The head of the United Kingdom's armed forces has taken the unusual step of writing directly to the Prime Minister over the state of the country's defence funding. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton sent the letter to Sir Keir Starmer, although its precise contents are not publicly known. It has emerged amid growing concerns inside government, the military and industry about whether enough money is being committed to defence. The intervention by the professional head of the armed forces signals just how serious those concerns have become.
At the heart of the dispute is a proposed financial settlement between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence. The figure under discussion is understood to be around 13 billion pounds of extra funding over four years. The worry is that this sum is simply not enough to achieve the ambition set out in a sweeping review of defence. That review was released a full year ago, yet it is still waiting for the money to be attached to it so it can actually be delivered.
The vehicle for that money is a document known as the Defence Investment Plan, which has taken on an almost mythical status given how long it has been delayed. It was first supposed to be delivered back in the autumn of last year, but that did not happen. Over the following months the timetable kept slipping, with expected announcements coming and going. In recent weeks, expectations had built that this Thursday would finally be the day the plan was unveiled, but that announcement is not going ahead.
The funding row plays out against a backdrop of stark warnings from the Prime Minister himself. At the Munich Security Conference in February, Sir Keir Starmer told the world, and in particular allies such as the United States, that it was important for European militaries to strengthen their armed forces. He spoke about hard power being the currency of the age, which was widely read as signalling a significant ramp-up in defence spending. Since then there has been a great deal of rhetoric about the need to go further and faster.
Behind the scenes, the reality has been a tug-of-war over money. The original allocation from the Treasury to the Ministry of Defence was seen as falling well short of what was needed to rebuild a military that has been hollowed out since the end of the Cold War. The Ministry of Defence then went back to the Treasury to ask for more. The Treasury, for its part, has been reluctant to hand over too much, pointing to the department's track record on managing large projects.
That caution is rooted in past programmes that have gone badly wrong. One example repeatedly cited is the Ajax armoured fighting vehicle, on which billions of pounds have been spent and which still has not been properly delivered. The programme has also been linked to injuries among soldiers involved in its testing. For those weighing the competing demands, it makes the decision over how much to commit a genuinely difficult one rather than a simple matter of writing a cheque.
For now, the result is continued uncertainty over how the United Kingdom intends to fund its defences. The deliberations that dragged on through this year have still not produced the full plan that was promised. Rather than the comprehensive announcement many had anticipated, the day had been set to feature a narrower step, such as plans for a new drone testing facility. With the bigger decision still unresolved, the year-old defence review remains without the money it needs, and the questions raised by the armed forces chief's letter are unlikely to fade quickly.