Russia is conducting a campaign of hybrid attacks and sabotage across Europe and is constantly probing and testing Britain, but the two countries are not at war and Britain does not seek confrontation, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Richard Holden, the Conservative member for Basildon and Billericay, asked whether the description of Russia’s actions as being short of war by officials in the department reflected a political or a military analysis.
Louise Sandher-Jones, the Minister for the Armed Forces, said: “Russia is conducting a campaign of hybrid attacks and sabotage across Europe. Russia is constantly probing and testing us, including through military posturing.
“We are not at war with Russia, nor do we seek confrontation but with an increase in threats the UK will increase its warfighting readiness and meet its NATO commitments. The government is also acting against threats on our own shores.
“Russia should be in no doubt that we are ready to defend every inch of NATO territory and will not be deterred in our unwavering support for Ukraine.”
Officials have been more forthcoming about Russian activity in other published material. The government’s Arctic Policy Framework, published last week, named the threat to critical national infrastructure from Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research, said Britain has exposed its operations and demonstrated a capability to respond, and described the shadow fleet as a systemic risk. The Lunna House Agreement with Norway commits the two navies to protecting undersea cables and pipelines in the North Atlantic.
Paul Downie of Cyjax told this publication this month that attribution of Russian activity takes too long and that British defence suppliers are exposed, and the question of where sabotage, cyber intrusion and cable cutting sit on a spectrum that ends in Article 5 has been raised repeatedly by MPs.
Short of war describes the adversary’s intention and not the effect, which is the practical difficulty with it. A cut cable, a burned warehouse or a disabled logistics network produces the same consequence whether or not anyone has declared anything.
“The UK will increase its warfighting readiness” same day as Healy announces a £2billion cut to the army.
Absolute gaslighting.
There is no £2 billion cut to the army.
There is a change in the boxer programme which we have been discussing here for days before the telegraph caught up on a slow news day and started making up shit.
I remember when the Telegraph was a proper newspaper that didn’t just make things up. Now the commercial pressures of the internet age have turned it into a Daily Mail clone trading off it’s legacy reputation. It’s depressing.
@Elliot, “… Absolute gaslighting.”
Do you have trouble standing upright and inhaling simultaneously? … or are you able to do both at once? As an upright, ribbed ventalation machine (a human) you’re well equipped to do more than two things at once, it’s called concurrent processing … running multiple tasks at the same time, aka, multitasking, one hand can takes ‘away’ while the other ‘gives’.
The common reaction to MoD budget announcements shows how easily people fall into the headline trap and start screaming that the sky is falling down.
When a gov. highlights millions of pounds stripped from an army ledger to show efficiency or savings, observers immediately claim the military is being crippled. They fail to understand that a modern defence budget is split across entirely separate accounts. Cutting the everyday operational costs of maintaining obsolete legacy equipment or retiring outdated vehicles is not a reduction in overall strength, it is a reallocation. At the very same time these cuts are being publicised, Billions of pounds are quietly flowing through capital procurement pots to fund prodigious modernisation programmes like new armoured vehicles, digital warfare capability, and advanced technology.
The black hole might not have existed if not for MoD fsck ups! … the Ajax programme spent £5.5 billion, 8 years behind schedule and MoD’s management of the timeline delay effectively added nearly £800 million in hidden infrastructure costs to the public balance sheet.
Project Morpheus spent £766 million pounds trying to develop a next-generation tactical battlefield radio network, the MoD completely mismanaged the contract and ultimately cancelled the programme without a single operational radio being delivered to the front line. Then the MoD was forced to spend millions of pounds in emergency funding to patch up the twenty year old Bowman radio gear to keep it running until 2035. The MoD spent an additional £174 million pounds purely on external consultant fees for advice on the failed Project Morpheus communication network before the project was abandoned.
(Navy) looking back to the T45 destroyer fleet, it spiralled over budget to £6.46 billion pounds, forcing the Royal Navy to reduce its total ship order from 12 down to just 6 vessels, which then suffered catastrophic engine design failures that caused the ships to break down in warm waters.
