. Today we'll be doing a deep dive into the Strategic Defence Review, a major document outlining how this government is going to transform our defence here in the UK.
I'm joined in the studio by my co-host, Roland Oliphant, and later on I'll be speaking to Alistair Carnes, Minister for Veterans and People at the Ministry of Defence, about what the review gets right. And then I'm joined by former Army Chief, Lord Richard Dannett, to discuss what it gets wrong. Let's start by digging into some of the headlines of the Strategic Defence Review, which, to stop it from being a mouthful, I'm just going to call the SDR going forward. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer launched the SDR up in a BAE shipyard in Glasgow this morning. Let's hear a clip of what he said.
What you've delivered is a blueprint to make Britain safer and stronger. A battle-ready, armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities equipped for the decades to come. We need to be clear when we say we're entering a new era,
the level of threat and the instability is of a different order than all of us have experienced for quite some time now. And that is why I asked for this review to be done, which is I need an assessment of
The threats that we face as they are now and as we think they're going to be over the next five or ten years and our current capability to ensure that our capability meets the threats that we face and that's what I'm very pleased that this review has delivered today. Our job now is to take that on and to deliver it alongside our long-standing commitment to our NATO allies. The report says the UK needs to be war ready.
This is all about making society at large is ready for conflict. We need to integrate our forces. We need a NATO-first approach. It's a 10-year programme and involves everything from new submarines to funding for armed forces accommodation to a new volunteer-led Home Guard. So, Roland, can you tell me a bit about the SDR, what its purpose was and who the authors are? The Strategic Defence Review is a roughly 45,000-word document, which I think is going to be made available today.
Within a few hours of us recording this conversation, it's meant to be a kind of comprehensive roadmap, a manifesto, a prescription, a big doctor's prescription for UK defence. They talk about over the next 10 years being specific, but really with a window up to the next kind of 40 years. But it is about the next 10 years of UK defence. The lead authors, there's three of them. There's Lord Robertson.
George Robertson, he's a former Secretary General of NATO. Before that, he was a Labour Defence Minister under Tony Blair. General Sir Richard Barons, he's a former head of UK Joint Forces Command, a very senior, experienced soldier. And lastly, a foreign policy expert, Dr Fiona Hill, which is the British-American foreign policy expert who you may remember advised Donald Trump on Russia during his first term. I mean, the world I come from, kind of Soviet Union watching, she's an absolute giant. So these are big names who got together to do this, have been working this for a long time.
It was commissioned, I think, when almost as soon as Kirsten came to power last summer, it was delayed. They kept on saying it's going to be spring. It's going to be spring. They have admitted, have spoken to people in the MOD who have admitted, frankly, you know, it was going to come out in February. Then Donald Trump showed up and started saying all this stuff about Europe, NATO, you know, America's defense commitments being elsewhere and that this was reworked.
over the previous three months. They've had to do a bit of rewriting to take account of that. They say, we think we've taken account of those challenges. We were speaking to people at the Ministry of Defence this morning and they were very keen to paint this as a really exciting moment, an opportunity to turn the British Armed Forces into a modern, relevant fighting force.
What are some of the headlines of this SDR? What's it actually going to do? Okay, it's a 45,000-word document, and I'll confess I haven't read it in detail, but this is what we know so far. It has 62 recommendations, and the British government has given us all to understand that it will accept all of them. The big headline one is 12 new nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Now, these are Orcas SSNs. So these are the submarines that are meant to be built under the new trilateral deal with the United States and Australia. They're nuclear powered, but they are conventionally armed with torpedoes and cruise and maybe hypersonic missiles. Slightly weasley worded. So up to 12, I'm told by someone who worked in government that it could be translated as this means we are not going to build 12 submarines.
Not sure yet, but they're to replace the current seven astute class submarines that do that for Royal Navy. So I think probably the baseline will be definitely seven of those to replace the boats going out of service, possibly more.
The other big thing, new nuclear warheads. Britain has a sovereign nuclear warhead program. And these are meant to go on top of the, well, they're meant to equip the Dreadnought submarines, which are going to replace the current Vanguard ones. Those are Britain's four nuclear missile, nuclear at sea deterrent submarines. The fact we're renewing those, I think, has been announced.
