As the United Kingdom continues its £7.8 billion commitment to military support for Ukraine, a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report has highlighted the strategic risks associated with substantial equipment and weapons donations from UK stockpiles.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) faces an ongoing challenge in balancing support for Ukraine while ensuring the UK’s own military readiness is not compromised.
According to the report, the MoD has faced mounting risks in maintaining military preparedness.
Since mid-2023, the donation of equipment from UK stockpiles has been sharply reduced as the MoD assessed that continuing at the previous pace would impose “unacceptable risks” on UK military readiness. This risk stems from depleting the country’s stockpiles of essential equipment and ammunition, which would be vital for any future defence needs.
Taskforce Kindred has been leading the effort to identify which items could be safely donated from existing UK inventories. As the NAO report outlines, ministers made final decisions on what to donate, taking into account the NATO warfighting requirements.
Taskforce Kindred has focused on older equipment to minimise risk, often donating items that were due to be scrapped or replaced, but which still held military value for Ukraine’s armed forces. For example, in March 2022, the UK donated 17,010 pairs of unused Army boots that were nearing the end of their usable life, saving disposal costs while providing immediate assistance to Ukraine.
While the focus has been on donating older equipment, the MoD acknowledged that even these donations have long-term consequences. The report estimates the cost of replacing donated equipment to be around £2.71 billion, significantly higher than their current net book value, due to the need to purchase newer, more advanced technology. To address this, the MoD has already placed replenishment contracts worth nearly £1 billion, and has committed to investing a further £10 billion in munitions production over the next decade.
A critical concern for the MoD has been ensuring that these donations do not deplete resources needed for the UK’s own defence. The report notes that Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) and senior military officials have been closely involved in determining how much equipment could be safely sent to Ukraine without undermining the UK’s commitments to NATO and other defence requirements.
The risks associated with stockpile depletion were highlighted when it was revealed that over a quarter of the Army’s training estate is being used for training Ukrainian troops as part of Operation Interflex, reducing availability for British soldiers to train at UK facilities. Additionally, the report mentions that Taskforce Kindred is working within a strategic decision-making structure that includes ministers, senior policy officials, and military leaders, aiming to manage the UK’s contribution to Ukraine while mitigating any negative impact on the UK’s national security.
According to Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, the MoD must continue to “balance the UK’s strategic interests with maintaining the UK’s own military capabilities,” a balancing act that grows increasingly complex as the war progresses.
Well actually it is good to see that MoD is aware of this and acting accordingly.
We can only do so much and our own military must always cone first.
Personally I think all of these budget lines should come straight out of the foreign office, on their government web page, job one is about ensuring Uk national security and conflict reduction. Clearly the MOD should be a partner but the funding should be foreign office not MOD.
Good Morning,
As regards the present unstaible world situation one as a government should ensure all requirements are met to ensure our defence forces are supplied supported and strengthebd as required. This is clearly not being done.
I do hope that the new Government increases the budget soonest to address this desperate situation before it is too little to late.
Living in hope Mr Healey turns it around.
Nick
Healey will be given the tools to turn things around if the Starmer/Reeves duo pony up some more cash.
If training Ukrainians is impacting on training our regulars, how do we plan to step up in time of war to train our own reserves and volunteers?
I would suppose in the event of war, Ukrainian training would stop and facilitates used for refresher training the recalled reservists. As for training a large pool of volunteers, that might be tricky, considering little of the reserve equipment (or indeed estate) we used to keep as ‘war reserve’ stock exists. By example, we traditionally kept refurbished last gen small arms in war reserves, to equip a rapidly expanding Army in the event of war. 200,000 No4 mk2 Enfields were kept stored well into the 1980’s, a large number of refurbished L1A1’s, L3A2’s and a quantity of L9A1 pistols, went… Read more »
Fascinating to hear that we once kept 0.303s into the 1980s – I had no idea – nor that we held the previous generations kit (L85A1s etc) until the Blair era. War Reserve key battlefield kit is now called Attrition Reserve, and is in-service equipment to be brought out to replace kit written off in battle. It is not kit for Reservists. Kit for Reservists from everything from uniform and boots to personal weapons, vehicles and radios etc etc is a different subject. I have no idea how that works. When I left the Regs in 2009 and went on… Read more »
Afternoon Graham, yep, thousands of the final run ( 1955) No4 mk2 went straight from ROF Fazakerley, straight to store. They remained in store until being sold off to trade in the 1980’s. Very occasionally, a ” mummy wrap” No4 comes onto the market today, usually for £2000 plus, a collectors item to stay in wrap… L2A3 Stirlings, fell foul of the court ordered agreement between the Government and Stirling Armaments, ‘to be destroyed’ upon surplus. ( long story) They were virtually all cut up for scap, bar a few that escaped via ‘gifting’ and the few that are surviving… Read more »
Well the good news is I have a bread knife. If I can find someone with a broomstick, we can pitch in and alternate shouting, “they don’t like it up ’em!”
