UK to boost ammunitions stockpile by £2.5bn

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Britain’s military will reallocate £2.5bn to boost its ammunition stockpiles as part of a refreshed defence strategy that takes its cue from the war in Ukraine and aims to increase the deadliness and agility of the UK’s armed forces.

The strategy, which will be unveiled on Tuesday in parliament, is the military contribution to Downing Street’s revamped integrated review of defence, security and foreign policy, and sets out Britain’s plans to counter Russia, as well as China’s growing threat.

Alongside the increase in weapons supplies, which will be funded through to 2030 by unspent money from uncommitted weapons programmes, the so-called defence command paper puts an emphasis on digital capabilities to enhance joint operations by land, sea, air, cyber and space forces.

Ben Wallace, the outgoing defence secretary, said the paper was not a “nice little shopping list” of new equipment as in the “Top Trumps” card game but rather about making the British military “more productive”.

“The lesson from Ukraine is your military better be perfectly formed, you better be able to [fight across] 360 degrees . . .[Weapons] need to be able to talk to each other, from sensors to shooters,” he said.

The strategy paper, published by the Ministry of Defence, makes no further cuts to the armed forces, which are at their smallest level since the 1800s. Nor does it add to or cut any major equipment programmes, as laid out in the last defence command paper that was published in 2021.

Instead, it aims to make British military personnel and existing equipment more deadly via improved logistics, bigger ammunition stockpiles, and the better application of existing technologies.

“One of the lessons of Ukraine is the need to bring together as [many] sensors as possible . . . and then delivering lethal effect,” he said.

The dissection of captured Russian army vehicles and tanks has played a key role in that process and one example is the UK’s Brimstone guided missile. Originally designed to be launched from the air, it was adapted by the MoD last year to be fired off the back of a truck and has since been used to devastating effect by Kyiv’s armed forces against Russian tanks in Ukraine.

Wallace defended the strategy’s “boring” focus on under-the-hood improvements, instead of on flashy new kit. There was no point, he said, of “having bubble wrap ships, or tanks and warehouses that don’t work. The aim is a more lethal, more enabled and globally deployable force”.

Wallace, who will step down in the next cabinet reshuffle after four years in the post, said he was leaving behind a transformed military, which had secured an extra £24bn in funding, and a parliament more aware of the need to invest in defence.

Britain’s current annual defence budget of around £50bn, the second largest in Nato after the US, is equivalent to around 2 per cent of gross domestic product. Rishi Sunak, prime minister, has pledged to raise that to 2.5 per cent, as economic conditions allow.

“Freedom is not free,” Wallace said. “Whatever the growth of the defence budget will [eventually] be, it will be based on an armed force that is match fit and able to absorb the money to modernise properly.”