To think that we should spend less on defence

[Blightfitting]

Interesting article in the paper today
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/01/britain-military-spending-defence-keir-starmer

It chimes with my thinking recently. Why is it that people are completely convinced that we need to spend way more on defence (and thus cut or borrow or raise taxes at home)? Why is the conversation not more nuanced?

How can Russia simultaneously be so shit that it can't beat Ukraine in 4.5yrs and also a looming threat to us?

I get that they can fight a shadow war, with cyber attacks and lone-wolves and infrastructure stuff. But the way to stop these things isn't aircraft carriers and tanks! Ukraine are holding their own using teeny tiny cheap drones, so why do we need to spend billions on battleships? And don't get me started on Trident. Why do we need to have so many nuclear weapons when surely one will do?

I honestly don't get it. Yes we need to be capable of defending ourselves, but the proposed ways of doing this seem bizarre and insanely costly relative to the actual threats we face. AIBU?

Exactly this.

As someone who spent 25yrs in the Army, I can assure you the threat from other countries is very real. Russia and China are our main concerns but other eastern countries would love to take a cheap shot given the chance. And now we can't without doubt think America will support us.

Actually if they invaded Scotland I think Boston would be here in a nano second 🤣🤣

Why would someone want to attack us, you've said yourself we are a rich domesticated country, that is a threat to others. Taking out a tiny island (which we are in the grand scheme of things globally) as strong as we may think we are, we are a pawn.

We are located in a very strategically sensitive position re the North sea and Arctic. As the ice melts/as technology improves there's increased interest from China, Russia etc in opening new shipping routes (also oil and fishing for Krill). In peacetime being able to take container ships that route rather than round Africa/through Suez would save a lot of time and reduce the risk of bottlenecks, piracy etc. in wartime it's strategically important. Russia is very annoyed that even though they have a huge (mostly frozen) coastline they still have to sail through the "triangle of death" to reach anywhere. So between them the Nordic countries, the UK and ummm Greenland have control of a very important bit of water. Even though the UK isn't an arctic circle country it has interests in common with them since it basically stands at the gate to the arctic.

So I think having a navy matters. But we should be cooperating with our allies, especially the Scandinavians, to build defensive capabilities together and spending money on what we actually need. Not just what's useful.

America spends more on defense but this is because'

1. It has interests across the globe it wants to defend. It wants to be an empire. Being an empire and having a presence in 5 continents costs money
2. It wants to protect its own interests in the case of nuclear attack. This means having monitoring systems on other countries soil. It also means providing security to those countries since without said security those countries are at huge risk of being the first targets in any war with no comeback. You take out the eyes first.
3. America wants to support the iron dome. This means, as with nuclear weapons, having radars and monitoring systems in other middle Eastern countries since you need to see the threat before it reaches the target. This means, by default, defending those systems and the countriea hosting them. This is phenomenally expensive as antimissile systems cost billions and each piece of antimissile ammo costs millions. As we can see from the current Iran war, actually using them is eyewateringly expensive. Not providing support will make allies think twice about continuing to host said systems
4. America has a domestic weapons industry it wants to maintain. And a very expensive, some would say wasteful procurement system. I could sell the UK MOD a pen and charge them 50 billion dollars. In so doing we would have smashed the "spending on defense as a proportion of GDP" target easily. But we would not be any safer functionally. Wasteful spending is not the same thing as "carrying" other countries
5. The only time article 6 was ever triggered it was when America was attacked. The UK spent 20 billion dollars supporting Americabin Afghanistan, it was not paid back for this as that's not how NATO works. The expectation is that allies help each other out and receive help back later if they need it. If the UK wasn't committed (by treaty) to supporting America we could have spent the money allocated to defence differently. But because the way NATO is meant to work is each country supports the one in need, money was funnelled into stuff like desert warfare. The idea was we do that knowing we get defence in turn if/when we need it. Except ....

They both spend almost the same amount GDP on defence.

Surely it can come from eds net zero budget which many people in the know say it's wasteful and not needed

If Russia and China are the main threats, how come the Chinese are being allowed to build a super embassy? And Russia and China being allowed to buy up/buy shares in British companies and own loads of properties?
Make it make sense.

