The UK has accelerated £200 million in defence funding to prepare its armed forces for potential deployment to Ukraine as part of a Multinational Force, according to the government.
The funding, announced by Defence Secretary John Healey during a visit to Ukraine, is intended to equip UK forces for possible participation in the Multinational Force for Ukraine following a declaration of intent signed this week by the UK, France and Ukraine. That declaration confirmed that British and French troops would deploy in the event of a peace agreement.
According to the Ministry of Defence, the £200 million allocation will be spent during the current year on preparing forces for deployment, including upgrades to vehicles and communications systems, new counter-drone protection and additional force protection equipment. The department said the spending is being drawn from the core defence budget.
Healey said the move was intended to ensure the UK is ready to lead the multinational force if required. “As we approach the fifth year of Putin’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainians continue to fight with huge courage – civilians and military alike,” he said. “We are surging investment into our preparations, ensuring that Britain’s Armed Forces are ready to deploy, and lead, the Multinational Force Ukraine, because a secure Ukraine means a secure UK.”
The Defence Secretary also said the UK would continue to support Ukraine’s current fight while preparing for a possible post-conflict security role. “As we look towards a potential peace deal, we continue to step up for Ukraine in the fight today – strengthening its air defences while backing British industry, jobs and innovation at home,” he added.
During meetings in Kyiv with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal, Healey discussed military planning for the Multinational Force, alongside the most senior UK general assigned to the force’s headquarters, which the government says is already operational in Paris.
Healey also confirmed that production of British-built Octopus interceptor drones would begin this month. According to the Ministry of Defence, the system is designed to counter Shahed-style drones and has been developed by Ukrainian engineers and refined by British industry. The government says the interceptors are low-cost, designed for mass manufacture and updated frequently using frontline battlefield data.
The MOD stated that the UK aims to produce thousands of Octopus drones per month, with each interceptor costing less than ten percent of the drone it is intended to destroy. The programme forms part of a wider £600 million UK investment in air defence for Ukraine this year, within a total £4.5 billion package of military support.
According to the government, the initiative also supports domestic defence manufacturing and high-skilled jobs, with live battlefield data feeding directly into UK production lines under the UK–Ukraine 100-Year Partnership.
Bulldog mk4 with RWS incoming!
Spend money on the British armed forces, order some frigate/aircraft/tanks once and for all, like other European countries are doing, instead of throwing everything away on Ukraine. We need 20,000 more ground troops; there are nearly no auxiliaries and few amphibious ships For the Royal Navy, there are barely 140 fighter jets and 100 tanks. If it isn’t treason, it’s pretty close.
If we order some more frigates today – and I’d love to have more than are currently planned, let alone more than the pitiful remnant we have at the moment – how soon do you think they would be ready for service?
Suggest you read the article, the £200 million is literally being spent on upgrading British forces to fight.
Chicken feed. Do we officially know what forces? I’ve an idea, given my knowledge of the Army and what’s even remotely available.
A chance to show off Boxer. An announcement of IOC is overdue.
I’d be surprised mate.
Not enough to go around 7500 troops.
Foxhound?
Feasible mate. They’re in (relatively) good shape and have been shown with RWS / anti-air turrets.
Unless Putin buckles completely these troops will not be going anywhere near Ukraine. But hey they actually get some kit upgrades so we can’t complain!
I think we need to “Own Greenland” and Iceland to help Canada personally.
Now then, about this £28,000,000,000 black hole 🤔 Surely Greenlands “Rare Earths” would make it pay for Itself ?
But SDR was fully funded because I distinctly remember our PM say, so why the delay in publishing the DIP.
Blaming the previous clowns is no excuse but the fault largely lies with the Senior Civil Servant leadership in the MOD who have just continued to show a level of incompetence in managing the budget that is just mind blowing. You want reform then start with them because they will move between departments, have excellent pay, great pensions and then receive knighthoods etc in reward for this mess.
So since the SDR was done our biggest ally started threatening to invade NATO territory and we just found out the most expensive acquisition program in British army history doesn’t work and we won’t know for several months if it needs scrapping.
To be honest I am puzzling to reconcile numbers: there are press reports of a DIP ‘shortfall’ of £28b versus the SDR over the next 4 years. Ajax is what, £5-6b? I find it difficult to understand how such a big ‘shortfall’ can suddenly magically appear weeks before publication of the DIP.
The previous Black Hole was £19 Billion (from memory) but many Billions were then found to help fill it. Now we have this £28 Billion hole.
Sack the entire Accounting Team for a start, they obviously haven’t a clue.
Then Let’s see a proper breakdown of where the mony Is spent/lost.
Unless we have secretly been building up the armed forces and all the negative news is just a front ?
I think you might have spotted what’s happening. Starmer’s behaviour looks like that of a teacher who has looked at a poor piece of homework and sent it back to be done again.