Britain is committing under this to develop and manufacture new warheads to replace our existing ones, so maintaining nuclear deterrent. The other big commitments is a slightly nebulous one called getting the armed forces to a stage where it will be ready to fight a war. Timeline's a bit fuzzy, but people are talking about within two years. They're talking about this 20-40-40 model of force equipment, so 20% of a force composed of
heavily crude traditional kit. 40% go on cheaper single-use weapons like one-way drones, another 40% on reusable items which are more costly but can be entirely unmanned. So big emphasis on this.
New technology, boosting weapons stockpiles, so an upping production in case of crisis. They're talking about six new munitions factories built across the UK. £1.5 billion for upping production of artillery shells and explosives, buying up to 7,000 UK-built long-range weapons. The government adds in a move to support 800 defence jobs.
and a billion pounds on digital capabilities. There's going to be a new cyber and electromagnetic command that's going to be in charge of offensive cyber operations, something called AI Kill Webs.
Don't honestly know what an AI kill web is, but I'm sure we can find out. And hacking teams, obviously. So building up that offensive as well as defensive cyber capability. The other thing they're very keen to emphasize is retention. And I suppose they don't use this phrase. I haven't seen it phrased, but used. But in kind of British defense talks, there's this thing called the military covenant, which is essentially an unwritten pact between the public and the armed forces.
which says the armed forces will not have a proper unionized labor force, but in exchange, we look after them. And that's been really eaten into recently. Horror stories about housing, about wages, about conditions. Frank admission from the people we're talking about the NID this morning that retention is a really big problem. So talking about pay rises,
£1.5 million in additional funding to repair a new armed forces housing. And if you talk to serving or former personnel, that's been a real big bugbear for many years. So that is what is in it. I wanted to get your thoughts on what the SDR says about the threat of Russia.
and the threats by other countries. It says that Russia poses an immediate and pressing danger, classes China as a sophisticated and persistent challenge, and says Iran and North Korea are regional disruptors and potentially hostile to the UK. But the focus there is clearly on Russia. What did you make of that? Russia is the, the jargon would be the pacing threat, right? It's the immediate security threat faced by the United Kingdom and its NATO allies at the moment. That's been clear. It's no secret there. People have said that for a long time. But I think this comes into the...
the considerations that kind of drove the review, which is this idea that we are no longer in the post-Cold War era. We're no longer in that era of peace dividend. We are again, frankly, in an era of peer-on-peer, state-on-state conflict. The authors of the report have laid out their thinking behind it. So Lord Robertson, General Barron, and Dr. Hill wrote in the Telegraph article,
They said that we were answering two important questions. The first is, what is required to ensure the UK has the military capability it needs to meet these threats that we face? This new era of state-on-state conflict, but also exacerbated by this new digital era. And the second question is, how can that be met against a challenging economic backdrop? They wrote, no.
There was an inevitable gap between these answers. But the government's important decision to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 to 2028, and vitally a 3% in the next parliament, made an enormous difference. And we should come back to that in a second because it's really important, that point. So they said we had four considerations. The first consideration is that the relative comfort of the post-Cold War era is evaporating. The world is shaken by population growth, climate change, nuclear proliferation, the digital age.
dominated by state level confrontation. And that, this is the real money quote, poses risks to our country at a potentially existential level. This is about answering that threat. Part of the answer they make very clear is a NATO first approach. So part of this report, as we mentioned at the beginning, is about responding to Donald Trump's kind of challenge to NATO. They're making very, very clear that the only effective affordable option for the UK is NATO first, is strengthening that alliance and doing this in concert
with our allies. Their second assumption is about the arrival of the digital age. Fighting changes the way everything else changes, right? I mean, the digital evolution has changed everything. They say Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows what war really means in the digital age. It illustrates the scale and pace of change required. Their recommendation is for a bit of jargon here. A constantly evolving transformation that combines existing and new technology to make the UK most technologically enabled armed forces in Europe...
We'll get back to that 20-40-40 mix we're talking about there. So respond to that. Yeah.
I can talk about that in a second. And their fourth consideration, the transformation, this extends beyond the front line. They're talking about whole of defense enterprise. So they're talking about industry as well, but they're talking about whole of nation resilience because the recognition is we will not be fighting wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, which are really just a business for the army itself.
