Britain finally faces up to its beleaguered armed forces

After months of behind the scenes wrangling, the government’s long-awaited Strategic Defence Review (SDR) is finally published today.

- MILLIE COOKE

The flagship review, which was promised by Sir Keir Starmer immediately after assuming office, is intended to address the “true state of the armed forces” – and the money available to spend on it.

Whenever ministers have faced questions over Britain’s ailing military in the past few months, they have pointed to the SDR as a fix-all remedy.

But when the review is published – and inevitably pored over by defence experts, journalists and MPs – there will no longer be anywhere for the government to hide.

The key question hanging over the review is whether or not it will be ambitious enough to address the problem at hand – Britain’s armed forces have been chronically underfunded for years. Troop numbers are down and ageing equipment is in a bad state.

Meanwhile, it is being published in an increasingly fraught landscape for global defence. Pressure on Britain and the rest of Europe to ramp up their defence spending has been rapidly increasing since the election of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to pull out of Nato if Europe does not pull its weight.

While the Nato defence spending target is 2 per cent of GDP – a benchmark that a number of European nations fall short of – Trump has gone so far as to suggest that US allies should be spending 5 per cent, amid mounting global threats from Russia, China and Iran.

Britain has already set out plans to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 and on Friday, defence secretary John Healey went even further, committing to spending 3 per cent by 2034.

Although it sends a strong signal of ambition ahead of today’s review, the near decade it will take us to get there shouldn’t be overlooked. In the meantime, Britain will be lagging behind Baltic states like Estonia, Poland and Finland.