The Government has declined to say whether the UK intends to procure the Nightfall ballistic missile, instead pointing to the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan for decisions on Britain’s future precision strike.
In a written question, Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty asked what assessment the Secretary of State for Defence had made of the potential impact of procuring the Nightfall missile on the UK’s precision fires capability. The question directly raised the prospect of the system contributing to Britain’s own long-range strike inventory.
Responding for the Ministry of Defence, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard focused on the programme’s stated purpose.
“The new ballistic missiles developed under Project Nightfall are intended to provide Ukraine with a long range-capability to counter Russian aggression as rapidly as possible,” he said.
Pollard added that “decisions on the UK’s precision strike capabilities will be prioritised appropriately against the threat as part of the future Integrated Force and set out in the Defence Investment Plan to be published this year.”
There is no indication that Nightfall is currently being considered as a defined UK procurement programme. Instead, ministers are signalling that any changes to Britain’s precision fires capability, whether involving Nightfall or alternative systems, will be addressed within the wider force design and investment process due to be outlined later this year.
Yet another non answer with anything concrete awaiting the DIP later this year. This government gives the impression it simply doesn’t know what to do.
Why do you think that is an impression rather than reality?
I scent an internal war on the defence budget increase. The manufacturing unions want the money spent, Starmer wants the money spent as industrial strategy in UK produced weapons.
Army wants MOTS/COTS basically anything that works now.
Navy is more relaxed as the hulls will be UK produced and it is happy with A30 and CAMM etc.
RAF wants more F35A and Starmer and the unions want Typhoon. This is where the F35B -> A game has backfired as they could have used RN / CSG as cover for more F35B.
Still haggling with the treasurey for the money.
It is also worth noting that the last working day before Leonardo’s NMH offer expires is tomorrow with no sign of an announcement, let alone the DIP.
Next Tuesday March 3rd is the date Reeves delivers her spring forecast statement to MPs. I would guess the spending depts will have sight of the funds they have been alllocated from Monday and assuming there is some decision on Ajax, can work on the DIP. They will likely leak decisions on some urgent items like NMH to Leonardo
There are rumours the medium helicopter contract will be announced next week. The whole DIP could be published with the Spring Forecast on the 3rd March.
Apparently a visit by Healey was abruptly and at short notice “delayed” today, where Leonardo expected a contract for NMH to be announced. Note I don’t know if this visit was the March visit or something they’d planned earlier. Source: Francis Tusa on X.
Probably a protocol thing. Healey could have been jumping the gun and announcing the NMH contract before Reeves had informed MPs of the spending forecast on Tuesday.
I’m sure the forces and the defence ministers know very well what they need to do and what.equipment they need to do it. The delay in finalising the DIP is now primarily down to money. The services claim to be £28 bn short to fund defence investment over the next ten years. There is no chance of getting that from the public purse, the nation is about skint and every department needs more cash following years of austerity.
The Chancellor has the options to (a) exclude defence spending fron the fiscal borrowing rules, as pet Germany, (b) borrow the money for a one-off investment in equipment as per the EU’s SAFE scheme or a UK equivalent, (c) raise.the money through defence bonds basically Treasury gilts or (d) put a 1p in the pound levy on taxes. The first three mean she would have to breach her borrowing rules , the fourth would breach HMG’s tax pledges. But the government will have to choose one of these doors or else cut the investment plan back by £28bn.
The best we can hope for is a compromise, where some more new money is provided by HMT, which.has now got £30bn headroom in its fiscal policy, but a lot.of the grand new schemes like Atlantic Bastion are scaled back sharply and delivery times pushed to the right.
.
Cripes,
Wonder whether the forecasted £28Bn shortfall in the procurement budget also includes the agreed expansion of MoD’s budget to 3.5% of GDP by 2035? Accountants, especially those of the governmental variety, should be accorded continuing, close scrutiny, throughout the developed world. 🤔😉
I would think that the missing £28bn is almost certainly the shortfall to get spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035.
