Ministers and senior military leaders have warned that rising Russian activity and growing Chinese interest in the Arctic and High North are driving renewed focus on UK and NATO security in the region.
During a Defence Committee evidence session on 27 January, Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed that Russian military activity around the UK and across the wider North Atlantic remains on an upward trend, alongside an expanding pattern of hostile cyber operations linked to state actors.
Healey told MPs that a previously cited 30 percent increase in Russian activity in UK waters should be understood as a headline figure, but said the broader trend of aggression was clear. He pointed to increased maritime activity, incursions into NATO airspace, threats to critical infrastructure and the continued use of shadow shipping as indicators of a deteriorating security environment.
He added that cyber activity now forms a major part of the threat picture, telling the committee that the UK had experienced around 90,000 separate cyber attacks in the past year alone, with the majority assessed as linked to state or state-sponsored actors. “If you look at cyber in the last year alone, we’ve had 90,000 separate cyber attacks,” Healey said, adding that Russia, China and Iran were all linked to elements of that activity.
When questioned specifically on the extent of Russian subsea activity, both Healey and the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff declined to provide detailed breakdowns, citing the sensitivity of operational information. However, senior military leaders acknowledged a clear increase in threat levels.
General Dame Sharon Nesmith told the committee that while it would be inappropriate to delineate proportions of surface and subsurface activity in public, the overall direction of travel was unmistakable.
“We recognise the uptick in the threat, and therefore the need for us to do more about it in the high north either at surface or subsurface,” she said.
Nesmith linked the response to wider transformation within the Royal Navy, including efforts to accelerate capability delivery in response to the changing threat environment. She referenced the emerging Atlantic Bastion concept as part of a broader set of capabilities aimed at strengthening deterrence and responsiveness in the North Atlantic and Arctic approaches. Healey said the Northern Sea Route was becoming a focal point for both Russian activity and increasing Chinese interest, creating new strategic pressures in the High North.
“As climate change opens up that North, the Northern Sea Route opens up the link,” Healey said, adding that Russia’s closer alignment with certain partners following the war in Ukraine was also shaping the regional security picture.
Well, If we can’t deal with a solitary cargo ship in the Bristol Channel !!!!
(I’m sure this was on here a few days back) 🤔
I, along with no doubt most on this site, and the wider fraternity of followers of UK Defence matters, am getting sick to the back teeth of the “warnings” from HMG, the Def Sec, and so on, while continuing to cut the military and fudge the supposed increases so that little new money goes to the core military budget.
Rising activity in the High North? Terrible news. And you then send our only operational SSN to Australia in response.
Splendid stuff!
Government warns of other Chinese threats.
Starmer: Quick, let’s cosy up to them and let them build a mega embassy on a questionable location with redacted rooms.
Ah but he did get some Lords off their Sanction list !!! 🙄
The solution is to keep cutting the armed forces, isn’t it, Healey?
Defence select committee reports are what passes for news while we wait for the DIP. Some press reports of the struggles in cabinet to make the DIP budget fit the SDR; no NMH order – shades of the Heseltine Westland affair; Italy and Japan not impressed by rumours of possible funding delay in GCAP timetable – Prince William to visit Saudi to tout for involvement contribution; labour election wipe out in Wales if they cancel Ajax; no answer to the IFV issue. Fun, fun, fun. But no orders yet.
“ Italy and Japan not impressed by rumours of possible funding delay in GCAP timetable”
The problem with delaying GCAP is that it creates a fast jet GAP. As it is essential that it is entering service in 2035 to take the strain from Typhoon.
If the money isn’t spent on GCAP then we have to spend on more F35’s or Typhoon.
Chinas hasn’t had much if any ships in the arctic since 2015. Russia submarines seem to be on the decline as well. Russia “spy” ships operating in international waters seem to be the entire driver of “increased” activity.
We can have 500 surface combatants and there is nothing we can do about Russia spy ships sitting 12 miles off the coast or in the Bristol channel.
This is just a fact of life. We do exactly the same to the Russians flying RC135 right around their country and giving the targeting data to Ukraine.
The Artic threat is yet another self licking lollipop for the MoD. It’s the boogie man used to justify bigger budgets.
“We can have 500 surface combatants and there is nothing we can do about Russian spy ships sitting 12 miles off the coast or in the Bristol channel”
Yup, Might as well not bother having any at all then !
But hey the Chinese and Russian interest in Greenland is totally a lie!
It is since 2015.
Headline should read: “UK warns of rising Russian, Chinese activity in High North: Does **** all about it”
Wut?
Trump was right!
Who knew!
Trump isn’t wrong on everything. On the other hand, his ‘cures’ are usually worse than the problem.
So the government says there is a threat. What are they doing about it? Some work on unmanned craft, but really… What about actually expanding the number of frigates and destroyers we’ve got to cope with this expanded threat?
The staggering misunderstanding of geopolitics in some (by no means all) of the above comments is a tad depressing. Some are always saying the defence spending is decreasing… please can you explain with actual figures, as I would like to understand (serious question). On the other hand cyber and High North is very real. What on earth do we think Trump’s real intentions with Greenland are really all about? But let’s buy 12 bore shotguns and dress the lads in red to show we’re British, eh? That’d stop ’em.
