UK told to boost arms manufacturing as turbulence grips globe
Britain and Western allies need to boost arms manufacturing amid Russia’s war with Ukraine, a top Whitehall official warned today
The Foreign Office’s Euro-Atlantic director Matt Baugh told defence and security experts that “defence industrial capacity” was a “growing and significant strategic issue that we have to face as allies and partners”. Addressing the Royal United Services Institute think tank, he said “Ukrainian consumption” of weapons meant stockpiles needed “attending to”.
The UK and other NATO nations have sent vast amounts of arms and kit to Kyiv as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime battles Vladimir Putin’s forces. Ministers announced in March that £2billion would be spent over two years replenishing UK caches to replace ammunition and weapons sent to Ukraine. Mr Baugh warned of the need for “maintenance of sufficient and growing industrial capacity and industrial output to demonstrate that we are both prepared and gearing for the long haul”.
Mette Birkelund O’Connor, a defence and security expert at the Norwegian Embassy in London, warned: “Many states downsized their armies and supplies and stocks at the end of the Cold War. The same countries have generously, and for obvious reasons, donated huge parts of their stocks of ammunition and weapons to Ukraine, leaving many nations low and to realise they need to start to resupply and that they are too dependent on other nations for production. There is an urgent need to ramp up our defence industry production.”
Senior civil servant Mr Baugh, who was previously UK ambassador to Somalia, told guests “Putin’s reckless, illegal, needless act of aggression” had helped make the world more “turbulent”. He added: “Today, Russia presents the most acute threat to European security. Unless together we do more to deter and defend, to build our resilience to state threats, to ‘out-co-operate’ the pace of technological change, our collective security and deterrence will deteriorate further.”
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 unleashed a “calculated and determined wrecking ball to the European security landscape”, he said, during a speech themed ‘The UK contribution to security in Northern Europe’. Analysts are increasingly worried about Russian interference with vital underwater cables carrying power and data between countries.
Last weekend, Rishi Sunak announced more than 20,000 British troops would be deployed across Northern Europe next year, along with eight Royal Navy ships, 25 fighter jets and an “aviation task force” of Apache, Chinook and Wildcat helicopters. No10 said: “They will take part in large-scale, multi-country exercises, as well as carrying out air policing and cold weather training.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited HMS Diamond before holding talks at the Joint Expeditionary Summit on the Baltic island of Gotland, Sweden last week (PA)The Navy’s flagship, the £3.1bn, 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is in the region, escorted by five British warships, F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets and Wildcat helicopters. Unveiling the deployment, the Prime Minister said: “Northern Europe is vital to our national security, which is why it’s more important than ever that we work with our Joint Expeditionary Force neighbours to protect our backyard and deter damaging hybrid threats.”
Addressing RUSI, Mr Baugh said: “Our decision to prioritise Northern Europe is a consequence of hard choices and national interests, the protection of critical national infrastructure and the need to reinforce freedom of navigation.”
Rachel Ellehuus, an defence adviser to the US Mission to NATO, told the seminar: “This region is really at the centre of everything.” Experts also fear a Kremlin military build-up in the air and seas around the High North, particularly Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway. Ms Birkelund O’Connor said Russia’s navy and air force “maintain a high level of activity and capacity in the High North despite the war in Ukraine”.
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