Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office (FCDO) Minister of State, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, showcased the UK’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific at the 20th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last week.
The annual Shangri-La Dialogue is considered Asia’s premier defence summit, where global leaders and ministers deliberate on pressing security challenges.
The UK ministers engaged in an assortment of plenary sessions and bilateral discussions, further affirming the UK’s dedication to a region critical to its economy, security, and a stable international order.
Addressing the summit, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, alongside his counterparts from Canada and the Philippines, focused on the themes of ‘Building a stable and balanced Asia-Pacific’ and regional cooperation.
In a statement, Wallace stated, “It has been a great pleasure to meet with my counterpart Dr Ng Eng Hen here in Singapore and to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue to meet defence ministers from across the Indo-Pacific.” He further asserted that Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security are indivisible and that upholding a rules-based order requires collective effort.
Wallace also noted the importance of organisations like ASEAN and highlighted the UK’s application to join ADMM+ as a symbol of their dedication to promoting prosperity and stability in the region.
The Shangri-La Dialogue followed the Prime Minister’s announcement in March about the UK joining the CPTPP, a trade bloc within the Indo-Pacific, which has an aggregate GDP of £11 trillion. Moreover, on his recent trip to Japan for G7, nearly £18 billion of new investment into the UK was announced, which is expected to generate well-paid jobs and stimulate economic growth.
The Defence Secretary also met with Singapore’s Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen and ministers from China, Indonesia, and New Zealand for bilateral meetings. Wallace even paid a visit to the FPDA wharf at the Sembawang Naval Installation, where he interacted with Commanders from Australia and New Zealand.
Reiterating UK’s proactive stance, Minister for the Indo-Pacific, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, stated “Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific prosperity and security are tied more closely together than ever before, and we must work jointly to protect the rules-based international order to safeguard our futures.” She confirmed that the UK would continue to work closely with partners in ASEAN and beyond to address global challenges.
The UK’s ties with Singapore were underscored by both nations’ membership in the FPDA, now in its 52nd year. This organisation, encompassing Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK, seeks to bolster defence and security in the Indo-Pacific and foster stability in the region.
Makes an awful lot of sense to be looking ahead to the world post Covid and Ukraine and that means focusing on SEAN rather than the Middle East. Historically we have ties with many of these countries and being an active partner is a role we can well play. Unlike other countries (ahem) they know we not Empire building or trying to interfere because we already did that and left. As I see it we have the ambition but not the real wherewithal to contribute any thing really significant in the way of fighting ships. At present we have 2… Read more »
The quicker we move away from oil and the middle east the better. I’d imagine a lot of dictatorships will fall when the west is less reliant on oil. I know oil will always play an important part of our life due to needing it for pharmaceuticals and other stuff. However I’d imagine the west collectively has enough untapped oil for our needs once we take away the need for energy and car fuel.
North Sea has a lot of the really good petrochemical feedstocks needed.
Methane, natural gas, is also a vital feedstock.
So shutting down North Sea oil and gas is stupid as you also shut down the chemicals and then pharma manufacturing.
trouble is we are still totally obsessed with burning the stuff. Yes we do need North Sea oil to keep flowing…. but as an industrial resource not as an energy resource.
Exactly this.
I gave up burning it in cars 5 years ago.
I’m doing my best to minimise my use of it for heating.
No, I don’t vote green.
I prefer the taste of cleaner air – as demonstrated in lockdown.
I’m busily saving money: that is my main motivation. As a company director I can drive an EV with very low BIK taxes.
Same with the £3.5k I spent putting 6kW of solar on my roof – it has paid for itself and reduced my emissions. Today I have more electricity than I know what to do with.
Problem is plastics we’re a byproduct of oil and gas as a fuel. North sea if used for feeding UK plastic industry alone would ve expensive. Remember in parts of the world oil far cheaper to extract. The problem is replacing oil is not a binary problem like climate activists would like you to think. Its probably better to keep using it as a fuel but as lower volumes, mixed with biofuels etc then offset the carbon created to achieve a net zero impact. Thus funding the feedstock for plastics industries. One irony is oil through cheap plastic to preserve… Read more »
Then you may like this:-
https://youtu.be/tHezYlICrOw
Abi Clayton’s contribution
(though don’t know if there’s a prize for anyone who correctly guesses the # on ‘moving forward’)
Just to add to my mentioning the Airlander I thought folks may find this interesting. Airlander started life as a US Army programme for a persistent long range, persistent high altitude recce vehicle. The tests went fine but the Army dropped it to fund other projects, it came back home and has been developed and has its 1st order from a Spanish Airline. But it could be used for other purposes.