Said this ages ago but got told off by many on here, we have given too much in service kit away with NO replacement due here in this or next year, less for FH77 Archer.
Hard balance helping Ukraine but not weaking our selves as always we gone too far to look good in the eyes of others.
Even MLRS we gave away 6 B1 launchers (all we had up dated) will have to wait until its up dated to A2 and that is not a fast process.
Russia is the only conventional threat to us geographically. The war in Ukraine is our frontline. Im glad this kit is being used to weaken and chasten our only conventional threat because that is its purpose. It doesn’t matter what nationality soldier is operating it.
Agreed but the balance of helping Ukraine and weaking our selves is a hard one, Some kit should not have been gifted mainly some in service kit but it is what its is.
The 14 archer are hardly a replacement two regiments of As90
Tts all we likely could afford and its sad 14 for the loss of 50, really the AS90 is as good as out of service less those in the Baltics, we will not see the RCH 155mm for 3 years at least.
14 second hand guns it’s alarming that we’ve left ourselves so short I was privileged enough to be on parade for the queen’s review of the Royal artillery in Germany in 1984 when I look back at that and what I see now I’m incredulous that the army in general has gone down hill so quickly in the case of equipment
Its been run down, under funded and its leadership seem to have not done much to protest. Can be fixed but will take more money that the MOD have to correct it.
Will the so called defence review just be another smoke and mirrors exercise to save money dressed up as some thing else, sadly very likely.
The army size is not the main issue its the state of kit/spares or lack of kit and ammo that is shocking.
True the central fleet storage at ashchurch has left a lot of equipment in a sorry state of repair as well some of the paint work for example you see on wagons on the road is shocking
Would not have been allowed before and Ashchurch is use less, letting kit rot and rust so its no good for much. Who runs it needs sacking.
Agree before I left the army in 2002 all equipment was held by units fully manned and properly maintained and looked after you took pride in your kit now though blimey I don’t know what to say
Standards have fallen, badly, no pride in the kit. Very sad to see and not s good sign.
I now work at the school of artillery in larkhill and I’m afraid your right the army has gone soft won’t bollock anyone they can grow beards and have long hair according to religion the standard of dress is disgusting even at snco level
this is whole problem, starts at the top, that is why the army is shambles, The senior WO1 of the Army needs to get a grip but i bet he can not and is held back by mindless PC crap. The Army as a whole is a mess but the RARSM the Mater Gunner etc must not be doing their job they set the standards in the RA.
I’m afraid you’re right mate the scruffy state of soldiers at the main gates at larkhill they’re slovenly and scruffy as an ex snco I sometimes have to bite my tongue entering camp
Is this the same place where CR2s have been left to rot as well? The Defence minister should be onto this and be held accountable! Can’t imagine this sort of thing happening in the private sphere.
Nothing will get done about it, no one will be sacked, just the way things are, sadly. And kit ruined beyond repair or for the C2 no use for up grade to C3.
Odd, as we are fighting a war with Russia by proxy. Of cause it’s going to deplete stocks we just need to buy in more. Wars are expensive and get in the way of other vital government spending however, there is no cheap way around this issue other than withdraw all support for Ukraine……and that isn’t happening anytime soon.
…and letting Russia win is the expensive option anyway as they wouldn’t then stop at Ukraine
This will also be a bit of a tough scenario to get right. On the one hand, as we have deemed helping Ukraine to be in our national interest, then using ‘end of life’ materials makes a huge amount of good sense, and I’m a big supporter of this. I confess this next point to be a cynical one, but something worth considering. Ukraine is frankly also an excellent opportunity to ACTUALLY test new and old weapons/platforms under real battlefield conditions, and see the real flaws that they may have, and highlight the weapons that perhaps may be ‘lower end’,… Read more »
Certainly agree with this, as even a cursory reading of Military History demonstrates that wars stimulate rapid advances in weapons related technology (with multiple civilian spin offs e.g radar). So, lets get on with the experimenting. My greatest strategic concern in Ukraine is that without NATO, or even Europe alone, stepping in to close it down with Russia having received no net benefit, we are simply confirming in Russian minds that we are chicken, while simultaneously training them how to fight against NATO weapons and tactics. Look how much smarter they are now, than two years ago. On the other… Read more »
Great photo of our 60-year-old FV430s Mk2s (ie without the Bulldog mods that constitute a Mk3).
That’s some top class pootling!
“The UK holds forces and supporting capabilities at varying states of readiness in accordance with its graduated response posture. The highest level of readiness (R1 or Extremely High Readiness) is “two days or less with force elements held at anything from minutes notice-to-move to the full 48 hours”. The lowest readiness level (R11 or ‘Very Low Readiness’) is more than 365 days” Source – ‘Ready for War’ UK HofC Defence Committee report It would be very interesting to hear which units achieve their readiness levels. When I served in Germany, NATO teams used to periodically descend on a unit with… Read more »
I’d be interested to know which units fit into that last group needing more than 365 days. Seems an extreme amount of time to be able to spool anything up?
The R1 group is pretty easy to guess.