Defence equipment spending in the year to March 2026 was £5 billion lower than in the previous year, which industry witnesses described as an indication of the Ministry of Defence working to stay within its budget, according to evidence given to the Defence Committee.
Kevin Craven, chief executive of ADS, gave the figure during a session on the implications of the Defence Investment Plan for British industry.
He said: “In terms of orders, what is probably interesting to note is that the equipment spend to the year ending March 2026 was £5 billion less than in the previous year, which is an indication of the MOD looking to remain within its budget or live within its means. We are hearing all of this language. The lived experience on the ground is that it is still hard to get orders.”
Craven said there have been procurement announcements since the plan was published, including the Royal Oak programme for the mobile docks on the Clyde and rapid procurement processes covering £1.4 billion around defence artificial intelligence.
He also told MPs that it was unclear whether around a third of the £298 billion announced in the plan is unfunded or simply not articulated in the right way.
On the additional £15 billion provided to defence, Craven said: “We are concerned. The MOD has a long history of baking in efficiency savings to its plans and then not necessarily being able to deliver them. The commitment to deliver those is not the same thing as doing so.”
He pointed the committee to a change in the department’s own provisions, saying: “One of the interesting things about the DIP was that the central contingencies held by the MOD were increased from 1.2% to 2% over the spending period, which is perhaps indicative of some of their own cynicism around the ability to deliver those efficiencies and savings.”
Craven said the difficulty of transforming the department while implementing a major shift in capability makes the savings harder to realise.
Julian David of techUK told the committee that nearly £5 billion is dependent on the Budget, and that there was potential confusion over whether the Budget would deliver it or whether it would wait for the spending review. He said waiting would be a very big mistake and would compound delays already identified.
Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Defence, told the committee the previous week that the Chancellor has said he will plug a £4.7 billion gap at the Budget, with more to come at the spending review. Jeremy Pocklington, the Permanent Secretary, told MPs that additional support received between John Healey’s resignation and Dan Jarvis settling the plan increased the department’s spending power by £15 billion.
Craven told the committee that the National Armaments Director group, the aggregation of departments now reporting to Rupert Pearce, numbers some 25,000 people, and that transforming the department while implementing a strategic shift is causing large amounts of pain within it.
War footing.
👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
Hello mate,
What is becoming increasingly clear is that we have left rearmament way too late. Many of the issues we are facing are as the result of decisions taken years ago, 40 years ago in the case of the T23. Worse we heaped more poor decisions and delays on top of bad decisions.
The biggest impact has been the loss of skills and experience which is making recovery and rearmament even harder. Throw in HMT behaviour and we are still in decline because kit we have is well past its sell by date and a severely deskilled MoD and defence industrial base, all of which are struggling to reorgoranise, reskill while trying to deliver new equipment, new doctrine in an environment of a changing and worsening geopolitical situation.
It is a perfect storm.
The only way to get through this storm is for the country to pull together and for a consensus to develop around the need to rearm. We need leadership, the kind that can pull us all together and I don’t yet see it. It could be a group leadership of a 21c Winston Churchill, I don’t care but whatever form this leadership takes we need it to emerge soon.
Cheers CR
The country pull together, mate?
Millions in the country have no interest in the UK, only what they can gain from it, and I’m looking forward to seeing those millions rally round in this fake projection of patriotism we’re seeing from HMG.
The pulling together also seems to involve increasing the recall age to 60, which I find nauseating, considering that the old and the bold have done their time and often get treated like utter garbage, that’s when their not being prosecuted by the same government that lauds them.
And as Jonathan says regards resilience, an area he knew professionally, very little so far.
We’ve been told to stock up on water and non perishable food though, and the trashy Daily Mail dismissed it as nonsense.
Like Covid advice, how many will ignore regardless?
Our nation is fractured and fragmented socially and I lay the blame squarely at HMG door over the last 30 years, and now we must all pull together?
Leadership? Okay mate! Our political class are only interested in soundbytes, give aways ( bribes ) to be re elected, and their own skins.
Deskilling as you say is a key one too, with all the endless cuts so much is now outsourced Defence is beholden to the MIC, and it’s need for profits, one of my bugbears as you know, rather than the ability to do something in house quickly.
And pulling together when Defence is such a poor vote winner, again not easy.
I think when a major grey zone attack happens and HMG are publicly humiliated, there is a loss of life, and the wolves are at the diir, then HMG act, too late.
And I’m sure that our superb intelligence community are warning of the dangers as well, I don’t lay blame there, but if politicians don’t act, then…. I don’t know what to say any more mate…..where are those 6 weapons factories by the way?
I share your frustrations mate.
However, I tend to think that Churchill would have felt the same in the 1930’s. It was ever thus.
I big difference is that people have more choice about where they get their ‘news’ from, so they can chose to listen or watch that which interests them rather than what they need to hear or see… “It’s all so depressing…” There is also the question of news and information ‘push’ which is entirely new and probably being exploited by those who seek to spread disinformation.
However, I tend to be a bit more optimistic about this country, but I will admit that my optimism is being sorely tested at the moment.
Cheers CR
Daniele, I’ve only just read up about the NAD Group, comprising 25,000 employees, presumably mostly CS. I wonder how many of the 25k are in the 4 new areas (ie a new overhead)
from official website:
‘The NAD Group was established in March 2025 and unites 5 existing enabling organisations and 4 new areas:
National Armaments International (NA-Intl)
National Armaments Plans and Portfolios (NA-P&P)
National Armaments Materiel (NA-M) formerly part of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S)
National Armaments Innovation (NA-Innov) Including Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and UK Defence Innovation formerly [Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), part of UK Defence Innovation (UKDI)]
National Armaments Logistics and Support (NA-L&S) formerly Defence Support
National Armaments Digital and Data (NA-D&D) formerly Defence Digital
National Armaments Commercial and Industry (NA-C&I) formerly Commercial and Industry (C&I) including the National Shipbuilding Office (NSO)
National Armaments Corporate (NA-C) including Corporate Services Modernisation and Defence Business Services
National Armaments Infrastructure is part of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO)’.