The Watchkeeper Drone Programme blew past its initial budget to hit £1.35 billion, suffered years of technical delays, and was ultimately retired early due to a history of frequent frontline crashes.
– To me this is the Biggie – The Spring 2026 Public Accounts Committee financial audit officially flagged the MoD accounts because the department completely failed to maintain basic accounting records for over £6 billion in infrastructure assets … they lost £6 billion!!!
It’s a move from proprietary military design to commercial plug-and-play modularity. So by cutting the specialised variants, military headquarters is forcing the Army to “live within its means” and focus on fleet volume rather than individual vehicle complexity. By pulling the plug on the specialised overwatch, radar, and mortar modules, the MoD has formally locked down the platform’s exact mission profile. The Boxer will not be used for high-threat cavalry reconnaissance or frontline fire support. It is strictly the “spine of the Mechanised Infantry force” a robust, high-tech battlefield taxi designed to transport troops safely to the objective, leaving the aggressive cavalry and tank roles exclusively to the tracked Ajax and Challenger 3 fleets.
People scream about the military being “crippled,” yet outlets like RUSI and Janes frame it as a logical, albeit painful prioritisation, keeping the core transport fleet intact by ruthlessly cutting out gold plated customisation. Instead of paying a premium to have a factory build a gold plated, customised vehicle body with a permanent, integrated weapon system, the MoD is defaulting back to buying the baseline, flat-topped infantry carriers. Down the line the Army will simply procure off the shelf FFG/ARTEC repair and recovery vehicles or Boxer GNGP combat engineering modules later, likely around 2030, rather than paying a premium for a bespoke UK-engineered development pipeline.
If you only track the operational ledger, you miss the actual capability being bought onto the capital balance sheet … maybe you missed the July 2026 DIP, the British Army was officially allocated a baseline budget of £19.2 billion between the financial years 2026/27 and 2029/30 – 4 years.
£26 million allocated 2026 for the procurement of 157 heavy excavators and earthmoving assets from British manufacturer JCB to modernise frontline military engineering capability.
£19.7 million committed 27 April 2026 via a contract awarded to Sonic Communications for Project Niala to deliver 270 heavily modified Toyota Hilux platforms for the 11th Security Force Assistance Brigade.
£10 million released May 2026 to kick off the phase-one design contract for Project NYX Armed Drones as part of the loyal wingman programme.
£16 million spent mid 2026 under Taskforce RAPSTONE to procure 1,025 small uncrewed aerial systems, including 670 Skydio X10 aircraft, 245 night-capable FOXE-NATO micro-drones, and 110 SONORA training drones.
£400 million allocated July 2026 over a 10-year period for long-range ISTAR, locking in a deal for the Tekever AR5 uncrewed aerial system to replace the Watchkeeper drone system.
£370 million set aside July 2026 under a four-year capital framework allocation for Digital Networks and Project ASGARD to build an AI-capable network software targeting system.
£400 million assigned July 2026 to the Land Lethality Pipeline to deliver lower-cost, expendable autonomous weapon systems, which included an immediate deployment boost for Taskforce RAPSTONE.
£150 million committed July 2026 for Uncrewed Ground Vehicles to transition autonomous ground logistics mules and scout platforms into rapid production.
£200 million formalised July 2026 within the budget for Counter-Drone Technology to procure and roll out mobile electronic warfare and kinetic anti-drone systems across frontline units.
£210 million committed July 2026 for low-cost, long-range one-way attack drones and precision munitions.
£1.3 billion allocated July 2026 under the capital framework for Close Support Artillery to upgrade mobile artillery units.
£590 million earmarked July 2026 to enhance Long Range Rocket Artillery and deep-strike rocket systems.
£1 billion protected July 2026 as a ring-fenced capital allocation within the wider framework to replace the aging Puma support helicopter fleet with the New Medium Helicopter.
