The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that decisions on shifting defence procurement from the United States to the UK will be shaped by the ongoing Strategic Defence Review (SDR), currently under development.
Responding to a written question from Martin Wrigley MP (Liberal Democrat – Newton Abbot), Defence Minister Maria Eagle stated that “the Strategic Defence Review will guide the Ministry of Defence’s future investment priorities and will also shape the Defence Industrial Strategy.”
Wrigley had asked whether any assessment had been made on how much US defence procurement could be repatriated to the UK, referencing a previous answer on transatlantic supply chains.
Eagle emphasised the value of international collaboration, noting that “to support the UK’s Armed Forces we procure a diverse range of systems both domestically and in collaboration with our international allies and partners.”
She added that the United States remains “the United Kingdom’s primary defence and security ally,” highlighting “robust working partnerships in the areas of intelligence, nuclear, science and technology, and operations.”
The response stops short of committing to any reduction in US-sourced procurement but places the issue within the broader context of the SDR’s goals, including increasing UK industrial resilience and autonomy where possible.
Largely pointless these questions, clearly the UK has to continue stating the tiered old trope of the US remains our most important blah blah blah.
Fact is the Uk has the resources and capabilities to be either self sufficient or lead developer in most weapons programs and we should not allow ourselves to ever be dependent on any country for basic defence requirements like nuclear deterrent and UK air defence. Our relationship with the USA is far too close and due to the quirks of its constitution and make up the USA is too unstable a country to base so many defence assumptions on.
Morning.
Agreed. It’s the ongoing programs that are the issue. I’ve no problem with weening us off any future orders of kit we don’t currently have.
New Chinooks, and current C17, TLAM as examples.
Capabilities we need now.
The intell hot potato I’ve referenced several times I don’t even want to think about.
I am making a good salary from home $4580-$5240/week , which is amazing under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now its my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone,
Here is I started_______ 𝐖𝐖𝐖.𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝟏.𝐂𝐎𝐌
Although you are right and we should be able to provide ourselves with the basics of kit there is a lot of advantage of us using machinery that our allies produce. For starters it means a higher level of interoperability but also it means that the R&D process is a lot cheaper. In addition the Americans make good kit. We could have had a dozen more additional helicopters if we had chosen to go with black hawk or sea stallions rather than developing the Merlin. The fact is designing something from scratch, like Ajax, is an incredibly costly exercise. Whereas building something on licence is much cheaper plus having the ability to fall back on technical expertise of our closest allies is also useful.
It is my opinion that when it comes to long term equipment like warplanes, helicopters, tanks, IFVs etc then using a close allies (ie USA, Germany, France is never a bad idea) but being able to make the extra items ourselves including munitions, parts, rations, weapons etc is the part where we make the biggest stand for independence,
Well said Jim👌
Britain is being left behind whilst everyone else has woken up and racing ahead…
And we don’t need the equipment of US nor do we need GUCCI gear
We have plenty of domestic and European options and should make plans to integrate better with other European military procurements
We do need to be flexible and not restricted to any one country
This “special relationship” blah blah blah rhetoric is over
The most worrying thing I have heard this week is that Canada turning to Gripens over F-35s could be s uppered by the US because it uses US engines and thus the US will block it and it has also threatened Europe over helping Canada resist US Imperialist ambitions using economic pressure. This is getting serious beyond contemplation. I mean it’s highlighted by Vance claiming they need Greenland to resist Russian expansionism while claiming that in Ukraine Russia can be relied upon as not being. Totally at odds leaving only one consistent thread, the idea of resource exploitation and power play.
John, you say we don’t need GUCCI gear, but very small armed forces have to have very high quality, force-multiplying equipment to offset the lack of quantity.
But not everything needs to be gold-plated and bespoke.
In reality that was a non answer and I’m not really sure what is expected. HMG is in the middle of profoundly different negotiations on a trade deal with the US that will have significant geopolitical and economic impact on the UK. At this time questions like that from parliament are potentially dangerous to the UKs interest just by asking them. Just Sometimes it is the duty of MPs to not challenge HMG publicly until a key negotiation have resolved.