Morning Graham.
A few fancy new names and a whole load of existing organisations and Directorates victim to a typical government move, the rebrand.
All will be fabulous and much better now the deckchairs have been shuffled, long standing areas renamed, and a NAD appointed. We already effectively had a NAD, under another name.
The changes may actually help, who knows. But if HMT drip feed every programme to drag out costs which just pushes costs up anyway what difference does it make overall?
If one knows MoD history, one sees that this isn’t the first time reforms and reshuffles happened to improve things, such as the Levene Reforms.
I’d read that even Defence Digital is part of the NAD Group now.
Jeeze, 25,000 of them! That is the equivalent of a full armoured Division and then some! We might be rubbish at meeting our force requirements, but I bet we have the largest armaments bureau in ENATO! I seem to remember that the German equivalent has about 5,000 staff, but I would need to check that.
I’m sure you are right Graham ref the numbers being primarily civil servants. DES had an ever-shrinking number of uniformed personnel and an ever-higher head count of civil servants pushing paper around. These CS people do love to create little empires for themselves!
I would cut 10,000 of them tomorrow to form an extra army combat brigade group and give 2,500 each to the RAF and RN to alleviate manpower shortages.
The MOD fiddles while the world burns.
So two things are true then, the biggest increase in the defence budget since the cold war, and equipment spend falling by 5 billion in a year…….
I can hear it already, world beating capability, meeting all commitments, tripled lethality, increased agility, tea and biscuits all round.
Suppose the problem is when the nuclear side is consuming such a chunk of the budget, then everything that isn’t the nuclear side gets shafted. So both are true at the sametime.
The long delayed DIP abandoned the previous practice of a 10 year equipment plan with enough detail to track all major programmes. It is impossible to tell from the three year DIP whether there is a forecast shortfall in funding. Or what accounted for the claimed fall of £5b on equipment.
So £5 billion less spent on equipment at a time when £5 billion extra would be more appropriate… is that what is called ‘committment’?
In government talk to the 5 billion spent is more lethal,has less down down is cheaper to run and actually has sun shine coming out of it arse so there for the one thing we have brought it actually doing the same job and 10 but with less people. And cost less oo and it build in the UK and is the best in world and dose this thing and that thing even wipes your arse
Amazing what a politician can do with numbers. 🫣
I think our government has created an impossible situation.
The prevailing view, it seems is that Labour is not a friend to the typical Brit, particularly hardworking, or enterprising ones, or those who are critical of government policies.
They’ve spent more than two years allowing everyone to call us vile colonial empire-building xenophobes, and done a fair bit of this themselves, while stripping our military in real terms.
Throughout all that, the world order has been apparently collapsing; America is increasingly unreliable, with an unstable President who seems to really like Russia; were constantly being told that one war or another is near
So the government is now in a horrendous position: it’s realised that the very people it’s marginalised and called racist, are now the same ones that will have to defend the nation, in the very conflicts they’ve been repeatedly warned about. And unsurprisingly, many of these people have said “on yer bike”.
Hopefully someone with some actual insight can explain to me WTF is going on in this country, and why our military is being asked cut make massive cuts right after it was announced that defence spending will increase.
And when the shit roles down hill, this bunch of incompetent socialist clowns will expect the white working class male to drag their arses into rig, and send them off to die for the good and benefit of HMG, the same Labour Government who has ostracised, abused, name called, blamed, hated, disliked, jailed and taxed to the hilt those same individuals shortly before!
We are on a war footing aren’t we? Shit then let’s not spend the money we know is available if willing, with the organisations and entrepreneurs who could provide innovative and effective platforms quickly. Don’t bother with any short or even medium term plans but rely on the unfunded DIP, which is expected to be completed roughly 5 years after the expected and anticipated conflict! Nice, 👌 well done HMG.
Did you see that your old mob did a big BG drop in Germany?
Not seen much about it apart from on X.
What a surprise! These incompetent student politicians and their brethren in the MOD must be Russians in disguise – as no one could have done a better job at decimating our armed forces. All those labour voters need their heads examining as our economy, social cohesion, food security and cultural fabric all go down the pan. Though the conservatives should take a fair share of the credit for those things
The sorry reality is that the Tories underfunded defence so severely over 14 years that we now have an impossible mountain to climb to get back to anything like a credible defence force.
They cut force levels to the bone to switch money to the equipment budget. The army alone was slashed by 32,000 troops, hence its miniscule size and capability today. Even then, the equipment budget was far too small, so we ended up with a mass of gapped and elderly kit which will take years and many billions to rectify. That was the Conservatives great contribution to Britain’s defence.
We are now being forced by Trump through NATO to make good these 14 years of gross underfunding and then some. That is the woeful legacy that Labour inherited two years ago. It is intriguing to hear Tory members earnestly questioning the SoS on defence issues and demanding that a shedload of extra money is now found pronto for defence! What charlatans! Do they think that we all have short memories?
Politically cunning though: Labour comes up with half the additional money the forces want, which is a very good start, but then gets bashed at the dispatch box and daily in the Conservative press for not doing enough for defence. There is no public appetite to slash public spending to pay for defence.
We can only go at the pace we can afford to. We need the Chancellor to find the missing £4.7bn in his budget and to find a way to increase defence spending considerable in next year’s spending review. It is going to take a few years to replace the backlog of elderly and gapped kit and fund the wave of new technology equipment now desired.
We are where we are.