Labour MP Calvin Bailey has warned that NATO must fundamentally shift its mindset and accelerate defence industrial mobilisation, following a Defence Select Committee visit to Washington.
Bailey, who represents Leyton and Wanstead and sits on the Defence Select Committee, published a thread summarising key messages delivered by senior U.S. defence officials during meetings with committee members, industry figures, and Armed Services Committee representatives.
1/7 Just returned from a week in Washington with the Defence Select Committee, meeting senior U.S. DOD officials, Armed Forces Ctte members and industry leaders. Here’s a short thread on what we heard — and why the UK’s Chagos Islands agreement is being held up as a model:
— Calvin Bailey MBE MP (@CalvinBailey) May 24, 2025
“The U.S. cannot continue to ‘spend its way out’ of threats,” he wrote. “Europe must shoulder more of the conventional burden — especially on Ukraine.”
The visit underlined a growing consensus in Washington that NATO allies must match U.S. efforts on conventional defence, particularly in Eastern Europe. Bailey relayed that U.S. officials were direct in urging Europe to outspend America in Ukraine-related support, describing such investment as a test of long-term political resolve.
Among the key themes was the need for a fundamental shift in how NATO operates and procures equipment. Bailey called for a “factory reset” in mindset, urgency, and defence industrial policy across the Alliance. He noted that the U.S. is investing $1 billion into agile defence technology and is open to collaboration — but only with partners able to reform “sclerotic procurement systems.”
“Innovation is central,” he said, warning that outdated acquisition models risk excluding allies from key partnerships.
The thread also touched on the strategic relevance of the UK’s agreement with Mauritius and the U.S. over the Chagos Islands. Bailey described the deal as an exemplar of how international law can serve national security objectives.
“The UK delivered a deal that strengthened global legal norms — and our strategic credibility,” he quoted one U.S. official as saying. “It means the UK can talk with moral authority.”
Bailey’s summary suggests the U.S. is placing increasing pressure on European allies to modernise, invest, and adapt at pace — with legal frameworks and innovation now viewed as central to long-term deterrence.
I would love to hear from those opposed to the Diego Garcia deal how they would plan to stop Chinese warships sailing right up to the base. Legally they would be entitled to just as we sail right up next to Chinese island bases in the South China Sea.
It would be almost impossible to operate the base with Chinese warships close to shore and short of sinking them and starting world war three there would not be a thing we could do about it.
That’s the American’s problem, not ours. Why should we shell out nearly 200m a year for a base we don’t use? That money should go straight to bolstering our own defence.
It’s £100 million a year and we use it as well especially for intelligence gathering.
The US pays most of the operating costs and we are responsible for the Sovereignty bit.
France pays $87 million a year for a small base at Djibouti so £100 million for a large sovereign base at Diego Garcia is very reasonable.
It’s £165m for the first 3 years, going down to £120m after. There’s also a one off £40m for Chagossians and a £45m a year for a Mauritian development fund.
We only have a few dozen personnel there so it’s hard to imagine any major UK led intelligence gathering. We should be cutting back on these unnecessary expenditures and projects and fund actual hard power.
Right so that’s not £200 million per year then is it.
“We use it for intelligence gathering”
That, has never been established. There is a GPS link there, and parts of the USN Ocean surveillance system.
Plus USN prepositioned kit and lots of USAF stuff.
The UK maintains a RN Naval Party.
Window dressing.
If we “use it” it’s part of the UKUSA agreement, more commonly known as 5 eyes. Or for ships and aircraft in transit.
I doubt we have any actual assets there in the intelligence area.
We do indeed have considerable military intell and GCHQ assets, but they’re elsewhere.
France pays 87 million? That interesting, didn’t know that.
I didn’t know France pays that much either until today, Professor Michael Clark shared it on LBC. He was stating GCHQ uses DG for intel as well.
No idea if it’s us or the USA collecting the actual signals but HMG seems to be most concerned about satellite control from the island.
There has been historic reports (911 and Al Qaeda spring to mind) and some data in the past on signals intercepts by British satellites over the Indian Ocean. This may be undisclosed SKYNET payloads or US satellites under UK control but there is likely more to DG than any of us is aware.
The US, UK and Indian governments all seem to think this is a good idea.
Yes, I think there is a SGS there, Satellite Ground Station.
It’s quite possible, yes. I heard of some stuff, not officially admitted.