Seems the USN has ideas of its own.
https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/electric-hybrid/us-navy-to-assess-use-of-airlander-airship-for-logistics.html
I have been following their progress since they started the process to buy back the vehicle, even have a few shares in the company. The potential applications of the craft are so wide in both civilian and military, it is low carbon and planned to shift to electric engines to remove even that. A brilliant British design and innovation.
I just look at the knee jerk reactions of buy the same old, same old and cries for spend more money on a super duper, all singing and dancing bit of kit. And then I tend think what actually is threatening the SEAD countries ? Is it China actively wanting to attack and conquer all of them or China wanting to exert its influence and strip them bare of resources ? All of these countries have military and coastguard assets but tend to not buy the nitty gritty of MPA for Oceanic surveillance, which are a key enabler. Are you… Read more »
Two OPVs (with 30mm guns) in the Pacific; both Wave tankers laid up and about to be sold off leaving a grand total of 5 AORs; Fort Victoria only with a skeleton crew aboard due to an RFA manning crisis; Prince of Wales in repair; a grand total of 29 F-35s in the UK; a grand total of 34 F-35 pilots in the whole of the UK … I am not sure where the capabilities for this grand “Pacific Strategy” are supposed to be found.
Its not just about military assets. Its about trade and diplomacy, and global logistics so we can and do deploy to that part of the world. Very very few nations can deploy that far from home. And another 7 F35B’s will be delivered this year. And the 30mm is more than adequate from the role the OPV’S are being tasked with. They are not destroyers or Frigates.
Come on …
Come on what…..? What do you want the MOD to say? we are deploying carrier’s every 6 months, we setting up a garrison with thousands of troops in Singapore. What’s stated is realistic.
??? explain regarding thousands of troops in singapore ? Last I heasrd we had a small support facility called British Defence Singapore Support Unit (BDSSU).
Up to 1972, Singapore was a major British base for army, navy and air force. The home of British Pacific Fleet. Then it all closed down upon the entry into the EU (as condition for its membership — to abandon the Commonweath).
Robert was being ironic. He did not mean those things.
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Hi mate. My response was to Roy, who doesn’t agree with the Pacific Strategy because we don’t have a load of warships or troops in that part of the world. I simply pointed out that the Strategy is realistic, and it isn’t just about military assets in the region.
I think you just needed to put a “are” before the “we” and ?after it 😉
👍😃
The Pacific strategy has become political because Tories are touting it Labour is going the other way and criticising it. That may be reflected by some posters I guess.
Who actually has a better expeditionary capability than us in this regard?
US is the only country.
France is the only other country that even comes close.
There is a lot of pretending on this website and in the commentary section. In a world that is becoming so conflictual, and in the face of the rising aggression of two totalitarian powers, this sort of pretending no longer cuts it. The RAF/RN have 34 qualified F-35 pilots.The RN has 5 AORs and can’t man all of them right now. Pretending that the carrier strike group is viable with those sorts of numbers, and in the face of a peer opponent like the PLAN, is absurd. The pending defence review may well cut capabilities further. Does anyone see any… Read more »
I don’t think anyone’s pretending Roy…The Uk has a small navy able to exert influence and effect anywhere in the world. It is not a force designed to sail to defeat a super power. In any confrontation with Russia/China/major adversary, the Navy will form a small part of a hopefully large coalition of nations.
7 more F35 pilots this coming August.
Yet the Royal Navy poses a larger threat to China than the PLAN does to Britain.
5 AORs is more than most other countries auxiliary fleets. As soon as Fort Victorias ready the Navy could deploy a CSG to the Indo-Pacific region.
Great points Louis.
👍 Cheers Graham.
Thumbs up.
Why would anyone pretend? As a large number of contributors are ex services and have seen and felt the various impacts of underspending, under equipping and understaffing of their various arms and services! So if anything the vast majority of contributors are quite pragmatic, critical when needed it also positive when necessary! The RN might not be the biggest, but within NATO, aside from the US, they are the most capable at this time! But I do agree that we do need to be concerned in regards to the next “defence review” as from that experience we all have, we… Read more »
I the Pacific? No. China have beaten the US crisis hit countries a few times now; don’t be so sure of yourself.
Not sure about that one these days ! When we had all 4 bays, both LPD in service and an LPH, yep we definitely were No2 to the US as that enabled us to amphibious land an entire brigade.
Since then we have declined and France now has 3 Mistral.
But that is really the only aspect France beats us in.
To my knowledge France has no counterpart to the Points. Mistral is the only part of their amphibious fleet.