Geez if things are that fragile it’s even worse than I feared, nothing wrong with the question being asked, it’s up to the Govt if and how the answer it or how cryptically they frame it. To be honest as so many have argued showing weakness and compliance to Trump just brings him back for more so a balance has to be struck and questions like this can gain a taste of how the wind is blowing. It’s important for us all as neither too compliant or too hostile will be best for Britain.
Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with asking questions it’s their jobs but in the last few days of an active negotiation it’s utterly pointless self licking lollipop stuff at best and at worst if the people you are negotiating with are as thin skinned and media messenging obsessing as the trump administration it could do real damage.
This is common sense although we have known this for years home grown tech is better
Common sense suggests even if the decision was made to cut buying from the US it would not be explicitly announced. Instead individual orders will go elsewhere as and when they were placed. By the time the penny dropped with the tangerine turd we’d be well down the line of cutting our reliance on the US so any belated tantrum had minimal impact.
Whilst I would love us to be able to tell him publicly to go do one the reality is we can’t and any divorce needs to be done quietly behind the scenes. I just hope people are quietly working on this!
(New Me) Spot on a very sensible approach, we don’t have to advertise it but we do need to operate such policies where feasible either uk or other foreign partners. The latest US/Japan hostility offers new possibilities the Japanese don’t like slights and though they may smile they will turn the screw behind the scenes and Trump is too dumb to understand consequences. Poor old Lo kneed Martin are already having to cover his ass by offering new sweeteners to Canada, plenty more to come I suspect.
We shouldn’t have sold our steel making , power generation , ship building to Indian, Chinese, french or Spanish or other nations companies either. Dependence on what is needed to fight a war is as bad as dependency on weapons. Measures should be taken to secure critical capabilities by nationalisation and laws to stop any one party in a parliament reversing that. Laws should prevent restrictive PFIs like airtanker.
Cooperation and shared projects are find but need to be ITAR free.
We “might”be able to put Meteor of Spear on F35B after 2033. That isn’t good enough. At least this time there has been no attempt by the US to shut down Tempest…yet. maybe so if the Australians or Canadians fancied switching from US dominance..
Open up a new royal ordnance set of factories, ex car plants if need be. Secure the ability to build vehicles, cruise missiles and drones and pay to keep that capability.
Interestingly enough the DT is reporting that the govt is considering using the anti- terror laws to nationalise British Steel; talk with its Chinese owner having broken down.
Why would you need anti-terrorism laws? To renationalise the entire steel industry, you expect an Act of Parliament, but for one company, you’d just negotiate it, wouldn’t you? I think that’s how Sheffield Forgemasters was nationalised.
No idea; maybe the Chinese are not up for negotiating, maybe the compensation is too big, maybe the govt is just playing hardball. All above my pay grade. But Scunthorpe is the last remaining plant in the UK capable of producing virgin steel….iconic and strategic. This is where Milliband’s net zero meets Trump tariff reality.
SFM was a very amicable and mutually beneficial Nationalisation as it involved a company and management team who were / are U.K experts and committed to the long term security of their industry.
The company was in the odd situation where they have a unique manufacturing facility with a very full domestic and export order book but unable to raise the finance to modernise. And as some of their unique product lines are of National and International Strategic importance a deal just had to happen.
Odd really that a private company negotiated a harmonious Nationalisation with a Conservative Government and both parties were as proud as punch of the outcome.
Pretty much agree with all of that.
Interesting that all that prized US investment as it was once boasted about is now scarily making us a client State which totally removes our self will in ways the EU never could. Tell that to the average voter mind. (By the way I was neither pro/anti on the vote for those who wish to call me a remainer just a realist)
We should be building a Finex (Austrian/Korean) technology steelmaking plant to replace the old ones in Scunthorpe.