And if America shared that attitude…
Totally agree. Possession is 9/10ths of the law. We should have kept it and not paid or left it with the Americans, if they wanted it. The reported £30bn on the front page of the Telegraph is a ridiculous sum of money to pay for it. Not to mention the effect it must on areas like the Falklands. Government reassurances mean nothing become meaningless. As for hanging onto it, well others seem to hang onto territory far bigger than this chunk of coral without too much difficulty.
We do use it, I spent many happy days and weeks there on SSN’s.
There is a 24 mile exclusion zone built into the agreement.
Yes but without the agreement there would be no exclusion zone. The UK would be in the same legal status as China in the SCS which both the UK and USA both frequently challenge with freedom of navigation patrols.
Except there is an exclusion zone that is part of the agreement and can be enforced. By handing the islands back to Mauritius we are now morally and legally in the right as far as internation relations and law are concerned – completely different to the SCS where China is at odds with all it’s neighbours.
I think that’s Jim’s point with the agreement there is a 24mile exclusion zone, if we had not signed the deal..it would actually be worse than the SCS because the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) had a pretty reasonable chance at some point soon of making a binding judgment that all the seas around the chagos islands were Mauritius national waters..in which case they could invite chine to go where they would like and to essentially accuse the US and UK of breaching their sovereignty…which if the was a binding judgement in law we would be..this deal sidesteps the whole issue…
Yes exactly. The agreement means we can enforce the exclusion zone.
And there was a 200 mile zone around the Falklands in 82.
24 seems rather ridiculous given the abilities of aerial ISTAR assets.
Yes which we enforced by sinking Argentine warships.
We are not going to do that against a Chinese warship doing a Freedom of Navigation patrol in water internationally recognising as Mauritius.
The Falklands was a different case – it was an active war zone. I have to nail my colours to the mast and agree with handing the islands to Mauritius. The area will be officially and legally belonging to Mauritius with no ambiguities that can be exploited.
So the deal means we (or in reality the Americans) can stop them? We can now sink them as a result of it? Either way it could start WW3 or am I missing your point?
What concerns me about thus deal is that the long running controversy was about removing the islanders but has ended with no actual consideration for what they wanted or their voice. They are now effectively being told they are Mauritian rather than British (who don’t realistically give a damn about them) which many have said they don’t want. Effectively they are just being transferred from one colonial power to another, one which has no historical rights to the islands at all, out of a sense of it being convenient and makes us superficially look better to Worlds shrills who in reality will just find the next opportunity to find a stick to beat us with in World politics.
I think it’s all going to kick off big time in NATO pretty soon.. the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague is going to be “BIG” “MASSIVE “ as trump would say. Watch out for the 24-25th June because I’m betting it’s going to be the biggest geostrategic moment since the end of the Cold War… because I think it will be the official starting gun of the west admitting it’s in a new Cold War.
There is clever money suggesting that NATO will be moving to a fudged 5% GDP spending floor for 2032, this will be to keep the US heavy in Europe until 2032. The fudge will be that 3.5% needs to be hard spend on direct military power, then a further 1.5% can be spent on other security related areas, like donating to ukriane or other allies or building up and investing in Military industrial complex infrastructure. But the talk is that Trump will be getting his 5% ( Simply put it looks like the rest of NATO does think he will walk if they don’t give it to him).
I think this is why the publication date of SDR has disappeared into the mists, the government is not publishing a 2.5% GDP by 2030 defence review, when it clearly knows NATO is moving up well beyond that. I suspect there is a lot of revisions going on. I also think it’s why we keep getting really odd press release about left field things like 2000km+ medium range ballistic Missiles.. and snippets like the KRH will be keeping their MBTs.
Fingers crossed.
Two big problems. UK is borrowing @4.8% of GDP and there are huge pressures on public expenditure. It’s not easy to see how a big uplift in defence budget could be paid for. Second, even if the money is somehow made available, how quickly could it deliver anything ? We have a number of programmes with IOC in the late 2020s, early 2030s. In particular, AUKUS and Tempest will need substantial funding for years.
Perhaps the most likely outcome will be an extension across all the services of the army’s push for greater lethality. But I doubt that we will see any increase in platform or personnel numbers .
Date wise it’s 3.5% by 32 present plan is to move to 2.5% for 27 .. so if they uplift by .2% per year by 2032 they will be their.. the further 1.5% can be security aligned.. so essentially industrial investment.. the government has already changed the rules on the 28 billion nation wealth fund to all defence industries to bid for it.. I essentially expect this entire fund to be thrown into defence industrial capability development… I think labour is going to “stay” labour by essentially going Tonto on the military industrial complex. But I don’t think ENATO has a choice.. they have pretty much decided that Russia is “ going to war with the west” as is China and that unless they do something big the US is walking away.
