"Hard choices" for Royal Navy, Army and RAF spending as MoD can't fulfil current tasks, defence expert says
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director General of the Royal United Services Institute, addressed the government’s current investment in the armed forces and the UK’s security during a defence select committee meeting in Parliament.
He told the panel on November 5 that even with the rise in fund announced in the October budget, it will not be enough to offset what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is being asked to achieve. Professor Chalmers also addressed the Labour pledge to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad

When asked by the committee if he thought the armed forces can achieve what they are being asked to do with the current levels of defence spending, he said: “Clearly, if the armed forces had more resources, they could achieve more. The nature of military preparation is you’re preparing for the possibility of conflict with other countries and adversaries.
“Your chances of success are always uncertain, no matter how great the resources you apply to proprietary effort. But, you’re in a better place if you’re better financed. The trends are rather worrying. Both compared to our allies and potential adversaries, the trends in the resources we devote to defence are going in a direction which means we’re less capable compared to our allies and potential adversaries than we were a decade ago.”
Professor Chalmers said since the government ordered a Strategic Defence Review (SDR) - where armed forces procurement, priorities and spending commitments will be analysed - it suggests “the government isn’t entirely sure what the priorities are”, and "whether they can define the priorities more clearly”. “Right now, the MoD is being asked to do a wider range of tasks than they have the resources to fulfil,” Professor Chalmers added.
Lincoln Jopp, Conservative MP for Spelthorne, asked what the new money mentioned in the budget can be used for. Mr Chalmers said the budget allocation for the next financial year is £59.8bn, which is roughly 2.3 per cent of GDP - with the new funding raising it to roughly 2.31 per cent of GDP in real terms growth over a period of two years.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdHe added that the defence budget is “significantly out of balance”. The money projected to be available is significantly less than the commitments in the forward plan for the Defence Equipment Programme, Professor Chalmers added, citing a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) published last December. He said the pay rises announced in the summer adds another pressure to the defence budget.


“The challenge for MoD budget planners is not to add something new to current plans, it’s that the current budget allocation for this year and next year won’t be enough to fund the commitments,” he said. “There have been changes since then. Some projects have slipped, some things have been given up and taken on, but certainly, the press reports last summer from the MoD suggests they haven’t entirely closed that gap yet.
“Closing that gap for this year and the next financial year is the next thing they’ve got to do. If you want to add more things which we’re not doing at present, you have to take something out on the basis of these budget numbers.”
Professor Chalmers said the impact of getting to 2.5 per cent of GDP depends on the timing, with the previous government planning to get there by the end of 2030 on a “straight line trajectory”, where it would rise by between 3 to 3.5 per cent per annum in real terms. Even if the current Labour government plans to implement a similar timeframe, the deputy director general said the government will still face many spending challenges.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“It would not in itself mean the funding gap which the NAO identified last year disappears, it wouldn’t do that as you're not getting to 2.5 per cent at once,” he said. “You could close that gap if you went to 2.5 per cent next year, but we’re staying at 2.3 per cent. You’re going to have some hard choices within a 2.5 per cent trajectory to the end of the decade. You’re not going to be able to do everything which is in current plans. If you want to put something new in the programme, you’re going to have to take something out.”


Professor Chalmers said the war in Ukraine shifted the focus of UK defence focusing more on warfighting rather than expeditionary warfare and operations. He added that the previous government worked on an implicit ten year rule that there wouldn’t be a large-scale conventional war with an opponent, which meant preparedness and readiness were put on the backburner. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine exacerbated a shift in focus.
“Right across the armed services, we have a whole range of capabilities, which on the face of it look cutting edge in most cases, and we continue to invest a lot in new equipment. But if you look behind the curtain and see how long those forces could operate, whether you have the logistics, munitions, spare parts and everything else, then it;s more worrying. That doesn’t mean in all those areas, Russia has wonderfully ready forces, but nevertheless, that sense of hollowness in our forces is now relevant and it wasn’t in 2010 when we didn’t need to plan for an imminent conflict with Russia.”
Calvin Bailey MBE, former RAF officer and current Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead, said the country reached a nadir in defence spending in 2016. When the Deputy Director General was asked by another committee member if the lack of timeframe over when the 2.5 per cent of GDP pledge would be implemented, he said: “We don’t have anything from the government on what the defence budget will be beyond the next financial year.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“It’s hard to know what the UK will be capable of doing without that budget envelope. Even if you have a clear budget envelope for the next five or ten years, there’s still a question about what your priorities are within that. The lack of that budget envelope does create more uncertainty.”
Comment Guidelines
National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.