The government does not control how individual people choose to sell things belonging to them, such as houses and shares in companies, would be the simple answer.

Imagine the shrieks of fury if they said "no, you can't sell your house for the highest offer".

Some countries do prevent foreigners from buying property. E.g. Thailand. We could do that here, but it would be a huge departure from current policy and the fury of the Daily Mail and Telegraph would know no bounds. I don't think it's ever going to happen, but it's not an impossible idea.
The Chinese buying up UK property phenomenon isn't really a sinister plot by the CCP. It's more an outcome of the fact that it's harder to find places to put savings in China than the UK. As a result (and for cultural reasons) there was a huge amount of emphasis put into buying a house/owning a house or land. To the extent many put of marriage until they could buy their own house. Unfortunately this led to a bubble and then a big property crash which the Chinese government declined to intervene in (possibly wisely). So many people lost out, and anyone wanting to put money in property is tempted to look abroad. The UKs especially popular because it has been demonstrated time and time again that no UK government would ever allow house prices to fall without intervening. Plus, many house building companies in the UK (even councils) have sought to capitalise on this market by directly advertising new build homes to Chinese investors.
It's driving up house prices and pricing local buyers out. But it's happening because of our own domestic policies and priorities. Chinese buyers are just reacting to it. It's our fault basically.

Industries that are essential to our security or life (eg water companies) should be nationalised anyway. The argument would be that if an industry is so important it can't be allowed to fall into Chinese or Russian hands, it is important enough for the government to own a controlling stake.

What I feel we don’t need is aircraft carriers, or Trident missiles.

We should transform our military into solely a defensive posture, covering the UK only and doing that to the highest possible standard.

There is no need for us to have any power projection capability these days.

Then we won't be able to rely on reciprocal help from other countries if we need their military help. It's because we help out other countries, via NATO etc., that they, in turn, help us. If we go all defensive as you suggest, who will help us when we are attacked and why would they?

Yep. Fingers crossed he doesn't get made chancellor or we're screwed!

Most NATO members do not have aircraft carriers or strategic or even tactical nuclear weapons.

Playing devil's advocate here... We spent a lot of money on ensuring we could (and did) support other countries in the expectation we would be helped in return if needed. The overriding message from some countries (coughAmericacough) is that we are still freeloaders and shouldn't expect reciprocal help. So you could argue that moving forward we should be more focused on what we need for our own defence not how we can beat facilitate other countries adventures in the ME or central Asia.
I don't actually think we should pursue a completely isolationist policy at all. But the people arguing that Europe/the UK have been freeloading and deserve to be cut loose can't have it both ways.
But even if thinking of how we can best help our allies/pursue reciprocal defense I'm not sure what the point of massive aircraft carriers are. If defending an ally from attack then their airbases are likely to be easier to defend and fly planes from than a boat. If defending ourselves then the same. The only point of aircraft carriers is for launching planes from when there are no airbases close by. And thats only likely in an offensive war I would have thought. Rather than one where we are defending ourselves or allies. Destroyers, Frigates, ships equipped with saw and air drones, or anti drone technology sure.

Particularly if the threat is Russia, I don't think we need an aircraft carrier to defend Eastern Europe.

Aircraft carriers carry aircraft, but those aircraft do do much more than the odd practice bombing run - surveillance particularly. The equipment onboard is watching and monitoring. There’s so much more that goes on - the matelot bit just keeps the thing sailing.

@Persephonia1966

Defending Eastern Europe isn't the only potential problem.

I think one of the main reason for the carrier(s) is to help NATO cover the northern approaches to UK/Scandinavia, the Arctic, and also access to the Atlantic via the Iceland UK gap...not just against submarines and surface vessels but also against Russian long range aircraft.

It was certainly a major part of the Navy's (and for that matter the RAF's) role during the Cold War and sadly it looks like we are heading back that way.

They are also very expensive targets in a world where drones are a thing. They need a huge amount of support from other boats etc to keep them safe. There is no reason spy planes etc need an aircraft carrier to refuel on**. In fact I think only fighter planes can launch from ours anyway. The other technology can presumably be carried on boats that are cheaper due to not needing to launch fighter planes into the air.