Navy, Air Force and the Ministry of Defence. They're basically talking about getting all of society aware and prepared for the role they're going to have to play if we end up in a war with a peer adversary like Russia. Yeah, it's really this idea that we've been fighting wars of choice for a while now, but the next war might not be a choice, I suppose. Let's hear Keir Starmer talking on the Today programme to Nick Robinson about that threat from Russia. Are you saying that under your premiership,
You might, for example, have to send British troops to fight, to risk their lives, possibly to die, in defense of, say, Lithuania.
I very much hope not. And in order to make sure that that isn't the case, we need to prepare. But we cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses. We've seen what's happened in Ukraine just over three and a half, three years ago. Those tanks rolled across a border, something I think all of us thought we wouldn't really see in our lifetimes, the invasion of a European country.
Russia has shown in recent weeks that it's not serious about peace and we have to be ready. You brought up the funding of the SDR. This Labour government is committed to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by April 2027 and they've said that there is an ambition to spend 3% by the end of next Parliament, which is 2034. Feels like a lifetime away.
They haven't committed to that 3%, but that 3% is underpinning a lot of the changes that the SDR sets forward as necessary to be able to meet the current threats. Does that make this SDR essentially toothless? This is the really important point here that I kind of feel isn't being adequately addressed. The problem with this is you need to know the money's coming from somewhere. Soldiers are expensive people.
like professional soldiers are expensive their equipment is expensive fighting war is expensive feeding them is expensive getting them into theater is expensive if the money isn't there this isn't going to happen and that's why i kind of raised that weasel sentence about up to 12 new submarines up to we're really going to get there i think it's a real issue for the government in terms of how they're perceived by by adversaries like russia or like china or whoever else um if you're
you know, sitting in the Kremlin watching this, down at the Russian embassy, preparing your report back to Moscow, as I'm sure they'll be doing this afternoon, they might point out that, look, this is all costed for this, but the government is clearly cautious about committing to it.
Does that mean they're really committed to reaching these goals or to fighting if necessary? And it makes quite a difference from places like Poland and the Baltic States and where the money is already being spent. I think this question of the money, is it actually on the table or not, really has to be addressed. And I think saying, I'm sure it will be there,
but it's not there yet, it should leave people a bit uneasy about how committed the government is to actually delivering on this. And then just finally, there's been a lot of talk about Britain's nuclear capabilities. There was a report in the Sunday Times over the weekend that ministers were considering whether to restore an air-launched nuclear deterrent by buying some F-35s from America. Britain is the only big nuclear power that only has one method of delivering a nuclear weapon. That's obviously from submarines at sea.
What have we heard today in terms of our nuclear deterrent? So this is another question that has to be resolved. As you said, we've had an absolute deterrent for a long time. Most other nuclear powers are able to deliver in other ways. And especially, frankly, since Donald Trump came to power.
and there is a lot more emphasis and focus on the British and the French nuclear deterrence in terms of the umbrella for Europe. There is a live debate about whether it's time for the Royal Air Force to get back its air launch capability. It used to exist.
There's no reason, I suppose, it couldn't again. But that is definitely going to be a live debate, I would say, over the coming year in defence circles. Great. Roland Oliphant, my co-host on Battlelands. I'm sure we'll be coming back to this subject in the future. Coming up after the break, we hear from a government minister about what the SDR gets right and a former army chief about what it gets wrong.
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Welcome back. I'm joined now by Alistair Carnes, who's Minister of Veterans and People. Alistair, welcome to Battlelines. I want to start by asking, the terms of reference for this strategic defence review, they committed to putting defence personnel right at the heart of defence's plans. Are you satisfied that that has happened? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm obviously the individual responsible for that. So I've been pushing really hard to make sure that the very centre of this defence review are people. It's worthwhile probably just for the listeners to step back and just
You know, I've spent 24 years in the military and some of the most specialist elements had a lot of insight to everything going on the last 24 years. And I've never seen the geopolitical situation as fractious as it is now. So this strategic defense review is actually really well timed, especially with what's going on in Ukraine, the lessons being identified there.
but also the fact we've changed from wars of choice of where we have an option to perhaps moving into a space where we don't. And that's why this defence review is so important. How do you square that with the fact that there are no plans to increase the size of the army? Well, I think, first of all, we've got to sort out recruitment and retention.