Oh yes, Cyber is so very problematic, so why the **** did the Government just say that the Chinese whom have a knack for Cyber Warfare can build their embassy next to a series of vital fibre optic cables only 100cm away from their dig site? Oh yes, very smart of the Govt, now invest in Cyberwarfare and encryption when we could have literally denied that vulnerability in the first place, hmm.
Indeed, a metre rather than 100cms but what’s a couple of feet between enemies! I’m not so bothered about this… it’s a pretty public piece of infrastructure which will be easy enough to shield… and anyway it’s financial stuff… not military?? (somebody clarify)… And anyway, it just means we can spy on them, as we will be building it for them one way or another. As I just said somewhere else… keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I’d more concerned about the stuff we don’t know about… the shadow stuff that can be devastating without us having a clue. Who knows what the UK is really doing in this area when, by definition, it’s secret? I doubt if anyone on here knows, and if they do they won’t be saying!
In real terms, UK Defence spending is tanking
Just to be accurate….A quick Google will tell you… “Increased Expenditure: Total Defence Spending increased by £1.1 billion in 2023/24 compared to 2022/23, driven by higher resource spending. After accounting for inflation, defence spending has increased steadily, with a notable £4.3 billion real-terms increase in 2024/25 compared to 2023/24.”
It’s not enough, of course, but let’s at least be factual… it isn’t tanking.
The House of Commons Library says” Real-terms defence spending fell by 22% between 2009/10 and 2016/17 (from £59.2 billion to £46.2 billion in 2024/25 prices). It then started to rise again, recently returning to its 2010 levels.
Real-terms spending has increased steadily since 2016/17, and is expected to continue to do so.”
No, IMO not necessarily a bigger army (unless we can work out what the UK army’s role is in modern European warfare), but defo a bigger RN and RAF.
The issue is that, if the US is going to leaving Europe to defend itself in this big bad world (as it says it’s going to), then to do so properly we are going to have to spend more money %GDP-wise than we currently do safe under the warm blanket of US military might.
The UK SDR 2026 recognised this and came up with some solutions to the UK’s future role in all that (eg increased High North cover and cyber). The DIP was supposed to provide details of the nuts and bolts thereof and it’s funding. But the DIP is absent without leave, and as a result even current day to day spending (let alone increased future spending) seems to have been paused. What seems to be happening is that the SDR is being bent to match the DIP funding Labour (might I’d were lucky) offer.
So the defence of the UK appears to be being watered down to suit eg the welfare bill. In the end it’s a political decision, and many of us on UKDJ think that Starmer et al are going to shit all over everything we care about.
Ref your “Dress them in Red” comment, given the Article subject, the Colour Red is often associated with China and Russia, can I suggest we dress our guys in say, Purple 🤔🤗
Purple does seem a rather popular colour on here lately.
😂👌
Some of you may know I’m a clergyman. The thought of dressing the army to look like Bishops…. yey!! 🤣
Maybe the bankrupt English and Americans should start worrying about themselves at home.
I’m not English or American! What should I do?
Pull your head out of your crack. You’re most welcome.
I’m sorry, English is my second language, any chance of simplifying? What is a crack?😱
Watched some of the defence/security commitee on BBC parliament tonight. Seemed like deckchairs being rearranged, some intel improvements, but loads more being spent with little actual climb in numbers/capabilities. Feels like many more years at the nadir of our forces before any effective improvement. Frigate numbers seem stuck at completely inadequate before they climb very slowly back to way too few in the later 2030s. We are more focussed on the high north, so they say.
Always seemed exactly the wrong thing to let Starmer run off to China when their attacks on us are so high & dangerous. Blisteringly naive.
Au contraire… absolutely. Keep your friends close and you enemies closer!
China is reported to have 6 Type 93 SSN and 4 building / completion.
They are said to be able to build 4-6 of the new Type 95 model at one time in a build cycle.
The moment that half a dozen Chinese subs and whatever Ru can muster roam in the north Atlantic then it will be very hard to maintain a viable Trident deterrent ( same for France) with the current limited resources and sub availability.
The delay for Frigate building means that TAS ship will be hard worked as will the 9 P-8 if they are all available.
Let alone stop them stalking the carrier or lurking off the coast.
Only the USN has capacity to track all those threats. NATO recently expended sizeable effort on tracking on RU submarine.
Yet the gov seems to be working at a snails pace to do anything about it.
Unless the Germans and Italians decide to go the SSN route and both France and UK uplifts numbers, any talk of an life without the US is a joke.
China is undergoing an internal implosion; of course news is limited but the Head of the Army might actually have lost his head but an Army is approaching Beijing with an idea about regime change; of course, will that change CCP, doubtful, but, their plans would be set back several years and give us breathing space.
And the rumours of nuclear secrets being linked is a like a Cardinal in the Kremlin (Tom Clancy) or in this case, Knight in the Forbidden City.