I could be wrong, there could be a need for these very expensive vessels. But I don't think it's enough for the MOD to just say " trust us bro". And if the answer is it's needed to support America so they deign to support us, then there does come a point you are throwing good money after bad. If we need to spend more so we stand on our flown two feet and aren't "relying on America" then that also means spending on what we need.

**Unless we are operating somewhere very hostile. In which case we aren't really defending allies are we...

So sorry Admiral. Where did you gain your first hand experience?

In Finland there are restriction on foreigners buying property, non-EU residents have to apply for permission from the ministry of defence to buy property (in reality the vast majority will get permission granted), and there's even further restrictions on Russians and Belarusians. This is a completely reasonable position for a government to have, for national defence reasons, to make sure they know who owns property near strategically vital areas and suchlike.

Oh, I do so agree! But in this country it doesn't happen, and starting now would make the government that did it have trouble getting re-elected, I fear.

(And of course we no longer have the EU to fall back on.)

I said before I don't have first hand experience and I am not an expert.

However IF we need to spend vastly more on defence and especially if things like welfare need to be cut, the people WITH said experience (like the minister for the Armed Forces) should be able to communicate clearly why we need to spend those vast sums of money. Of course, there are somethings that need to be kept secret for operational reasons etc. But at the moment the messaging is just "aaargh Russia scary, China scary give money... Give more money" which isn't enough. Neither is "UK has been freeloading and wasting it's money on welfare" which feels more like an ideological argument than one based on defensive needs. And the majority of UK tax payers are not Admirals. Neither are most people signing up to the armed forces. However, the actual Admirals shouldnt be above deigning to explain why we need things to the non-Admirals without sneering. The last time we were at war, the UK public was assured that WMDs existed and that it was essential we followed America into war. Not only did many British soldiers die, the war turn into a shit show and WMD turn out not to exist after all... We have now had several years of Americans (not just Trump, it's much wider than that) grousing about how their allies are sponging of them and always stayed away from the front line. The trust isn't there anymore for any government Minister to just insist they need to spend vast sums on big projects without communicating why.

The point about the role of aircraft carriers in the Arctic is an interesting one and not one that I had thought about. But why does it take someone on Mumsnet to do that? Why can't the Minister in charge do that more, instead of either giving vague interviews to the Telegraph about how the UK is DOOMED without going into detail, or talking about spending as a percentage of GDP without saying what that money needs to be spent on and why and then resigning.

I literally remember being told that people against the war in Iraq "just didn't understand the situation". Well... It turns out the people going to war didn't either.
I am not a "the British public is tired of experts type" we need experts. But said experts need to convey why they want stuff clearly, not just rely on "I know more about this on you. Give me a billion pounds for an aircraft carrier with no aircraft".

FWIW I wore light blue when I served, often worked with the RN, and I can testify that for them carriers has always been a sensitive issue, and loaded politically....even so I think there are still some valid arguments for retaining them.

The general public often make the mistake of thinking any Russian threat to European/Scandavian NATO must come from the east, they completely fail to look north....the worry for years has been if Russia decided to have a pop at western europe or the UK a lot of the surface threat, some of the sub threat and air threat would come from around the North Cape.

if a Navy's NATO role is to help counter this it will have them operating well offshore, say in the Iceland/UK gap or further north quite probably several hundreds of miles offshore...that comes with advantages and disadvantages...

Big advantage is you're not going to have to worry about drones,

Big disadvantage is if you need fixed wing air assets for whatever reason unless you have a carrier or carriers you are reliant on shore based aircraft, which would take time to get to the fleet and would be a long way from home if they expend ordnance and a reload is needed.

ETA that if the political decision is the RN needs carriers,.plural, then the politicians need to fund enough aircraft....but that's probably another argument.
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I think we should definitely recognise the change of modern warfare and not waste money on big white elephants. We should spend smartly. The USA won’t be there for us. We need to have enough to defend ourselves. Look at the embarrassment of taking too long to get to Cyprus.