That's what the £1.5 billion going into housing is particularly focused at, to ensure that people get the right to family life. We increase the standard of their family accommodation, but also single living accommodation. That will bring the total to £7 billion spent on accommodation, because we know that's one of the biggest issues.
Recruitment we're working on, we just put out a new contract, obviously that'll kick in the next 12 to 18 months. We've got lots of people wanting to join the military. It's often the process of getting the requisite medical records to join up that is the issue. So hopefully that will speed up as well. What I would say is standing forces that we have, Army, Navy and Air Force,
are the very sort of spearhead of any response to a crisis or a war of scale. What we've got to really look at is defence in depth. What do I mean by that? What is our ability to regenerate more reserves, more regular forces really quickly should we be caught in a crisis? And that's why in this defence review, one of the key pillars is a whole of society approach, recognising that we need unity of effort across the nation and the nation needs to recognise why we have defence in the first place.
ranging from working with the national schools and curriculum all the way through to cadet forces, all the way up to our standing forces and ensuring everyone's aligned.
You've said that retention is one of the biggest issues facing the armed forces and the accommodations obviously at the heart of that, as you said. There's accommodation that has damp, mould, there are broken boilers. Do you think this is enough money to tackle what's been a really massive ongoing problem? I mean, a report by the National Audit Office earlier this year said that it was an intractable maintenance problem for the MOD's estate. Yeah, absolutely. And the reason it's intractable is because for various reasons, we did the worst deal ever. You
you know, decades ago and sold off all of our military housing, paid for the rent and then paid to upkeep it as well, which is absolutely unbelievable. So it meant that we couldn't actually refurbish any of the houses because we didn't own them. That's why it's such an amazing announcement at the start of this year, the Annington deal to buy those homes back. So we now own them all. We've now put 1.5 billion into behind to refurbishing them. I was just RAF Wittering just last week, I've been to
God knows how many visits to military housing. And I've lived in that military housing myself. And what I would say is that 1.5 billion will go a long way to ensuring the kitchens, the bathrooms, the boilers, the damp and mold are dealt with. But over the
Over the medium to longer term, the defence housing strategy will be the thing that will actually change and give us a once in a generational lifetime chance to change the housing that our armed forces personnel live in. Can you tell us a bit more about that strategy? Absolutely. So we're working really closely with the DIO. We've got some external challenge panel as well, family federations, and we're working about how we take the 36,000 houses that we now own
and refurbish, knock down and rebuild the ones required to provide the deal that our defence personnel deserve when it comes to housing. What are the other issues that are affecting retention and recruitment? There's a multitude of different issues. One of the ones is that Armed Forces personnel, through the extensive training and qualifications they get, are highly attractive to the commercial market and it can offer so much
um so much outside and so we for example we've given the biggest pay rise in 20 years we've also provided um retention bonuses to those most skilled for example um most skills to sort after in the civilian world such as engineers and soldier bonuses to ensure we can keep people in but we've got a long way to go in this space um and you know i don't i don't hold back but we're absolutely working hard to make sure that
the standard of living of those serving improves over time. I was recently out on a military drill on the Swedish island of Gotland with members from the 16th Air Assault Brigade and it became very clear to me that one of the issues that they face is that they have to spend a lot of time away from their family when they're out on drills, when they're out on missions. Is it the case that our society is just fundamentally not prepared for some of the sacrifices that are involved with having a more active armed forces? I
I would say, I mean, as I say, 24 years in the military, a huge amount of operational tours away. I know how those individuals in 16th Air Assault Brigade feel, but that is part and parcel of being in the military. Where possible, we need to reduce the cadence of those deployments and training exercises so people get the right to a family life and ensure, but also ensure that when operational requirements demand, those individuals are ready and fit to
And also the morale is focused at that deployment. And that's why things like housing and retention bonuses and pay are really important. When you mentioned society not being ready, I think we could be careful. In 1938, there was a king and country debate in Oxford that said people wouldn't fight for king and country. And then the Second World War took place and huge amounts of people signed up.
