British Defence budget to double to GBP100bn by 2030.

The UK Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, has said military spending will double from its current level to hit £100bn in 2030 as a result of Liz Truss’s commitment to increase the armed forces’ budget to 3% of GDP, Dan Sabbagh reports in The Guardian on September 25.
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Taranis drone in front of a Eurofighter Typhoon (Picture source: BAE Systems)

Recently appointed Prime Minister Truss had promised during her leadership campaign to lift defence spending from 2.1% of GDP to 3% by 2030, comfortably above a commitment made by Boris Johnson in June to increase it to 2.5% by the end of the decade, Dan Sabbagh recalls. Wallace said Truss’s promise would be worth billions more to the military. “On current forecast, that’s roughly a defence budget of £100bn in 2029-30. We’re currently on £48bn. So that’s the difference. In eight years, that’s a huge amount,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.

But, Dan Sabbagh rites, despite the extra sums on offer in future, Wallace said he could not yet speculate on which parts of the military would benefit. It was “highly likely” the size of the army would grow, he said, and he suggested expansion was likely in anti-drone warfare, signals intelligence and artillery. Indeed, the war in Ukraine demonstrates the formidable utility of drones of all sizes, particularly for reconnaissance, and the need for battlefield intelligence to help Kyiv’s forces target Russian command centres and munitions hubs deep behind the frontlines.

Robotisation is quickly boosted in the arsenal of the British Army, at a pace that will, even more, accelerate (Picture source: British Army)