Whilst Meteor in particular is happening and in defence terms soon and will turn our F35B into a pretty capable fleet defence fighter at the top end of AAW I just can’t get that excited about SPEAR . I haven’t seen any evidence that we have even progressed to flying an inert load on our B’s let alone practised weapons release. Both are however European weapon systems so I agree your point. As regards F35 IMHO what we do need to do is put all our effort into
JSM. It is a European weapon already in service on Norwegian , Australian and even USAF F35 so the software is there now, USMC have flown it albeit externally on the B. Without JSM we have ended up with a pretty looking CSG which apart from maybe one SSN (if available) doesn’t actually have the ability to sink any ships . JSM for UK F35 is a no brainer to me.
If France can do, so should we. Defence is the primary duty of government, including protecting ourselves against ‘friends’.
To be honest I pretty much think the Neoliberal “ free market” world is dead.. we are now back to the pre thatcher/Reagan world of essentially mercantilism. If the EU survives as a free market entity it may be possible for the UK to remain a free market economy if we essentially join the customs union.. but I have my doubts that that EU will survive that and will instead be forced into mercantilism as well as become essentially a cohesive federal state with tax raising powers an central military and foreign policy.
The simple reality is the UK cannot remain a free market Ecconomy when 70% of the worlds wealth will be locked away in mercantile economies ( EU, US and China ).. it will probably have to become a mercantile economy and align with one of the big three blocks..hard to stomach but I think it’s now very likely.
To but it in context of how bad this is, Essentially china and Russia have won the most difficult hurdle in their wars with with the west, they have destroyed our unified free trade system that made the west so dominant economically and they have destroyed western military and geopolitical unity… the first stages of any war are political warfare to destroy an enemies will, unity and power base.. only then do you engage in kinetic warfare after you ramp up the political warfare to a sub kinetic level ( sabotage and deniable kinetic operations ).
On the present trajectory I expect the US to be fighting china in the pacific possibly as soon as 2027, that will go on for years and years..with china simply working on the assumption of stacking pain on the US until it gives up and Russia within a couple of years of the Ukraine war ending to destabilise a Baltic state with sub kinetic operations before invading it on the pretext of supporting the new pro Russian government that’s trying to overthrow the democratic government and seeing what the ex NATO European nations do ( because I expect NATO if it’s not collapsed before to collapse at that point).
I’m not an expert but, hoping for a better alternative outcome, the UK might lead Europe in a transition to the new economic models propounded by economists like Maria Mazzucato, in which the state and the market become partners in optimising the stability and prosperity of the country. As I understand it, these models do not consider that the volume of trade is limited but rather that we need to respect the sustainability of the earth’s resources.
Hi Paul I agree, but these models are still essentially mercantile in nature, just a sort of enlighten mercantilism, essentially though they are not Neoliberal free market economies..essentially I now think for good or bad that model is dead.
The Georgians and Victorians ran a Mercantile economy. If anything, one could say the British Empire was a direct product of Georgian and Victorian Mercantilism. The merchants who first set out to the far corners of the globe did so for trade. Through the East India Company and later the British Military, Mercantilism expanded to the level that if 1876 was today, the trade surplus would still be £5 out for every £1 in. Capitalism entered our minds post 1945 and only because Churchill was such an advocate of the American system and we needed to rebuild. The Marshall Plan wouldn’t allow the UK to continue in the way we did pre-1938.
Well the UK got its foot in the door with the Pacific & that region has a greater share of global trade than either Europe or USA.
Yeah but the Pacific is a very long way away and the Chinese and other Asian economic powers make very good stuff of their own. Any expansion of trade that does happen will very much be one way. Even as regards the old Commonwealth alliances if which I am a very big fan again I can’t see much both ways trade. New Zealand for example won’t be importing very many UK sheep. Europe however is a huge and vibrant market right on our doorstep and with which we are politically and culturally very much aligned, in fact if recent events are anything to go by pretty much have the lead.
The World is bigger than Europe.
It is tempting to tell the USA to go take a hike and switch to an anyone-but-USA procurement policy. The reality is that we can’t easily do so, we are too intertwined with their high-end kit and capabilities and have lost too much of our manufacturing base to compete in many areas.