Actually our situation looks pretty tame compared to France, Japan and the US all with frightening levels of overspending GDP per capita. Not that I am encouraging us to match them.
Japan is different. Most debt is held by Japanese people who are assiduous savers. France faces big problems with plans to cut public expenditure unlikely to be passed and likely to be resisted. UK has similar problems and if the rumours about reversing previous benefit cuts are true, will find it even harder to increase the defence budget. A rise from 2.5% to 3.5% of GDP, a 40% increase would cost >£24b a year. I just don’t see it happening.
Japan is not really different to be honest its debt burden is creating massive issues.. its economy is sluggish, its housing market insane ( you buy a house knowing it will become worthless) and its public spending is insanely out of control and profligate.
Their priminister has come out and said just this week they are in deep infact he specifically stated that Japans financial outlook is worse than that of Greece…
Absolutely agree, ENATO will be on a trajectory toward spending 5% of GDP across all defence related activities by 2032, at least until January 2029. Then, depending upon the composition of next US administration, a renegotiation of the defence spending goal and/or timeline may commence. Until then, “Alea iacta est.” The final version of the 2025 SDR report could prove to be quite interesting.
Ok just humour me here. It’s over 1200 miles from Diego Garcia to Mauritius. Its about 700 miles between Madagascar and Mauritius.
So how does Diego Garcia belong to Mauritius, when Madagascar does not own Mauritius, which is closer?
Shhhhh. The Falklands 🤫
eeeeek
Argentina never administered the Falklands so it has no claim.
It was administered by the French along with Mauritius ( then by us from Mauritius) and at the time of independence we paid Mauritius for it under agreement to return it to them one day when finished with it.
It’s all down to the choices made by the British government in 1971.
Simples Tom this so called de-colonisation is almost exclusively based on colonial logic and convenience ironically. The French and later the British, when we acquired the islands (Mauritius and by default the Chagos) simply administered the latter from Mauritius. The. Chagos were unpopulated until the French introduced slave/indentured labour to the islands to run plantations there, ie the people who are deemed the ‘indigenous’ former residents. Of course by the same logic the Seychelles should be part of Mauritius too as that equally was run from Mauritius in colonial times. The only other flimsy argument was that Mauritian fisherman used to fish off their shores which means we should reclaim Newfoundland I presume and would fuel spurious claims from dodgy regimes all around the World. China would claim half the Pacific using the same logic. So yup all the coincidence of colonial history the powers that be are claiming they are trying to reverse.
NATO needs to get much smarter as we can’t all just spend more on the same.
Each country should be allocated to provide a specific capability they have to provide for the alliance. Not just whittle it away on more of the same duplication.
Germany: electronic warfare aircraft and tankers for example
Britain+ France carrier strike, nuclear deterrent.
Netherlands amphibious landing and mine clearance
Just some examples
The logic makes sense and indeed has been toyed with mainly between Europe and the US but that is presuming that everyone in NATO would be fighting in any given conflict (let alone on the same side). The ‘Coalition of the willing’ tends to point to the complexities there. Indeed the European reliance on the US to provide important elements Space, satellite and intelligence in particular is now being seen as a weakness in Europe being able to co front the Russians alone. Presently thus has led to the US having us under their control and reliance to a great degree the result of which has only encouraged the complacency in Europeans self defence that the US now vehemently complains about, a self supporting vicious circle of compliance and complacency.
I think it would be better (but with historical problems of its own) for Europe to cooperate in complimentary design and production of important platforms be it tanks, anti aircraft systems ships and satellite systems and thus reduce costs and encourage inter operability and bulk orders. As I say this so far hasn’t been the greatest success what with National protest give policies but this new urgency seems at least to have encouraged it on certain levels what with Britain forming relationships with Poland, German and France one to one efforts seem to have been more successful than multi national efforts so far. The FREMM seems to have been a great example of this once Britain left it but that just shows the innate problems of coming to common agreements between multiple Countries in important defence projects of the type Europe needs to foster if we are to compete with the US and others.
Calvin Bailey MP is wrong: ENATO contributes far more to Ukraine than the USA. See worldpopulationreviewdotcom, since and includimg 2023.
Last time I totalled up the availiable figures the results were:
USA just slightly over 50% of military aid;
ENato approx 60% of economic aid;
So ENato slightly ahead overall.
Then you have taking in almost 10mil Ukrainian refugees which is almost wholly an EU thing.
And now the USA is stabbing them in the back.