Sir Stewart Eldon KCMG OBE is an adviser and commentator on international defence and security issues. He served as UK Permanent Representative to NATO; Ambassador to Ireland; and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. He works with private and public sector clients in Africa and has led executive workshops in negotiation and diplomatic skills.
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The UK Strategic Defence Review 2025 (SDR) was published on 2 June. It was originally expected much earlier in the year, but was delayed by developments in Ukraine and the arrival of the Trump Administration. It is now positioned at an important point in the path to the NATO Summit in The Hague on 24-25 June.
The Review is the first carried out by a Labour government since 2003. Rather than being led by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), it was undertaken by a team of three Independent Reviewers led by Lord Robertson, a former NATO Secretary General. They were backed up by a support team including international military officers. The Reviewers worked closely with the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary and were thus subject to political guidance. The government has accepted all their recommendations.
The SDR has many positive points. There is an honest assessment that longstanding UK assumptions about global power balances and structures are no longer certain. Radical action is necessary to make the British Armed Forces fit for purpose in the current uncertain international environment. This should involve a move away from a focus on expeditionary operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to ‘whole-of-society’ preparations for war, home defence, resilience, and industrial mobilisation.
There is an acceptance that currently the UK military is not optimised for warfare against a ‘peer’ military state (i.e one that can match its capabilities) and an assumption that the UK would not take on such an adversary on its own. Russia is correctly described as an immediate and pressing threat and China a sophisticated and persistent challenge.
The Review advocates a policy of ‘NATO First’, maintaining the UK´s leading role within the Alliance. NATO should be mainstreamed into the design and execution of UK defence, though that does not mean ‘NATO only’. The three main tasks for UK Defence are set out as to defend, protect and enhance the resilience of the UK and its overseas territories; deter and defend the Euro-Atlantic area; and shape the global security environment.
The Review outlines the deep reform needed to ensure the UK is both secure at home and strong abroad. This includes fully integrated and reshaped armed forces; new capabilities (including greater use of AI and autonomous systems); a ‘high-low’ equipment mix (with ‘traditional’ heavy equipment such as tanks and artillery assumed to take up about 20%); the establishment of a Home Defence Force (large and well-equipped enough to do its job); more emphasis on protecting critical national infrastructure; and a reinvigorated defence industrial base. All these changes are much needed but will be difficult and take time to achieve. It will be important to recognise the importance of maintaining military ‘mass’ in addition to increasing lethality; the British Army is currently the smallest it has been in more than 300 years, while others in NATO are expanding fast.
The SDR recommends further investment in the UK nuclear deterrent and commencing discussions on enhanced participation in NATO’s nuclear mission (possibly, though this is not stated, by purchasing F35-A aircraft capable of carrying US air-launched tactical nuclear weapons). This is prudent given Putin’s threats to go nuclear over Ukraine.
The SDR proposes a more agile and proactive partnership with the defence industry (a new Defence Investment Plan is to follow) so that the Armed Forces can get the equipment they need more quickly and efficiently and adapt more rapidly to technological change. The partnership is seen as a driver of economic growth, and the government has already announced the building of six new munitions factories. With at least 10% of the procurement budget to be spent on novel technologies, defence is likely to be a productive area of investment for many years to come. However, it remains to be seen when and how the promised savings and agility will manifest.
The Reviewers acknowledge that this ambitious menu will be hard to deliver. They say it has been drawn up against the government’s current plans to increase defence expenditure – a rise to 2.6% of GDP by the end of April 2027 (including the contribution of UK intelligence agencies), and to 3% after 2029 when fiscal and economic conditions allow – but that their recommendations are scalable and could be delivered more quickly with more money. The government has not so far budged from its position, although with US and other criticism likely at the NATO Summit the Defence Secretary said on 8 June that it is ‘up for discussion’ of a 5% target. UK Public Opinion (and a significant faction in the Labour Party) remains focused on other priorities – the National Health Service, Social Security, the Police and Education.