I would argue when there's a national imperative to support the nation, this nation is full of amazing patriots who would sign up and stand up to do their duty as and when required. One of the other aspects of an SDR which ties into that is this new volunteer-led Home Guard. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, so it's a strategic reserve. And this is about if the country is called to a crisis,
or indeed we have an existential threat from a hostile state that is likely to impact our way of living in the United Kingdom, we need to make sure that we can
and protect all of the critical national infrastructure and all of the critical components that sustain our way of life here in the United Kingdom. And so we're investigating how we can do that. Does that look like a strategic reserve? Does that look like using the Reserve Forces Cadets Association? Does it look like a new command and control model here in the United Kingdom?
So we're exploring all those options and in particular how we can protect the nation against hostile state threats, both in the country and external, should they bubble up to the surface if a crisis was to evolve. Do you think we'll start seeing posters, your country needs you again? Well, it got me in in the first place. So I go back to, you know, I'm still in the reserves area.
There's not a shortage of people wanting to join the armed forces in any way, shape or form. And I do think that this country is deeply patriotic at heart and will stand up to fight for the country should we need to do so. The report talks a lot about the threat of Russia, the very current and immediate threat of Russia. Do you think that's properly understood here in the UK? We do a good job, but we could do better in explaining the impact. You know, the standard of life, standard of living crisis, perhaps some people are going through, a lot of that is impacted by Russia.
And the rise in food prices, the rise in oil and energy prices is caused by Russia's legal war in Ukraine. So I think we have our duty to explain that to the population. I also think that from our perspective, in the military perspective, and your listeners will be interested, that we've got to learn lessons from the war in Ukraine.
There's thousands of first-person view attacks a day. The drones have caused more casualties in artillery for the first time since the First World War. And it's important we learn those lessons, pull those lessons to defence and change our training tactics and procedures to adopt those lessons and make sure they're combined with some of our heavier conventional equipment to provide a potent mix of military capability. You mentioned the cost of living crisis.
In order to fund all of this, Keir Starmer's government has already committed to bringing up defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by next April. But the main ambition, as they're phrasing it, is to get to 3% by the end of the next parliament, 2034. Feels like a long time away. Does that effectively undermine the Strategic Defence Review if the money's not actually there? No, I think the Prime Minister has said today he's 100% confident we'll move to 3% in the future. For anybody in uniform today,
listening to the podcast or interested in defence, this is the first time individuals can look forward for the next 10 years and see an increase in defence spending. That's huge. And it's also huge about your retention piece about morale, because it means they're going to get the best capability, the best equipment, and the programmes are going to be funded correctly to ensure they're fit to fight should a conflict come upon us.
And I would say one other thing that one of the key factors on this was reducing overseas development aid. So taxpaying money going overseas and pumping it into the United Kingdom to pump prime defence industry.
Some of the announcements we made today will create 30,000 extra jobs, thousands of apprenticeships, and indeed be really, really good for the economy. Just finally, is this SDR, is it enough? Is it enough to keep the UK in the fight dealing with the threats that we face today? So the SDR outlines a journey to 2030. I think it's a fantastic set of announcements today.
And those announcements will help us protect the freedoms that we all enjoy and make sure our armed forces personnel, men and women, have everything they need to fight, but also ensuring that they have the accommodation and the standard of living required as we move forward. A lot of this, as always, with very complex, sophisticated procurements takes time, but the nation can have absolutely guarantee with us that we are moving in the right direction. Thank you very much, Alistair Carnes, Minister for Veterans and People. Thank you for joining us on Battlelines. Thank you.
Now, for a different, slightly less glowing perspective on this review, I caught up with Lord Richard Dannett. He was the head of the British Army from 2006 to 2009 and has repeatedly warned that we need to invest much, much more in our armed forces if we want to be able to bring them up to speed, let alone if we ever want them to be deployed as part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
As a former chief of the general staff, he's uniquely positioned to understand the issues at hand. Lord Dannett, welcome to Battlelines. You've previously warned that the UK military is so run down that it couldn't lead to any peacekeeping missions in Ukraine. And now we're being told that the UK must move to a state of war fighting readiness. How far away do you think that is? And does this review do enough to get us there?
Well, this review gives a very comprehensive analysis of the threats facing the United Kingdom at the present time and it proposes 62 recommendations to try and address those threats and that's all well and good. The determining factor of course is how much money the Treasury is going to make available extra to the Ministry of Defence to operationalise those 62 recommendations.
