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ADVERTISEMENTThis month, the United Kingdom took one step closer to battle readiness with the launch of its Strategic Defence Review.
The is a “landmark” shift in how the country deters and defends itself from threats, shifting towards a “warfighting readiness” in the Euro-Atlantic.
The UK commits in the review to up defence spending to 2.5 per cent by 2027, taking the UK past the NATO benchmark, and to a further 3 per cent “when fiscal and political conditions allow”.
What this will do is allow the UK to create a military that combines “conventional and digital warfighters, the power of drones, AI in tanks and artillery with procurement measured in months, not years,” the plan says.
These are some of the new military technologies that the UK is committing to in this new plan.
The ‘next generation’ of the UK’s Air Force
One of the first commitments in the UK’s new plan is to create a “next generation” Royal Air Force (RAF) with F-35 jets, upgraded Typhoons and next-generation fast jets.
The UK military already relies on the F-35 Lightning, a short take-off and vertical landing variant of the craft that operates from short-field bases and air-capable ships in the UK’s Navy.
The ones currently employed by the Navy are just under 16 metres long, can get up to 1.6 Machs (1,914 kilometres an hour) and have a lifting capacity of 18,000 tonnes.
Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the F-35 Lightning, said in 2024 the UK reconfirmed its commitment to receiving 138 F-35s and that the aircraft would be jointly managed by the Royal Navy and the Air Force.
Experts have previously voiced concerns to Euronews Next of a possible “kill switch” that might exist on board that would let the American company Lockheed Martin control how and when programme updates happen. However, the firm has denied that such a “kill switch” exists.
Euronews Next asked the British Parliament to confirm whether the F-35 deals would still go ahead despite these concerns but did not get an immediate reply.
Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said that while the F-35 is a good aircraft, the UK military is still missing a long-range standoff weapon to use with it because of the “pathetically slow” implementation of Spear 3.
The technology should be used to boost what the UK armed forces already have, he added.
“We need to improve essentially our combat capability and our firepower,” he told a press conference shortly after the UK report was released.
Phasing out the Eurofighter Typhoon
The UK also said it will be working on the next generation of “fast jets”. The plan says this will come through the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a joint venture between the UK’s BAE Systems, Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement and Italy’s Leonardo S.P.A. to create a sixth-generation combat aircraft by 2035.
A November 2024report from the parliament states that £2 billion (€2.37 billion) had already been invested and an additional £12 billion (€14.22 billion) had been earmarked by the British government over the next ten years for the programme.
The new crafts will replace the current Eurofighter Typhoon, which according to the UK parliament, is scheduled to be phased out of service in the 2030s.
Sixth-generation crafts like the ones the UK, Japanese and Italian militaries want to develop are more advanced than the current fifth-generation fighters, according to David Bacci, a senior research fellow with the University of Oxford wrote in a piece for The Conversation.
One of the likely innovations in sixth-generation fighters, according to Bacci, is the complete removal of vertical tails at the back of the aircraft in favour of thrust vectoring, which will make the aircrafts more stealthy in the air.
The crafts could also have enhanced engines for better performance, the deployment of drones from the aircraft and an “advanced digital cockpit” supported by virtual reality (VR) that “will allow the pilot to effectively become a battle manager,” he continued.
The plans for these airfighters would be folded into a broader plan for an army that is “10 times more lethal” and combines air defence, artificial intelligence, long-range weapons and land drone swarms.
GCAP is “pretty important” for the UK aerospace industry in the short term, Savill said, but it’s a “vast project with a lot of commitment in the near term,” while it likely won’t be operational for the next 15 years.
“Taking a punt on GCAP is one of the areas where I guess [the UK] is de-facto making a significant resources choice,” Savill said. “In combat air terms, we are betting big”
A ‘hybrid’ Royal Navy with new submarines every ‘18 months’
Air fighters would also be integrated into a “hybrid” Royal Navy, and used in conjunction with drones, warships, and submarines to patrol the North Atlantic “and beyond,” Savill added.
The plan also promises up to 12 “conventionally armed, nuclear-powered attack submarines through the AUKUS programme, he said.
The goal is to have a new submarine delivered “every 18 months,” the plan read, which would provide the region with 30,000 apprenticeships and 14,000 graduate roles over the next ten years.
Savill said to meet this goal, you need “significant” investment into Barrow and Raynesway, Derby, the site where the submarines will be manufactured, but the plan does not lay out how it will achieve that.
“So I think that feels like setting a hard target,” Savill said, noting that there will have to be a “major culture change” within the UK’s armed forces to reach these targets.
“What [the review] sets is these targets that say you should have even the big stuff on contract within two years.
“And I would be fascinated to know how they’re going to do that because the record is not great up until now».
The UK currently operates seven Astute Class attack submarines, which will be phased out by the new submarines in the late 2030s.
Lessons learned by Ukraine
The UK says it will be adopting some of the lessons learned from the battlefield in Ukraine, such as harnessing the power of drones, data and digital warfare into its new strategy and war readiness strategy.
“The fundamental lesson for today is that with technology developing faster than at any time in human history, our own forces, and the whole of defence, must innovate at wartime pace,” the report reads.
One of the standout technologies in Ukraine, according to experts, is the drone industry, which accounts for roughly 25 per cent of the country’s weapons supply.
The military revved up the industry from about 5,000 drones at the start of the 2022 invasion to upwards of 4 million in 2024, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. The military now has a national portfolio of specialised drones, like carrier drones, target drones, electronic warfare drones, and AI-powered swarm drones.
While no specific investments are planned for a drone fleet in the UK’s defence plan, several types of drones are identified as priorities, like long-range, single-use, underwater, surface, surveillance, and ‘one-way effector’ drones.
The report mentions that the UK would be “doubling investment in autonomous systems” to boost the country’s export potential and would create a new “drone centre.”.
Like in Ukraine, the UK military is planning a shift towards greater use of autonomy and AI in its forces. The plan says it will do this by establishing an operating capability for a new Defence Uncrewed Systems Centre by next February.
One of the major lessons from Ukraine is also how to drive the entire military “by the logic of the innovation cycle” by finding, buying and using innovation to bring it from “ideas to frontline at speed.”.
Experts have previously told Euronews Next that the Ukrainian government uses a “Danish model” to directly finance defence companies and start-ups that manufacture weapons on the ground.
The model has brought faster approval times for new defence prototypes to three months, which would have usually taken over a year in peacetime.
One way the UK wants to replicate this success is through a Defence AI Investment Fund to “accelerate the adoption of Artificial Intelligence across defence” and prioritising the most promising use-cases.
The plan also says the UK will continue to set aside £3 billion (€3.56 billion) for Ukraine every year “for as long as it takes.”.