Starmer has the look of a toddler taking a dump In his Nappy 😁😁
Its better out than in 😂
I have seen some of the 28B blackhole been attributed to the Nuclear sub replacement programme but with no detail or even an outline of the amount of overspend. Tempest will also be another blackhole as we are not very good at delivering state of the art complex weapon systems on time and within budget and its still a long way away from first flight or even design lockdown. There is also the probability that once a large overspend is identified, other programmes will join the bandwagon to take advantage of getting all the bad news out at once avoiding ‘death bu a thousand cuts’.
All from the EU should send a small unit to Greenland, hell a single infantry squad each would do. Its more the gesture than the fighting force, make it clear, you attack Greenland you attack every single one of us.
Are you getting Hungary and Ireland to send someone?
Even if they don’t there’s a strong message sent, it’s not like either of them have much to offer anyway.
I think the bigger issue isn’t sending troops, it’s building the basing infrastructure.
I wondered if you’d see this thread.
You are the Army expert, what is your view on what is available and how it might be sustained?
All for supporting people of Ukraine but cannot come at errosion of JEF and commitment to Northern Europe.
Would be nice to see a full blown JFE exercise kick off say in April, perhaps at invitation of Iceland with France perhaps invited to play role of aggressor. Exercise could run for most of the Icelandic summer !
Any up grades and new kit are a good thing. Love to see what these 7500 are to equipt with? most of what we have left that still works is in Baltic states. Will it be a light force of wheeled things we scrap togeather to make look better than it really will be.
We all know it will be under euipt with Armour and Arty, sad day when we make do and mend to send just 7500 Soldiers any where. My guess they will never deply its just postering by France and the UK.
If 800 000 Ukrainian troops can not hold the line not sure what tiny under gunned force is meant to do?. Would make sense to deploy them along the Belaruse border and free up Ukraine froces there and that will avoid the likely hood of being fired at.
An RWS on Bulldog and some interceptor drones
better than nothing any up grade is a win, bulldog 60 year old 432’s ha ha says it all
I’m not enough being facetious.
That’s what I really think will happen.
true a half arsed buy just enough to do a semi ok job
There’s no money for anything else seemingly.
Where has it all gone, what on earth was it spent on in the last 20 months? meetings, service plans, spare as it was not spent kit that is for sure. Worse mess than it was 20 months ago with nothing but rehashed press releases and talked up near nothing stories.
World leader in endless projects and window shopping. Ever one is ordering new kit and we do nothing just talk about what we might do. Utter F ing shambles no wonder many leave they have nothing to do day to day as we have next to no kit to be worked on, delay, defection, but nothing new.
Ukraine.
Chagos payments.
Afghan rehousing, I read over 1.25 billion so far. That’s 1.25 billion less kit.
Uplifts to housing budget.
Increased pay ( from existing core budget.)
Attempts to improve recruitment and retention.
SSN defuelling.
AWE infrastructure delayed by decades.
GCAP, will cost 10 billion plus just to develop I’d read.
AUKUS uplift, more billions.
The usual snouts in troughs with the MIC, heartily encouraged by HMG.
Martin. The “Defence” budget doesn’t just mean the military and resourcing it! So often it seems they’re at the bottom of the pile!
I understand what its for but inspite of an paper work exercise bluffed to show an incress there does not seem to be any thing left.
All that has happened is more things are now piled on the Defence budget that never used to be on it. So on paper the Government can show they hitting the NATO spending target when in reality there is even less going core defence.
Ukraine is draining the life out of the Army, kit gifted that has not been replaced, ammo not replaced. The Army can not equip 7500 correctly we know that but Army will bluff it and send what it scrape together under the heading of peace keeping not fight, god help them if they do need to fight.
Well the force is peacekeeping so not supposed to fight ( I didn’t say thats a good idea…).
Agree re posturing tho. Prefer UK seizing illegal tankers transiting UK zone waters ( France too but there’s no chance of them lifting a finger in that regard). Any with Venezualan links could be handed over to US so not our problem after that. Any blowback from Russian we should consider Article 5.
Peace keeping or Peace Enforcemen, any force must be able to do both and defend its self. What we scrap togeather to send will be embrassing as always talked up but likely a lot of light wheeled stuff and some used MRAP’s
Ajax perfect for a Coalition monitoring force in Ukraine. The sensor array would be useful. The operators could simply follow in a Grenadier or some such
And they could remain there for the duration of the operation……forever……..
when it works with out rattling apart or hurting the crew yes it would be ideal
I imagine the commander and driver when not closed down should be fine. Everyone else can perhaps follow in a wheeled vehicle (!), as I previously suggested.
Let us not forget that BMP 3 always operated opened up due to the extreme heat generated by the engine enclosed within the crew compartment.