Now, what ministers are saying today is that they're going to increase defence spending from 2.3% to 2.5% by 2027 and up to 3% of GDP at some point in the future in the next parliament. Well, frankly, that doesn't really just touch the sides of the problem. If this government is really serious about securing the future of this country, it's
and the security of our population, then they've got to find more resources, they've got to find more money and find it quite quickly. And frankly, saying that we're not going to go to 3%, perhaps until as late as 2034,
is tantamount to, well, back in 1937, saying to Adolf Hitler, hey, please don't attack us until 1946 because we won't be ready. You said earlier this year that you think we should be going even as high as 3.5% and that if the review doesn't
get to 3%-ish, then it risks being hollow and Keir Starmer risks being assigned to the bin of history. Is that still your view? It's very much my view. I mean, where we should be is moving from 2.3% to 2.5% as planned by 2027, moving to 3%
in this parliament, in other words by 2029, and then to 3.5% by the end of the next parliament, 2034. Now when Keir Starmer or John Healey goes to the NATO summit in a week or two's time, they're going to be told very clearly by Mark Rutter, the Secretary General of NATO, that 3.5% is the figure that European member states of NATO should be aiming for.
And when our government says they want to be the leading European member of NATO, but are only willing to commit to 2.5%, frankly, neither are our enemies or our allies going to be very impressed with that. If we're serious about this, they've got to find the extra money and find it soon.
3% by 2029 at the latest, and then moved to 3.5% in the next parliament. So does that mean this strategic defence review is essentially toothless? Is it worth even paying attention to if the money doesn't appear to be there until potentially 2034? No, it's a roadmap.
but the roadmap doesn't become a plan until there are vehicles to move down the roadmap to actually make it actually work. So I don't want to rubbish in any shape or form this Strategic Defence Review. As I said, its analysis of our threats is very good. I think the way that it's positing NATO first is a very interesting adjustment to the Integrated Review of 2021, which itself was refreshed in 2023,
which was called Global Britain in a Competitive Age, and talked about a tilt towards the Indo-Pacific. Well, we're not tilting much to the Indo-Pacific now. What we're actually saying is the Euro-Atlantic area is our priority. And funny old thing, that's because there's a brutal war going on in Ukraine at the present moment. The Ukrainians are buying us time, and we've got to use that time wisely. Now, just think.
If in the next few months there should be a ceasefire in Ukraine and the killing stops in Ukraine, the killing and the destroying of Russian equipment will also stop.
The Russian economy is on a war footing. It'll be about two years before they replenish themselves and are ready to press again elsewhere in Europe. Maybe a probing attack on one of the Baltic states to test the commitment to Article 5 of the United States, of the United Kingdom and of other countries. So frankly, time is not on our side. The Ukrainians are buying us some time.
And number 11 has got to get a grip and find a way of putting more money into the defence budget one way or another. You mentioned the threats that the SDR lays out and it puts Russia at the top as an immediate threat and suggests that China is a challenge but not an enemy and that North Korea and Iran are regional disruptors. Does that sound the right way round to you? You mentioned our previous attempted pivot to the Indo-Pacific.
Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think quite rightly, Donald Trump, amongst the many extraordinary things he's been saying, the one thing that to me makes a certain amount of sense is that the United States wants to focus much more themselves on the Indo-Pacific. They're concerned about the rise of China. They're also concerned to maintain their security guarantees to South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia and other countries that rely very heavily on the United States. Therefore,
the European members of NATO have got to take up the slack and have got to do more to protect our own security. That doesn't mean to say the UK should focus just on NATO. It's NATO first, not NATO only. So bearing in mind our wider responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, there may be times when we have to operate with allies outside the European area. But that's
that's downstream the issue that's really facing us at the present moment is the security of Europe and that's where our focus should be and that's where the additional funding which must come sooner rather than later should be applied. What else do you think is is missing or perhaps not emphasised enough in this review I know one of the aspects that's been spoken about is the lack of boost to the numbers in the army I think it's the plan is to grow up from 73,000 to 76,000 which
feels a little bit underwhelming given that they continue to lose soldiers at a rate of about 300 soldiers a month. Yes, it's underwhelming in some respects. I think...
