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The UK’s outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Tuesday that Britain would spend almost £300 billion (€348 billion) over the next four years to modernise its armed forces amid rising threats.
Starmer, expected to leave office next month after losing the support of Labour MPs, announced that the overall defence budget would increase by £15 billion (€17 billion) over the next four years to almost £300 billion, as he launched his long-awaited 10-year Defence Investment Plan.
“Last year I made the decision in the national interest to reprioritise aid spending towards defence and achieved the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the Cold War,” Starmer said in a speech.
“That was the right choice because the world has changed. National security is economic security.”
“Today we uplift defence spending further. An additional £15 billion worth of funding by…reprioritising spending across government,” he said.
The plan includes more than £5 billion (€5.8 billion) for drones and autonomous systems over the next four years, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said earlier in a press release.
The announcement follows months of wrangling within Starmer’s Labour government over the resources required to modernise the UK’s armed forces in the face of rising threats, including from Russia.
Two defence ministers quit earlier this month in a row over spending proposals, including defence secretary John Healey who said the plans risked making Britain “less safe.”
The UK’s pledge came as US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged NATO allies to spend more on defence and become less reliant on Washington for security.
Trump has long questioned the value of the military alliance and complained that the United States provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight.
The plan is a road map for how the UK will increase military spending to NATO’s target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035.
The UK military is seeking to reverse years of decline in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia, which invaded its neighbour Ukraine in 2022 and increasingly tests the defences of European nations with overt and covert activity.
The UK has watched how drones have transformed war in Ukraine, which uses 200,000 of them a month to defend against Russian forces.
Britain plans to invest billions in drone systems across all branches of the military. Instead of a planned fleet of new destroyers, the Royal Navy will get hybrid vessels that will act as command hubs for drones.
“The very nature of conflict is changing before our eyes,” Starmer said during a speech at a drone manufacturer near London. He said that, armed with cutting-edge technology, Ukrainian forces have destroyed Russia’s Black Sea fleet, “struck deep into Russian territory and stopped the advance of one of the biggest armies in the world.”
The resignations of Healey and junior Defence Minister Al Carns were among a series of blows that prompted Starmer to announce last week that he will resign.
He is likely to attend a NATO summit in Turkey on 7-8 July in one of his last acts as prime minister.
His successor, likely the former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, will be under pressure to stick to the commitments in the defence plan.
Opposition Conservative Party defence spokesperson James Cartlidge said the plan was “too little, too late.”
“The plan is now almost a year overdue and only being rushed through because Keir Starmer is desperate for a legacy,” he said.
Additional sources • AP, AFP