Defence nuclear, AUKUS, Poseidon, Wedgetail, Rivet Joint, Shadow, GMLRS, MQ9b Protector UAV, satellites and loads of missiles and other tech are supplied by the US. To that list, add Apache and F-35. It would take decades to develop, manufacture,/joint manufacture or buy from non-US OEMs, even if we had the mega budget to do so. The French route of protecting their own military manufacturing.base and eschewing US kit suddenly looks very smart.
Our inclusion in 5 Eyes intelligence sharing is also critical and we cannot afford to lose that.
We do need to plan a long-term switch away from dependence on US equipment, but we can’t afford to poke the bear for the forseeable future. Any such divestment needs to be done quietly and gradually. No.sizeable new orders for US kit from now on, though we are effectively stuck with the expected order for a further 26 F-35s. We need to start to tie up with the big EU defence programmes on the drawing board and get a piece of the action.
The route through the immediate Trump threat is a diplomatic one, trying to agree a limited trade deal that heads off the threat of ruinous tariffs. We have to bite our tongue, be very compliant with Trump’s diktat and try to gently nudge him in the right direction ref tariffs, Ukraine. Greenland and whatever next
Agree with most of that but not sure compliance with Trump gives you any influence at all, he just exploits you more Canada and Me ico have learned that the hard way, Vance’s talk pretty much demonstrates that contemptuous approach, and Trumps skin deep ‘love’ of Britain at best a fractional distraction to the overall plan. Only a non US unified front will show the wider US just how weak they truly are and weaken Trumps stance accordingly, his and especially ially Musks popularity are sinking but if we are disunited he will still win if he can suppress popular internal opposition and we all become client States he and whoever follows (he is already trying to ensure his legacy prevails through dictats internally weakening that opposition) will dissect us all year on year till we can no longe4 unite against him just as he is trying to do internally. This New World Order leaves us only as slaves, just listen to Peter Tiel talk about even Americans having no real role in Governance of the new Oligarchy they are building let alone outsiders.
I would rather order 14 F-35B & 12 tranche 4 Typhoon.
Bottom line is that the whilst the UK likely has the ability to develop the capability (carefully phrased) to make most defense equipment doing so is going to be expensive, the UK already manages to be incredibly inefficient with defense spending and is not spending anymore tham it has been (despite the rhetoric) so whilst Europe seems to be actively progressing with domestic capacity and capability (likely to be dominated by France/Germany) Britain is either going to have to patch up the mess left by Brexit (likely to need concessions elsewhere and be expensive) or stay with the US and/or spend an awful lot more….
The World is bigger than either USA or Europe. South Korea for example. Even South Africa if we get in quick before it collapses. Then there is Brazil , India, Japan, etc.
The sell off of defence manufacturing to the private sector and the consolidation of smaller companies into the hands of a couple of large global companies has resulted in the closure of a lot of capabilities. All our new naval guns are now made abroad, we have no small arms manufacturers that can build at scale and we are reliant on Germany for armoured vehicle upgrades and new models.
Rebuilding lost capabilities is going to be difficult and expensive. With the exception of Germany with its large industrial sector, other European countries have sustained defence manufacturing largely through state ownership or control. Our own orders are too small to expect the private sector to maintain capacity through years of famine. Export markets have disappeared as countries that routinely bought British equipment now make their own.
For small volume high cost assets, we either buy American or join multi lateral partnerships.
But we should aim to regenerate the ability to design and build the more basic equipment types- artillery, AFVs, small arms.
Maybe start smaller? make the uniforms, gloves, helmets, boots, socks, shirts etc, belts buckles & all PPE. That will create uk jobs & save billions £ in spending on there things abroad, taxes generated will also fund an expansion in small arms manufacture & developments in other more exotic future weapons.
This will also create uk jobs.
UKDJ sometimes seems to read a lot, perhaps too much, into bland answers to parliamentary questions.