give the government credit where it's due. This is about the first review that I can recall in the last 25, 30 years that hasn't posited cutting the size of the army. So trying to restore it up to around about a target of 76,000 is a step in the right direction. A bit like going to 2.5% of GDP is a step in the right direction. But what is more important to me as far as the army is concerned is that those 76,000 soldiers
are well led, of course they are, but they're well trained to the best of our ability. Most particularly, they've got the equipment that they need. And that's some traditional equipments like main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, tube and rocket artillery, air defense artillery, but also to make sure that we're studying the lessons of what's going on in Ukraine at the present moment
and that unmanned systems, drones and the parlance, in every shape or form we're acquiring, we're understanding from the Ukrainians the tactics of how to operate with them on the battlefield. And to make sure right across the piece, we've got the equipment and the training to make sure that that force of 76,000 is well provided for and is capable. I think only then do we then start the discussion about whether in the circumstances that might pertain at some point in the future,
medium to long term, whether the army should itself be larger. There is some coverage amongst the 62 recommendations in this review towards increasing the size of our reserves. I think that is good. A little bit to do with cadets and also some form of other service that can help protect critical national infrastructure. And I think that's good. But as far as regular military numbers are concerned, let's get what we've got.
well-equipped, well-led, well-trained first, and then we can start to worry about numbers. Is there anything that you think is missing as a former chief of the general staff from this review? Well, Venetia, at this moment, I have not...
had a copy that I can read. I'll probably get my hands on a copy about four o'clock. I've seen one, a journalist waved one in front of me a little while ago, but I wasn't allowed to look at it because it was embargoed. So I have to look at the detail before I know what's missing. We know what's there because a lot's been trailed over the last few days. But my big point is, and I think this is where we have to agree, is if those 62 recommendations are a good roadmap towards dealing with the security threats facing us,
It's only going to work if there is enough fuel in the tank, if you like, to make...
to make these things happen. What's good in the course of this year is the Prime Minister and the government have realised they've got to spend more on defence. The tanker, if you like, has turned. What it needs now is more fuel in the tanker to make it go faster in the new direction of travel. That's really critical. A lot of think tanks and commentators have suggested today that that fuel will have to come from tax rises inevitably, given how much this government is trying to do. Do you think the public is ready for the sort of sacrifice that that involves?
The public is not ready, but it's one of the duties of the Prime Minister and the senior leadership of the country to get the country to understand by explaining carefully why it might be necessary to consider raising taxes. Yes, of course, there is hope that the economy will grow and therefore the Treasury will have more money, but I think that's quite a sluggish, that's a medium term at the best aspiration. Can we borrow any more? No, I don't think we can borrow any more. We're too heavily borrowed at the present moment.
So it does take you then down to, yes, OK, spending what we've got better, but also raising more money by raising taxes. And I think we may have to see a penny or two on the basic rate of income tax or a percentage or two rise in the level of VAT. But the public will only accept that if it's explained very carefully why this is necessary in our community and wider interest.
There's a counter view in writing in The Telegraph today. The former Royal Navy officer Tom Sharp said that the review lacks foundations and that defence doesn't just need more money. It needs a root and branch overhaul of the systems, infrastructure and mindset that underpins it. Do you agree with that?
Well, you've got to start somewhere. I think the last government did a pretty good job of overhauling once again the defence procurement process. I'm hoping very much that this government has accepted the previous government's work and that we don't go back to square one as far as that's concerned. A large source of waste
of the defence money in the past has been poor project management and poor defence procurement. Too often, some of us, the users are guilty because we changed the requirement midway through a programme and that causes delay, it costs overruns as well.
I believe this government also is looking at the higher management of defence. It's putting, again, back in the procurement area, a national armaments director. So I think there are steps that they are taking to reorganise the higher management of defence. We need to do better as far as defence procurement is concerned. But you can't get away from the fact that you've got to put more fuel in the tank to make this machine work better and work faster. There's no magic bullies here, I'm afraid, Banish.
Lord Richard Dannett, former Chief of the General Staff, thank you very much for joining us on Battlelines. That's all for today's episode of Battlelines. We'll be back again on Friday. Until then, goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey and Roland Oliphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it really helps others find the show.
To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter, or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest. You can get in touch directly by emailing battlelines at telegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.
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