£350 million formalised July 2026 under the Land Ground Based Air Defence Programme to double the size of the deployable Sky Sabre air defence force.
*** £1.86 billion in future uncommitted variant spending cut from the Mechanised Infantry Vehicle fleet to remove the specialised Armoured Mortar, Repair and Recovery tow trucks, and Overwatch capabilities.
£2.2 billion ongoing multi-billion-pound capital ledger allocation dedicated to completing the baseline delivery of the Boxer 8×8 modular infantry carrier and ambulance fleet.
£86 million active capital contract awarded to BlackTree Technologies for the delivery of the AI-capable Dismounted Data System.
£2 billion ongoing active 15-year capital contract for the Army Collective Training Service to inject cutting-edge synthetic simulation software into the training pipeline.
£1.1 billion formalised July 2026 under the four-year Defence Investment Plan framework to continue the delivery and deployment of the Ajax tracked armoured fighting vehicle fleet.
£159 million awarded 10 July 2026 to the Raytheon UK-led Omnia consortium as a specific sub-contract slice of the wider training pot to deploy Rheinmetall and Calian synthetic warfare systems for the army over a 15-year period.
£190 million committed July 2026 under the new equipment framework for short-range ballistic missiles, specifically to acquire the Precision Strike Missile system to triple the deep-strike range of the artillery regiments.
It not everything that we wish for … but it getting there, bit by bit.
I think you’ll find Ajax is heading for £7,000,000,000 now is still unusable, appalling build quality and consistency- every hull is different. Root causes have not been addressed. The first liability suit has been instituted for personal injury. Ajax is the original broken arrow. Now as a 42T forward recce vehicle with no drone protection is totally obsolete.
Additionally, if it wasn’t bad enough, after a couple months storage availability allegedly drops to 30%!! Garage queen that not one user has a good word to say about. Should be GD’s last ever UK contract – but it won’t the jobs conveyer from main building to GD boardrooms continues and is self perpetuating – I pity the victims that may have to actually use this Spanish lash up in anger. GD deserves to be in court for reckless endangerment
@ Lord Baddlesmere
The MoD and GD have both admitted defeat will adopt a new programme, the Army is now transitioning toward the Ajax 2 configuration, which introduces the following fixes –
Composite Rubber Tracks (CRTs) will replace the steel tracks with high-tech rubber significantly dampens the violent harmonics and vibrations shaking the hull on hard surfaces. It also has the added benefit of shaving half a tonne to a full tonne off the vehicle’s bloated weight. GD has already been demonstrating this setup on their Blackjax test vehicle.
Ajax 2 brings …
Automatic Track Tensioners. Incorrect track tension was identified as a core reason why some vehicles vibrated violently while others didn’t. The new automatic system allows the driver to constantly adjust and monitor the track tension directly from inside the safety of the cab, rather than forcing the crew to manually grease and adjust them outside.
The most critical battlefield update is the planned integration of advanced active protection and electronic jamming systems. This is designed to give the vehicle a soft-kill counter-drone capability to detect, jam, and spoof incoming loitering munitions or top-attack drone threats.
The vehicle’s multi-sensor suite is also being updated with acoustic tracking capable of triangulating the unique audio signature of drone motors and incoming mortar/artillery fire, pinpointing their location up to five miles away without the crew needing to expose themselves.
Following the public accounts committee findings, that the original cabin caused extreme crew fatigue, noise, and vomiting, the Ajax 2 hull interior will receive substantial upgrades that include
upgraded air filtration and climate control. New environmental control and heating systems are being integrated to manage toxic fume exhaust and cabin pressure.
Enhanced electrical power generation … because the digitised “brains” of the Ajax draw a massive amount of power! the electrical distribution architecture is being retrofitted to securely feed the upgraded situational awareness software and drone jamming systems without overheating!
Redesigned seating and vibration isolation, the internal mounts and shock-absorbing seating arrangements are being re-engineered to work in tandem with the rubber tracks to further shield the crew from residual hull harmonics.