The known maths tell us this: HMG has committed to increasing defence spend from £62.5bn this coming year to £73.5bn in FY 2027/8, to arrive at 2.5% of GDP. (Well 2.6% in government-speak, being 2.5% core defence and 0.1% intelligence services). If we extrapolate that increase out to 2035 and the 3.5% target, it would need another.2.8m each year, so a total of…. £28bn. So that looks to fit.
A supporting fact is that these defence investment plans are a rolling 10-year plan, which gets updated every year. So the services are looking at what they need versus what they can afford to buy through to end March 2036. The answer looks to be that £101bn is.the figure they are working to.
Hmmm … on this side of the Pond, we have learned through experience that there are four categories of untruths: Lies, Damnable Lies, Statistics, and Government Accounting Ledgers. Would advise extreme vigilance of any government during the shell game aka the budget process.
I would just go with an Australian model and tell the public everything costs 3-4 times more than your actually playing.. by toting up every bag of crisps Coffee any any other purchase anyone vaguely looking at the thing will buy over the next 1000 years.. then adding in inflation.. before anouncing the 5 5 SSN-AUKUS subs its buying will cost close to 250 billion pounds… then wondering why the Aus population loss their shit about defence spending and AUKUS cus their government essentially tells them each sub will cost 50 billion pounds… I would loss my rage as well.
I don’t know how you arrive at the notion that the Australian population ‘are losing their shit’ about defence spending????
The latest Lowy Institute poll in 2025 reports that 51% of Australians (71% over 60 years old) actually support increased defence spending, 37% think the current spending of around 2% GDP is about right. Only 10% were concerned it was too high or misspent.
Hardly indicative of some great public groundswell and outrage about defence spending. Chineses ships circumnavigating the country has a way of concentrating the public’s mind.
Mate some of the Australian population are.. i have had a lot of interesting conversations about 300 billion pound submarines and what they could get for that.. it’s not so much an anti defence stance they have been taking but an anti SSN stance because of the published cost.. which is not the cost.
So it’s how much they think the government is spaffing on specific projects.. I’ve had a few people tell me 300 billion is insane when you can pick up an electric boat for a billion… completely missing the point of how their own government is totting up the cost of the programme.. so making it impossible to compare with what other countries have paid.. just look at boxer.. the Australian government says it’s paid 3 times more per boxer than the UK government…
But it is precisely the real and actual cost to the taxpayer of acquisition and operation of a defence platform.
For many years Australia operated the same kind of simplistic defence costing model the UK seems to operate. The exact same costing model that has delivered ‘capability gap’ after ‘capability gap’ to the UK armed forces (retirement of Harrier and scrapping of carriers before QE, Nimrod, E3 sentry…) or loss of capability without replacement (Warrior IFV, AS90…) or the placing in reserve or early retirement of RN ships or loss of actual capability (Albion, Bulwark, Argus…) or project blowouts and mismanagement (Ajax…) Similarly the running down of defence bases and parlous state of housing for troops all stem from an unrealistic view of what it actually costs to run a defence force and kicking the budgetary can down the road.
Australia has stopped doing that and simplistic comparisons between countries costings (apples and oranges) especially by some media outlets looking for a sensationalist headline doesn’t help.
‘A few people’ that you might have spoken to or chatted with online does not constitute the view of the bulk of the Australian population.
Yes but it’s not the true cost because it includes inflation.. and that means it’s a piece of fiction.. because that 300billion is not the real cost in today’s money it’s an indicative figure of future inflation and what a dollar is in 30 years.. all assessments should be made in present day spending power.. so yes give a full life cost but give it as a meaningfully indicative figure of what it means in today’s dollars or pounds.. because an indicative figure made up of dollars 30 years in the future that have no value meaning in the present world is not helpful unless your an economist.
‘All assessments should be made in present day spending power’ Why?
