The UK government has officially released the long-awaited Strategic Defence Review (SDR), a document that identifies several priority areas for Britain’s defence and security in the face of growing threats, compiled over the last ten months.
Amounting to nearly 140 pages and 45,000 words, the SDR constitutes a set of guidelines for navigating the global animosity and fractured security environment over the next ten years.
Go deeper with GlobalData
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer first listed numerous priorities laid out in the SDR in an announcement made from BAE Systems’ Govan shipyard in Glasgow, Scotland.
Among these, the UK leader noted building six new munitions factories; thousands of long-range weapons; air and missile defence at home; uncrewed systems. All of this will be supplemented by increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 while setting an ambition, as opposed to an objective, to reach 3% in the next Parliament “subject to economic and fiscal conditions”, as the old saying goes.
Later that evening, after parliamentary squabbling over security concerns that the government had permitted the press to read the document before it was announced to the House of Commons, for which the speaker had scorned the government, the Secretary of State for Defence John Healey had finally addressed Parliament in a lengthy line of questioning, at which point the document was finally published.
What is the SDR?
The review was led by Lord Robertson, a former Labour Defence Secretary and Secretary General of Nato. Although touted as an externally-led review the SDR is supported and commissioned but not directed by the government, yet it is still subject to the scope that MoD funds allow.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataIn October 2024, it was revealed that the UK used artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in the analysis of around 8,000 responses in the call out between July to September 2024.
The document comes more than a week before the wider Spending Review on 11 June which will determine where funds are allocated across government.
Certain points within the SDR were released on 1 June before the Ministry of Defence (MoD) released all 65 recommendations yesterday (2 June).
This includes £15bn ($20bn) investment in sovereign nuclear warhead development and the construction of up to 12 conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) as part of the trilateral AUKUS pact with Australia and the United States.
Here, Naval Technology offers analysis for just some of the key priorities in UK defence going forward. Further analysis of major programmes will soon follow.
Nuclear deterrent
The jewel in the crown of Britain’s defence and security is its deterrence, achieved through its continuous at sea deterrence.
While the UK does not publicise figures regarding its operational stockpile, deployed warheads or missile numbers, the SDR does pledge a £15bn ($20bn) investment in its sovereign nuclear warheads development.
Unexpectedly, the report does suggest that the government should begin to define the requirement for the successor to the Dreadnought-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) in this Parliament (in the next five years), even though these boats are currently in development themselves.
Like many suggestions laid out in the document, there is no particular timeline. Nevertheless, the recommendation indicates the high strategic priority SSBNs will continue to play in the UK’s defence strategy over the next decade given the Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s repeated attempts at nuclear coercion.
Digital Targetting Web by 2027
“For the Armed Forces to be more lethal than the sum of their parts, they must complete the journey from ‘joint’ to ‘integrated’”, the SDR reads.
A critical part of this transition for the Labour government will be to construct a Digital Targetting Web by 2027, which the SDR suggests will cost more than £1bn.
This Web is a system-of-systems concept designed to integrate all nodes – sensors, deciders, and effectors – across the whole battlespace, funneling intelligence into a single, shared platform. This would enable coherence in planning across the whole military and speed up operations.
“For example, a target might be identified by a sensor on a ship or in space before being disabled by an F-35 aircraft, drone, or offensive cyber operation,” the document states.
While this may seem an obvious point that is not new, the elements that come to form this cohesive and extensive web requires substantial investment in a range of emerging technologies such as AI to manage the system as well as cloud technology for storage.
In addition, costly efforts in protecting key enablers based in space, such as Skynet 6 satellite communications, will prove to be a difficult and necessary consideration, and one that is touched on somewhat in the SDR.
The document recommends that the Digital Targetting Web will provide access, in whole or in part, to a Defence-wide Secret Cloud, with a minimum viable product available in 2026.
Hybrid warfare
“Drones now kill more people than traditional artillery in the war in Ukraine,” observed the Secretary of Defence John Healey in his foreward. “And whoever gets new technology into the hands of their Armed Forces the quickest will win.”
For the British Army, drones offer a three-layered operational formation that risks uncrewed systems in disposable and attritable layers while preserving personnel and platforms as a more valuable third layer. The SDR offers a prescribed model:
“A ‘20-40-40’ mix is likely to be necessary: 20% crewed platforms to control 40% ‘reusable’ platforms (such as drones that survive repeated missions), and 40% ‘consumables’ such as rockets, shells, missiles, and ‘one-way effector’ drones.”
According to the authors, drones along with AI, communications, and an armoured capability, will render the land forces “ten times more lethal”. It is striking, however, that the Army have specific figures for its balance of crewed and uncrewed systems, other forces do not.
The Royal Air Force, meanwhile, remains steadfast in its teaming concept under the costly Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) alongside Italy and Japan, which will explore crewed aircraft, uncrewed platforms, next-generation weapons, networks, and data-sharing.
However, one recurring trope throughout the report is a new goal to augment the Royal Navy, “moving [it] to a hybrid carrier air wing.” This essentially includes combat aircraft, autonomous collaborative platforms in the air, single-use drones, and, eventually, long-range missiles capable of being fired from the carrier deck.
This follows a rationale that has taken shape in recent months that leans towards an effects-focus rather than a platform-centric mentality.
What this means is that cash-strapped governments – much like the UK, which is inching the defence budget ever further to 3% of GDP, and even then financing all these new strategic objectives are questionable – must lean on emerging technologies that deliver a particular effect while relying on existing platforms from which to deploy them.
Procurement and efficiencies
“As Ukraine shows, a country’s armed forces are only as strong as the industry that stands behind them,” Healey asserted in his belated address to Parliament. The government’s approach, as expected, will lean on “defence as an engine for growth,” as the mantra goes.
More improvements will come over the next 12 months which will involve “overhauling the acquisition processes from top to bottom”, according to the report. In the end, it is hoped this will see procurement “measured in months not years.”
However, these assertions come across as political point-scoring since the previous Conservative government had eventually managed to gain a grip on procurement, albeit towards the end of their premiership, with the Integrated Procurement Model (IPM). The IPM delivered 14 digital Swedish Archer howitzer systems to the British Army in just two months of receiving the requirement.
Notwithstanding, the SDR authors now recommend that major modular platforms ought to be contracted within two years, spiral and modular upgrades within one year, and rapid commercial exploitation within three months.
In addition, at least 10% of the MoD’s equipment procurement budget should be spent on novel technologies each year, without defining with any parameters what constitutes a ‘novel technology’.
The SDR also points to potential efficiencies to be made in this Parliament. Healey commits to accruing nearly £6bn of new savings through efficiency and productivity savings, civilian workforce changes, and structural simplification.
This has already been in the works with cuts across the civil service workforce amounting to losing 5,000 people, a reduction of around 10% of the workforce, according to an estimate from the MoD’s Permanent Secretary David Williams.
