Op-Ed: UK Naval Shrinkage Taints London Defence Conference

Attempts to develop the annual London Defence Conference as an annual geopolitical event rivalling the Munich Security Conference are facing difficulties as the conference gets underway.

A tour of the Gulf by the British Prime Minister, and a press conference by the British Defence Secretary this week, were intended to soothe concerns. But instead, both have emphasized the weakness of the UK’s defense posture and have failed to paper over the cracks.

Sir Kier Starmer, the British Prime Minister, spent much of his tour of the Gulf States emphasizing the seriousness of the current crisis in the Gulf and the need “to step up” and enhance defense capabilities. But he has not announced any additional expenditure. Indeed, whilst nominal increases were announced some time ago, taking defense expenditure from 2.3 to 2.6 percent of GDP between 2024 and 2027, this has been achieved by including allocations for the naval nuclear deterrent, and those for the intelligence and security services, under the defense budget. 

This means, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that spending on the armed forces in real terms has decreased this year rather than increased. The Prime Minister has accepted that the defense budget should make up 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, but has made no program commitment to start the necessary additional funding necessary to achieve this goal. The 2.6 percent of GDP spent on defense is programmed not to rise between 2027 and 2029, and the Defence Investment Plan to implement the recently completed fundamental defense review remains unfunded. Illustrating the switch in priorities from defense to welfare spending, in 1987–88, defense made up 3.5 percent, and spending on the National Health Service was 4.0 percent of GDP. If UK defense spending gets back to 3.5 percent in 2035, by then the health budget is projected to be 9.2 percent of GDP.

The lack of investment in defense equipment over the past ten years is not, of course, the current government’s fault, but the Starmer government is suffering the consequences. Although now deploying some ground-based air defense systems, the UK has not been able to offer immediate assistance to Gulf states in the form of offshore air defense destroyers, nor mine clearance capability, notwithstanding defense agreements in place. Neither has the UK honored its responsibilities in recent weeks to the Republic of Cyprus under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, whereas the other two guarantors, Greece and Turkey, have both done so. Nor has it come to the aid of Oman, a very close ally, in whose waters mines and have been laid and ships attacked, whose ports have suffered drone attacks, and who now faces losing control to Iran over its territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz – through which it sought to guarantee freedom of passage to ships of all nations.

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But aside from an inhibiting lack of equipment, without which the Royal Navy could perhaps have played a more active role, in all these instances, there also appears to be a lack of resolve. Whereas the Nordic nations have found cause to intercept dark fleet tankers in the Baltic, on the basis of suspected breaches in health, labor, environment, and registration issues, the UK’s Attorney General is content that the UK instead provides the dark fleet with escorts and free passage through the English Channel rather than arrest them. The Royal Navy has also looked on whilst Russian Navy GUGI submarines linger over underwater cables, the Defence Secretary implying that watching the Russians as they work acts as a deterrent. In reality, the Russians were probably not seeking merely to locate or damage the cables, but to covertly plant unobtrusive tapping devices alongside the cables, as was done during Operation Ivy Bells. 

There is nothing more detrimental to deterrence, and no greater signal of weakness, than talking up prowess and capability which simply does not, nor is even planned to exist. Meanwhile, the defense industry in the UK wonders what it will take to finally see funding allocated to the Defence Investment Plan.