The economists (funny thing is they are in charge of budgets and forecasting) in the the Australian Government Treasury have chosen (based on the First Principles Review in 2015 and subsequent reviews by the ANAO) to use Capability Lifecycle Framework (including build cost, facilities, workforce, sustainment…). It’s a different model and like most things having pros (planning for life of type funding) and cons (public misconceptions).
The Pentagon actually uses a similar (even more rigorous) model known as Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Total Ownership Cost (TOC).
Maybe the UK is the odd one out.
Thing is the departments are not actually short of spending money. Budgets were and are historically high in most departments – money is just spent quite badly.
A lot of this is down to Doris’ crowd pleaser spending splurges which bloated out the public sector and entrenched high headcount’s which are hard to reverse.
Desperate to bring back votes but I fear not only will that not happen but that priority will, particularly in defence but not exclusively so. the money that’s needed simply won’t be found. The economy generally needs a serious injection to inspire longer term growth but like defence the delays in any apparent perceptive benefit where the public is concerned is thus in desperate Govt thinking secondary to more headline and immediately influential pronouncements even where much of the money is effectively wasted or more bribe than good policy for Britain.
DIP published THIS YEAR! What a waste of words.
This is actually a softening of the government position, as previously IIRC they had said there were ‘no plans’ to procure Nightfall for our own use.
TJ,
Hmmm 🤔, … perhaps the public drama involved in the process of “Waiting for the DIP,” is in reality the post-modern update of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” written, directed, acted and produced by members of HMG? 😉
The answer is no then.
O/T but what are Prince Harry and Meghan doing in Jordan? Selling RBSL Challenger refurbishment services perhaps?
Yawn.
What a way to run the defence of the realm.
Yet no other Dept has to publish an ‘investment plan’ money is thrown at the NHS ( double the budget but no improvement in service since 2010)HO can spunk £Bs on illegals,FO can pay to give away sovereign territory,mad Ed snaps his fingers and £Bs end up at GB energy!It really is bonkers!!
And no other Dept is limited to a specific % of GDP. There is a good argument, and a serious wake up call to voters, if spending on the NHS or on benefits was limited to a fixed % of GDP.
Makes sense, who would buy initial version without seeing it in action from a country that never developed such weapons?
Every unit we buy for ourselves is one redirected from Ukraine where they can produce baby be fired as fast as they are delivered. Right now, send them to Ukraine I think
Yes, but we need to learn to use them, infrastructure needs to be put in place, training pipelines. Even if we only announced the start of creating, in time, an embryonic Regiment for the RA with a handful of launchers.
Even that, minimal as it is compared to buying thousands, is missing.
They mean NO.
The answer to Defence questions by Starmers clown show government will always be NO.
Should be re-named “Shortfall”.
Or Skyfall? As what’s going to happen to this government, sooner or later.
Accept politicians lie. They do nothing but lie. Then realize how really fooked we are as a country. We won’t need to worry about external enemies. We have enough enemies at home.
Now now….don’t be “racist” for caring about one’s culture, identity, and people….
Indeed.
Forthcoming defence investment paper… It doesn’t seem to be that forthcoming!!!
Well it missed its first coming, then its second coming even its third coming…. Only one more coming and going to go.
Waiting for the publication of the DIP (nearly 6 months late already) has become the standard Government response to avoid the answering of defence-related questions or committing to any projects. All I can say is that the content must be bloody awful. So many projects are falling apart through the lack of decisions: T26 schedule, medium helicopter, RAF advanced jet trainer, even Tempest / GCAP.
So first of all they hid behind the SDR and now they hide behind the defence procurement plan which is always coming but never arrives.
Starmer plays the warrior leader in the international stage with a with.a thickness of brass neck measured with a meter rule. Urging other to rearm while we do SFA.
And they still maim the barbarians are heading for the gate.
My frustration. Is at boiling point. Who is the Prime minister Starmer or Reeves .
Would do better to change the Government or organise a coalition ASAP. Get the Unions on side and Starmer is toast. We could see this in fact with a split between various Unions. Those producing things for Defence v those in the NHS and Benefits etc.