RN has double the carriers with 5th gen fighters.
French auxiliary fleet as of now consists of 2 small, 30+ years old ships.
Let’s see where they are better armed than us :- 1. More Rafale fighters than we have Typhoon and F35B combined. 2.Although they have a matching CASD capacity to our they have an Airborne Nuclear Attack capability using ASMP-A launched from Rafale fighters. 3.French Army is 118k to our 76k. 4.France has land based Aster 30 missiles in their SAMP/T batteries which will shortly have an ABM capability. The most important things to remember about France is that it designs and builds over 90% of all its own military equipment. France does not allow any foreign take overs of its… Read more »
Not a lot of those relate to expeditionary capability. France also has major shortfalls. 1. No 5th gen aircraft 2. 6th gen aircraft is having issues, with an in service date as late as 2050 possibly 3. Just 2 comparable destroyers to T45, with Horizons being worse. 4. SSN’s are worse and 1 less 5. No C17s 6. No Chinooks or equivalent 7. No point class equivalent 8. No 24 hour AEW for carriers 9. Smaller auxiliary fleet 10. Only one smaller carrier 11. Overseas bases- there is a British overseas territory in every single continent. France doesn’t have the… Read more »
Yes, exactly…things like the aukus deal, and developing the next generation fighter jet with japan (and Italy) show that we are starting to come back into play in the region. Japan joining the tempest program in particular is massive news, and gives a genuine chance of success (tho still many hard yards to be covered…)
Hi Roy.. Had an update on Navy Lookout. Seems the Wave class ships are not being sold, but will remain in extended readiness.
I’ll have wot their having. Is Shangri-La a 40% spirit?
The picture of Ben Wallace tells us a lot. He has presence and respect and just look at the body language This defence secretary has been very solid (I want to say ruddy brilliant but politicians always disappoint) and is well respected by friends and foes I was just reading an article on Turkey and our defence co-operation including over 200 Brits (I think BAE working on a fifth generation F35 alternatitive) Ben Wallace has been prominent and the Turks like him Sorry boys and girls but the Champion’s League Final kicks off in 40 mins and I am from… Read more »
Wallace needs to ask PM nicely for 3% in defence 🙏 😀
I think he has got two additional tranches of funding in his time, over and above the usual annual settlement. Too much to expect he could increase spending to 3% – thats about 1.5 times more than we are spending now.
The government needs to understand that 3% is cheap, if we spend now while we still got chance it will be a lot cheaper than scrambling about later when we have a full on world war 3. When Ukraine was attacked we was one of the first to show strong support and we still do which we should all be proud of but now we should also really be increasing the orders to what we currently have planned, more T26/T31, challenger 3 upgrades, F35, Apaches, E-7. For people these are challenging times and no one wants tax increase but we… Read more »
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Fair point – and 3% is much less than we were spending in the Cold War (5%?).
We started rearming in 1935, and were only just about ready for WW2 – and that was when aircraft, ships, weapons and munitions were far less complex than today; we probably need 8-10 years prep time now.
Wallace has done well to have obtained an ~£18 billion uplift in the defence budget, but the MoD has clearly signaled that further cuts in capability are to be expected; they retired the Hercs at a ceremony at Brize on Friday. Attended by the Princess Royal, no less. America is now focused on China. The defence estabishment here is so fixated on NATO Article V that there are no UK Air Defence systems around any of our military bases. The Army has been eviscerated by repeated cuts in their capability and we could not now assemble a single armoured division.… Read more »
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Your words should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country – a concise summary of our parlous Defence situation – alarming and astonishing given that our defence budget is quite large compared to other European countries. The budget clearly needs to be much larger and procurement needs to be really sorted out. A full Value for Money audit should be conducted across all areas of defence, with some focus on the PFI contracts.
Big Ben certainly does a lot for the RAF and RN – but he said he would review the numbers of tanks to be converted to CR3s in light of the Russo-Ukraine war – we expected an uplift but got silence. Many also expected at least a partial reversal of the 10,000 army cut too. But the cut goes ahead and was even strongly endorsed by CDS.