Digitised reconnaissance and “Mothership” capabilities, through “smartphone-style” open architecture, the core software is moving to a fully updatable. This allows the MoD to push rapid software patches to the vehicle’s combat systems to counter evolving electronic warfare threats.
Unmanned system teaming, internal testing by General Dynamics has focused on using the vehicle’s huge data-processing capability as a localised command hub. The updated Ajax 2 architecture will allow the crew to launch, control, and receive direct video feeds from friendly reconnaissance drones right onto their digital displays.
By implementing these retrofits, the MoD gets to claim they didn’t waste billions on a scrapped vehicle, while GD gets to fulfil its contractual requirements, essentially buying both parties a very expensive way out of an embarrassing procurement disaster.
Makes you wonder what the designed in the first place! It seems everything is being addressed.
When HEALEY Outlines how we get from 2.6% ..!
(Notice the 0.1% Starmer add ons Now included!) ..
To 3.0% by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035 is credible Achived and Money Allocated ..
ill belive he hasnt been Gaslighting Everyone to get the Chancellors job.!..
Good post. Very good post. You should save that and post it every time sombody says the Army is clueless.
The next 2 weeks need steady nerves. The Oct 28th UK budget and the Nov 3rd US mid terms are the key dates now. We are seeing sensible measured UK responses to the Ukraine Musk satellite cuts: we are providing a tad more help to Saudi to help them defend against Houthi attacks – Typhoons with APKWS ? It looks like the govt will give the go ahead for Rosebank and that Healey will fill the immediate £4,8m gap in the DIP. It’s all about sending the right messages to the US, to Russia, to our NATO partners, to our own people and importantly to our armed forces. 🤞
Fingers crossed from the DIP funding. And the roadmap to 3.5% in next years spending round.
Not sure how Healey will fill the real 10 billion funding gap in the DIP mate when just shy of 2 Billion has been removed from the Boxer programme and 3 variants chinned off! I’m presuming he will move that money to another area, while pretending it’s new money.
The MOD was asked to make big “efficiency’s” again, which is all about cuts. And the message going to all those you mentioned mate, to include the military (who are paying attention to the troubles bill in parliament) is that we are not taking defence seriously and we are being lead by the usual donkeys, but with a lot less lions available. Cheers.
They are going to have to rely on future growth in the economy for the £10b. I think the roles of the £2b Boxer variants will be xferred to cheaper vehicles. It’s time for the donkeys to earn their wages. They have to come up with an equipment plan and a structure that’s credible.
My thoughts on the Boxers mate but the recovery variant may still need to be a boxer, but the other 2 could easily be a cheaper and simpler platform. However as experience shows us, that money will probably disappear, the 3 variants will be “gapped” or quietly be forgotten about and like the DIP, kicked into the long grass for some other fool to try to deal with post 2030! Cheers.
Yep the problem with boxer is it weighs a ton, well close to 40 tones.. essentially you need a very heavy recovery vehicle to recover them ( AKA a boxer).. any old 25 ton normal APC recovery vehicle, will not do it…
That’s what happens when you make every armoured vehicle you buy in the 40 ton range..
@ you’re a donkey.
There isn’t a $10 Billion funding gap it’s £4.7 Billion to £5 billion “defence black hole” funding gap. The MoD has locked in a ‘Total Efficiency Commitment’ of £10.7 billion over the next four years. This is an internal savings target carved out of the operational running costs ledger, designed specifically to clean up contract management, streamline defense logistics, and eliminate corporate waste. The £10.7 billion is the internal operational budget cut the MoD is executing to prove to the Treasury that they are capable of ruthlessly clearing out their own structural waste.
The Rheinmetall RMMV HX88 Wrecker Since Rheinmetall is already a primary co-manufacturer of the Boxer and heavily embedded in UK procurement, their massive HX 8×8 tactical recovery vehicle is a frontline option and the British Army already operates a massive fleet of MAN SV tactical trucks, making the HX88 incredibly easy to integrate into the existing logistical supply chain.