If you are going to send our forces into a tinder box that could explode at any time is going to take more than 200m to prepare them for it. They’ll need proper air defence systems, manpower, logistics, defence systems on what armoured vehicles they have left. They need to be ready to fight and fight hard, we all hope they don’t need to but they deserve better than to be sent out with little more than hope to fall back on.
At the moment, it looks like there is about zero prospect of Coalition forces being positioned in Ukraine.
Germany has already indicated that German forces will not be deployed to Ukraine for a variety of reasons
This preparation, at least to me, looks like prep for positioning a Coalition Corps adjacent to Ukraine in Poland for deterrence purposes.
The ‘Coalition’ probably will require elements positioned in Romania as well.
A Coalition Corps will indeed require all the usual elements. And, as you say, if ‘Britain’s Armed Forces are ready to deploy, and lead, the Multinational Force Ukraine’, that will require a great deal more than £200m; who knows maybe even a credible armoured division….?…..Whoa! Steady the Buffs! Apologies! I must have drifted off into some kind of la la land reverie…….
This is a very interesting development:
The MOD stated that the UK aims to produce thousands of Octopus drones per month, with each interceptor costing less than ten percent of the drone it is intended to destroy.’
Interesting in many ways but particularly because:
‘The real value of Octopus is not in the specific characteristics of the system, but rather in the process, which saw the UK respond in anticipation of a scaling threat to produce a technological countermeasure that was price competitive with what it was designed to defeat, and to align the industrial capacity to scale production. It is this process that must be protected and indeed expanded to be applied to other emerging tactical problems for Ukraine and potentially for Europe in the future.’
RUSI ‘Octopus Adds an Additional Layer to Ukraine’s Air Defences’, Dr Jack Watling 27 November 2025
“The department said the spending is being drawn from the core defence budget.”
As it is out of the core defence budget it is actually a cut.
As this UOR on a politically mandated tasking it should be paid from Treasury Reserve.
I saw that as well, just at the point we have a £28 billion hole
What else, mate.
Standard.
Comments flying about how departments have to find savings to pay for the digi ID scheme! Sooo any money will be believed when seen!
How many funerals does £200M pay for?
For all the fanfare recently about defence spending in Poland, Italy and Germany, I notice that none of those countries intend to deploy forces in a post war Ukraine. Is that because they don’t want to take the risk, don’t want to spend the money or some combination of the two? Seems like a non starter if the two countries with ambitions to have the most powerful armies on the continent are not involved.
They don’t grandstand on the world stage as major powers which the UK and France must do due to our nuclear and P5 status.
The UK is ready to “lead” but I’d be surprised if we can deploy a Brigade for a long term enduring operation.
They’re all committed already, how many hats do this accursed government expect them to wear?
Our 2 Divisions, various supporting formations, so the bulk of the war fighting part of the army, form the core of the ARRC, a SACEUR Reserve.
The 2 Armoured Brigades are committed to supporting an enhanced BG in Estonia.
The DRSBs have no infantry and are tied to another Brigade, they don’t deploy alone.
16 AA Bde is for out of area.
The ASOB isn’t a Brigade level force it splits up around the world as needed.
4 Bde has Light Infantry and little else, no CS CSS of it’s own without robbing others.
Speculation now, 7 Bde….I wonder if that are earmarked, bulked up by bits of 4 Bde and using parts of 101, 102, and 104 Brigades.
The overall HQ, I wonder if it would be 1 UK Division HQ, which was beefed up a few years ago to deployable status I understand.
There are also deployable HQs at Northwood as well that might be involved.
The Army is cut to beyond the bone, tens of thousands less personnel than it had when it sustained Helmand, and now has to account for this political crap.
And to add, who replaces 7 Bde in theatre?
It’s an utter parody.
An exceptionally well informed and instructive comment.
Thank you.
There is a great deal of political grandstanding going on both in France and in this country.
It appears to be completely out of step with the real ‘peace process’.
That may be why Italy is suggesting (no doubt at the prompting of the U.S.) that Europe makes direct contact with the Kremlin.
European efforts at the moment bear all the hallmarks of Humpty Dumpty: ‘The meaning of a word is just what I say it is, nothing more and nothing less’
Some elements I missed, for completeness.
Obviously parts of FAT, Field Army Troops, might also be needed with any hypothetical UKR force, as they have the “high demand low volume” capabilities, so Drones, TUAS, Cyber, Sigint, EW, and so on.
That wording is used by the Army and MoD themselves. Translation, cut to the bone so badly there are hardly any of them left! No wonder they’re in high demand.
One thing amongst many which I loathe about HMG is their inability to stop grandstanding. The forces can only take so much. They just cannot help it. Their statements bear no semblance of reality when one knows the forces available to realise their rhetoric.