I believe the fundamental issue all 3 services are facing are down solely to 3 Politicians Sir Blair, Mr Brown Mr Cameron Blair got us into Iraq and then Afghanistan and that needed the Army to refocus its attention from Heavy Continental Warfare and Expeditionary into a primarily Infantry based counter insurgency war. For nearly 10 years everything else that had been planned or could possibly be dispensed with was. The Army needed an entire new fleet of vehicles, logistic support and that costs £££££. Brown then nailed everything else down to the floorboards to pay for his 2 locally… Read more »
Very interesting post, mate. From my army perspective, it was not just core equipment (mainly heavy metal – and I don’t mean Metallica!) replacements that suffered during the Iraq and Afghan years – such equipments were not materially upgraded either. So baffling that deploying a force of about 5.5k soldiers to Afghan with attendant UOR kit, dislocated planning for the core equipment programme – and seemingly cost so much money. Learning from history, we started rearming in 1935 and were barely ready for major conflict in Sep 1939. With more complex equipment and fewer manufacturers nowadays it might take 8-10… Read more »
Glad you liked it. The problem with the mass rearming of everything as per 1935 onwards was it left us with a huge post war problem Everything needed to be replaced at roughly the same time and was unaffordable and in 1960 the defence budget was 7.09% of GDP. Which is why rebuilding has to be structured to increase and renew capacity over a longer period of time. The U.K. National ship building strategy is the only long term plan that replaces ships in a structured timescale to ensure industrial production continuity The Army and Airforce need similar and IMHO… Read more »
Yep. Assuming a 25 year service life, we should have replaced the CVR(T) family from 1996, Warrior from 2012, AS90 from 2017, CR2 from 2023. We would have had a sequenced replacement plan with an ideal spending profile. But we didn’t (although the CR2 replacement is not far off my timeline) so are in a huge mess, with all of the above needing replacement now! We should also have upgraded the above during their service life regularly and significantly – but largely didn’t. So for much of their service life they were less effective than they should have been. Can… Read more »
The thing about it is, it isn’t too late but there would have to be an acceptance that it is a 25 year plan and some things will have to wait. If it was me I’d forget the old single purpose factories and piggy back on a civilian company with transferable skill sets. It would have to be in the business of building large, heavily engineered land vehicles, be UK owned and be able to see the benefit of having a constant work stream. That way you have the mass to back up the necessary infrastructure, recruitment, training and apprenticeships.… Read more »
I was not of course proposing a 25 year plan to get the army fixed! Just saying when kit should have been replaced based on a nominal 25 year service life. Maybe some things might have to wait ie stay in service a few more years – but we still have FV430’s in service that were fielded 60 years ago. Recce vehicles that are over 50 years old. It’s just ridiculous. I am sure you have mentioned your JCB idea before. But we already have Assembly Halls (rather than ‘tank factories’) up and running (RBSL, GDUK, WFEL), and they have… Read more »
And that is the main effect of delaying the replacement of land vehicles. All we have left are some assembly halls for foreign designed equipment or that can service, upgrade or rebuild existing equipment. There is zero new U.K design or building left, it has been gutted and all that is left are 3 smallish facilities. The GD and R bit in the titles are practically the tombstone for the U.K AFV industry. RBSL at Telford are rebuilding the CR2 hull and power trains to take a German designed turret with a 100% German gun using some U.K. parts (some… Read more »
I am trying to be a ‘glass half full man’! I fully understand that: Boxer design is largely German but Ajax design is Spanish-Welsh! and CR3 design is German-British. Doesn’t mean that we Brits can’t design AFVs any more – there will be design staff at those facilities – why do you doubt that? The asembly halls in UK can build AFVs – you said they could only service, upgrade or rebuild. [BTW, AFVs are not serviced by factories – they are serviced in unit lines by AFV crewmen]. GDUK is building Ajax – it matters little that they buy… Read more »
Ukraine’s counter offensive is underway. Looking difficult. They’ve suffered a setback on this occasion with 9 Bradley’s a rare Leopard 2A6 and a couple of armoured engineering vehicles destroyed. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/06/09/the-ukrainian-army-lost-a-leopard-2-tank-and-bradley-fighting-vehicles-trying-and-failing-to-breach-russian-defenses-in-southern-ukraine/
Seems they were lacking SHORAD and the engineering vehicles were stopped by attack helicopter which then left the following Bradley’s and Leopard 2A6 exposed and hit by artillery. Hmmmm….
Look closely to that photo note the scale of the Leo to the Bradley behind it! The Leo is a model photoshopped into the picture! If a Russian tells you it’s daylight it’s always best to check for yourself👍
The Ukrainians may not even have seen the AH if it popped up quickly from a wood line, and ducked down again after its engagement.
ADMM+, what’s that?
Annual defence ministers meeting of ASEAN plus those of the ASEAN dialogue partners. The structure includes expert working groups to enhance practical cooperation.
Thanks Jon.
Mr BW certainly gets around places doesn’t he!?
If we cant man the Waves why not form and lend them to a NATO support fleet. We have NATO AWACs.