Another option is the Bundeswehr’s “Bison” Mercedes-Benz Actros 8×8 Heavy Wrecker; operated by Germany, the Bison is explicitly designed to recover heavy-wheeled combat platforms like the Boxer. It features a heavily armoured cabin, high-tension winches, and an automated hydraulic crane built specifically to tow 30-plus-tonne vehicles out of combat zones.
According to technical field reviews from defense mobility specialists like EKA Limited, the Boxer’s rear tyres and axles are not rated to support the vehicle’s total weight during a standard suspended lift-tow. So, if you lift the nose of a damaged Boxer and try to drag it backward, you risk snapping the rear axles entirely. As a result, a straight “flat tow” using heavy-duty rigid tow-bars is the only recognized method for moving a disabled hull. The new truck the MoD selects must be optimised for this exact heavy-duty structural alignment.
Until this new heavy-wheeled purchase is negotiated, formalised, and delivered, the Army will be forced to rely on its existing fleet of MAN SV (Support Vehicle) Recovery trucks. While these logistical wreckers have the raw engine power to physically pull a heavy Boxer, they lack the high-end frontline ballistic armour that the axed Boxer recovery module would have provided.
The door to a custom British-built vehicle is closed! Instead of paying a massive premium to design a proprietary vehicle from scratch, buying a standard, mass-produced truck off the international shelf allows them to solve the towing problem quickly without draining or exhausting the cash they need to finish delivering the baseline troop carriers.
It is all about preserving what little funding they have left.
1st paragraph, if you believe that nonsense then so be it, but the DIP is currently unfunded by real cash for its aspirations out to (the delayed/can kicked down the road) date of 2035 to the current tune of 10 Billion. The rest is Recy Mech specialism and your subsequent cut and paste paragraphs confirm my view, to recover a Boxer you need the same or equivalent, in a combat zone (look at Russia and Ukraine recovery under drones/fire) so that may be the main issue. Thanks for your input, it’s an always good to hear from a Labour supporter.
I think Magenta is talking al ot of sense especially around how MOD funding works. He’s provided a deeper dive behind the headlines. Just because someone provides a more detailed explanation doesn’t mean they support Labour. Its just how it works.
Disagree mate, his “deep dive” regarding the funding is straight out of the Labour playbook regarding the DIP. Remember the DIP was out prior to the statement need to save 10 Bilion and change through “efficiency savings” a terminology which anyone with any experience in uniform organisations means serious cuts! And the rest was a cut and paste where he is wanting the REME blokes to rock up at a damaged/bogged in Boxer in a MANN truck! If you using Boxer then you’re using it for a reason mate. Sorry, just get bored with cut and paste nonsense and people pushing out the party line.
OT some good news, the SAS Regimental association has the intention of taking HMG to court if the “troubles” bill remains in its current form as it now goes through the House of Lords. Cheers.
Britain may not be at war with Russia, but Russia seems to suggest that is at war with Britain…
Yes indeed. I can’t imagine Healey will fail to deliver on the issue he resigned over. The howls of derision would deafening. Less sure about the 3.5% timeline. Marco Rubio is voice of sanity in a sea of US chaos. The King is doing his bit, currently entertaining the Sultan of Oman. “The King’s banquet speech praised the country’s “noble efforts in trying to keep open one of the world’s most important shipping routes”.
And over a dinner of pheasant and quince, he praised Oman’s diplomatic mediation in the conflict with Iran to establish “where common ground might be found”. ” BBC report.
Trump is a world leading arsenist. It’s taking a lot of firemen to deal with his work. Have to say, quite proud of the stabilising diplomatic and military influence of the UK.
‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression’ 1994
What many people forget.. is that it only takes one side to start a war.. not two. What we are planning is less relevant than what Russia is planning.. unless your a an ultra right wing or ultra left wing Tankie Putinphone.
Technically a country is only ‘at war’ if war is formally declared- so the Falklands War was not strictly a ‘war’ either, but it is a distinction which has little practical significance these days.