These and other tensions risk undermining the credibility of the SDR and its effectiveness. Credibility is essential to its key objective of strong deterrence.
A key issue is time. The German Chief of Defence argued recently that Russia could be in a position to launch an attack on NATO territory within four years. In a speech in London on 9 June the NATO Secretary General put the figure at five years, and in a recent interview the Chief of Germany’s foreign intelligence service said it had evidence that Russia was planning to test NATO’s mutual defence guarantee. Whether or not that is Putin’s intention, the war in Ukraine is not exhausting Russian defence capabilities as fast as had been first thought. Russia is continuing repeated and systematic hybrid attacks on European allies and the UK. The rate at which Poland, the Nordic and Baltic states and now Germany are re-arming shows they take the threat seriously. Set against this background, the SDR’s current timescales look much too slow.
Next resources. Pushed not only by the Trump Administration, NATO is intending to set a new defence spending target of 5% of GDP (3.5% core defence spending and 1.5% infrastructure) at the Summit in The Hague. On 5 June Defence Ministers agreed an ambitious new capability targets to build a stronger, fairer, and more lethal Alliance that will be the basis for the new spending target. All will be challenging. The current UK offering does not appear to be of an order that will allow it to maintain a leadership role in the Alliance. It is notable that in an interview on 5 June one of the SDR Reviewers suggested the government should be spending 2.5% now and reach 3% by 2029.
A ‘NATO First’ option is entirely sensible for the UK. However, the SDR describes other Alliance-linked options for UK Defence Partnerships as a series of developing bilateral relationships with Allies (primarily the US, France, Germany, Poland, Norway and Turkey); ‘miniIateral’ action with Allies; and support for implementation of the UK’s new Security & Defence Partnership with the EU. Arguably this underestimates the requirement for co-operation with the EU (as opposed to European Allies). The SDR acknowledges the importance for the UK of participation in the EU SAFE defence financing instrument, and the Defence Secretary has subsequently supported the idea of a World Defence Bank. The SDR describes the EU as ‘a defence and security actor of increasing significance, whose unique regulatory and financial levers can complement NATO’s role as the primary guarantor of European security’ – some in Brussels might want to go further than this. As the US contribution to NATO reduces, the UK may need to confront at some point the emergence of a distinct European pillar of the Alliance and/or what to do about a transfer of some ‘hard’ defence functions to the EU.
It would not have been realistic to expect the SDR to take head-on the transatlantic defence differences that have arisen since the arrival of the Trump Administration. The SDR describes the US as the UK’s closest defence and security ally and suggests working to maximise the relationship’s potential as a force multiplier in renewing deterrence. It points to the enormous potential for expanding industrial and technological collaboration with the US in particular. There thus seems little sign of any change in the established UK default option of joint-working with the US and heavily relying on the military ‘special relationship’ in other ways. Whether this is sustainable at a time of doubts about the reliability of the US as an Ally remains to be seen.
In an interview on 7 June another of the SDR Reviewers commented that rather than focus on capabilities such as UK aircraft carriers, America’s primary concern was to ensure it had access to UK bases, both overseas (including Diego Garcia) and in the UK itself (the USAF currently has 13 bases on UK soil). Again, as a matter of prudence, it would have been good to see in the SDR more about the development of sovereign UK national capabilities that do not rely on the US. There is clear potential for more defence industrial co-operation with Europe and elsewhere, which now is being called for by European allies. The Review endorses the Global Combat Air Programme being undertaken by the UK with Italy and Japan.
Ultimately, the test of the SDR will be whether it can deliver the shift in mindset the Prime Minister has promised in the foreword to the Review to make security and defence the fundamental organising principle of government. The Review recommends a national conversation around defence in an attempt to make society more resilient. A recent BBC television programme that spent time with military and police forces in Scandinavia concluded that the success of Nordic societies was based on people having confidence in national institutions (not least defence) and being prepared to contribute actively to them. Whether there is currently sufficient national cohesion in the UK to make that happen is unclear; if not, urgent leadership is necessary to strengthen it in the interest of our collective defence.