Spot on!
I and many others were already incandescent about ‘overstretch’ fifty years ago!
Willing the mission but not the means, particularly in view of lives lost as a direct consequence, is an absolute disgrace.
Ok we deply 7500 troops, need 7500 to replace them and then another 7500 for troops just sent back who go on leave etc end of tour, we do not have the troops or kit as the replacements must be able to train on kit before deploying. yes you swap units out and not replace the whole lot in one but the kit and numbers are not there nor is ammo if they had to fight. C2 120 mm ammo is no longer made and most went to Ukraine, we are short of 155mm ammo lucky we only have 12 /14 guns to fire it, and we only have 2 updated A2 MLRS we gifted the others of which we had 4/6. B1 s
Exactly. The rule of 5 or whatever it was before no longer exists. This bit of political theatre is utterly unsustainable.
The sooner the Army is set up into 2 proper Divisions and concentrated and equipped to be the SACEUR RESERVE to be deployed to kick the Russians arses where it’s needed rather than being split asunder in 20 directions for political reasons the better.
The LSOF, Land Special Operations Force, so the ASOB, 77 Bde, 11 LS Bde, and special forces are what should be committed forward.
Do you think the British forces in Estonia will be entirely withdrawn and focused into Ukraine or do you think there will be a half-arsed effort in both theatres? I guess Poland and Germany are well placed to take over our roles in the Baltics,
The later.
3 Division is being used to supply the Estonia, Cabrit elements. They are the Division whose Brigades have SP Artillery ( all 14 of them 😒 ) Armour, Stormer HVM, Armoured Engineers Arnoured Medics, Armoured REME, and so on.
The main warfighing part of the Army.
I cannot see how such a small starting force can furnish both UKR and maintain Estonia.
1 Division has the lighter forces, but includes 7 Bde which at least has a full set of CS CSS elements, a fully deployable Light Mech Bde, a bit of spin as it’s got Foxhound PPV and Jackal. Hardly “mechanized.”
I mentioned 1 UK being improved earlier, that includes reportedly one of Perham Downs Royal Signals Regiments, which were both previously committed to 12 and 20 Armoured Brigades. I’ve read that one has quietly moved over to 1 UK Division. Not as the Divisional Signal Regiment, that already existed in 2 Regiment as part of the Divisional DIEG.
No, this is for signal Sqns for 7 and 4 Brigades.
Giving 4 Bde some of it’s own supports.
Both already have Int Corps support.
Also, again as quiet as a mouse, photos exist online of the formation of another DRSB, No1 DRSB, to support 1 UK Division much as 3 DRSB supports 3 Division. ( it switched number from 1 to 3.)
The “new” 1 DRSB doesn’t have any new units, they just nicked some of 3 DRSBs units!
Still, all steps towards establishing 2 deployable Divisions.
Sorry all if all this musical chairs orbat moving is hard to follow, if you’ve an understanding of how the Army is structured and organised it makes a lot more sense.
Interesting possibility, I cannot see it myself.
We were allocated Estonia, what shame that we’d need to withdraw.
Fact is they will never be deployed, Russia will not agree to it and has to, to get a cease fire. Its just for show and to make the UK look better on the world stage. And make the Government look good by saying we will buy £200 million of kit for them, god knows how lok that will take to get trialled and in service,UCAS defence might just be some camo folding mens unbrellas, white for winter, and some .22 air rifles just about all we can afford.
That 200 million of kit should have already existed. 1 UK Divisions 4 Brigade lacks so much CS CSS of it’s own without resorting to the Reserve that I find HMG including it as a deployable Brigade ridiculous. Assume it’s infantry might be split into other formations or used as rear area if the ARRC deployed.
As I mentioned above, there are small steps afoot to structure the Army better, but without more people, which Healey ruled out in the short term, it’s utter musical chairs window dressing.
To be honest most what has gone on in past 20 months is window dressing, trying to make next to nothing like like they are doing some thing. Fact is we simply do not have the numbers or the kit, or the ammo to do much, sad part is no one up high will accept that its la la land with them.
Will take a good 10 years to fix and thats if the money is really there with out evey other thing secretly being added to the defence budget to cook the books to try and keep NATO happy.
When we can not cover our commitments as it is,
Note that the £200M is being taken from the core defence budget – it’s not new money from the Treasury contingency fund, and historically would be the norm. Given that the budget is already fully allocated and more, something(s) has been quietly cancelled, pushed right, downsized, taken out of service prematurely, and/or sold. Starmer and Reeves have clearly resolved that the MOD won’t get one extra penny whilst they are in power, regardless of world events that were were once unthinkable now becoming almost routine. E.g. What happens if Denmark calls Stormers bluffs and formally asks for the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) to be sent to Greenland! In just one week that has moved from a remote possibility to very likely.