After months of waiting, we finally got to see the recommendations made to government in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) on 2nd June. The Review was conducted differently from previous iterations. It was delivered by three independent advisors, a politician, a soldier, and a foreign policy expert (as they put it in their introduction). In this role they were supported by teams within the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and experts from outside, me included, and by around 8,000 written submissions.
The resulting document has a different tone from recent reviews. We had, from the last government, in 2021 the Integrated Review and, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an Integrated Review Refresh in 2023. This 2025 SDR avoids the political bluster that characterised its predecessors and is, quite rightly in the light of increasing geopolitical threats, more sober and direct in tone.
I would argue that the Review gets its priorities right, but the big challenge will be in the delivery. The government has accepted all 62 recommendations, but much of the detail on how and when capabilities will be delivered is still to be outlined. The reviewers themselves state that, ‘the plan we have put forward can be accelerated for either greater assurance or for mobilisation of Defence in a crisis’, thereby acknowledging that the current planned pace of change is not suitable for crisis if it is imminent.
The Review’s five themes are central to the document and, in my view, very much the right priorities for defence, providing accessible descriptions of the priorities for reforming defence to face the reality of the world today. These are outlined by the Secretary of State, John Healey, in his introduction as ‘NATO First’, ‘Move to warfighting readiness’, ‘Engine for growth’, ‘UK innovation driven by lessons from Ukraine’, and ‘Whole-of-society approach’.
NATO First comes as no surprise both because it was singled out as a priority at the start of the review process and in the light of potential future US isolationism from the European continent. That was always likely given the US’s increasing focus on the Indo-Pacific but has been accelerated by the election of President Trump for his second term. Language within the Review refers to the UK ‘leading within NATO’, but I would argue that the UK’s ability to lead in NATO will largely depend on higher defence spending, beyond the 2.5% by 2027 and an ‘ambition’ for 3% in the next parliament. This month’s NATO Summit will be the first challenge to the UK’s aspiration for a leadership role without, for now, further solid financial commitments to defence spending.
Underpinning the concept of warfighting readiness is the establishment of a more lethal ‘integrated force’. In some ways, this contradicts the NATO First theme since it implies prioritising integrating the different UK services and domains (land, sea, air, cyber, and space) over our ability to fight with our NATO partners. As an example, air forces fight as a coalition and aren’t there simply to service their own countries’ assets – they need to work across nations ahead of working with their own. That said, the Review does spell out that the ‘integrated force’ should be ‘integrated into NATO by design’.
The Review recognises that two big problems are the procurement process and layers of bureaucracy around every aspect of defence. Addressing these will contribute to the ‘engine for growth’ theme, and at pace ideally, so that the benefits start to spread beyond defence. These are not new problems and have been singled out before, but here they come with some serious ambition such as contracting major modular platforms within two years. That is one almighty stretch target. Procurement and bureaucracy are both wicked problems in that they are impossible to solve in ways that are simple or final. The will to attack these will require strong and consistent political support including taking more risk and being willing to sometimes fail.
Ukraine has many lessons for the UK, but a crucial one is the need to raise our nuclear IQ. The wording on nuclear capability, beyond the Continuous at Sea Deterrent (our strategic deterrent), is interesting, including the aspiration to commence discussions with the US and NATO ‘on the potential benefits and feasibility of enhanced UK participation in NATO’s nuclear mission’. The Sunday Times trailed the SDR the day before its release with reports of talks around arming aircraft with tactical nuclear weapons. We will have to await future announcements to learn more, but as I argued before on the Progressive Britain blog with a fellow academic colleague a few weeks’ ago, this is a debate we should be having.
Which brings me onto the final theme of encouraging a ‘whole-of-society approach’, which is described as ‘widening participation in national resilience and renewing the Nation’s contract with those who serve’. One point on the latter aim is the prioritisation of Service Families Accommodation over Single Living Accommodation – evidence that the lobby from Service spouses has trumped that of the much bigger group of personnel who are single and living in poor accommodation which is a huge issue for retention.
More generally, in the context of the ‘whole-of-society’ approach, the document talks of a national conversation, but this will be incredibly difficult to achieve unless politicians are willing to level with society in a bolder way. Communications, in the sense of engagement with the public, are only mentioned briefly in the Review, yet the MOD’s communications culture is inherently risk-averse. An interesting example of an external attempt to raise public awareness is Sky News’ recently released podcast series ‘The Wargame’, which features a simulated cabinet (made up of ex-ministers and advisors from both Labour and Conservative governments) dealing with a Russian attack on the UK.
So the Review is big on ambition and sound on priorities, but the kind of organisational and cultural change envisaged is a huge ask. In the past, that level of change has only come about when countries have had to fight wars or when politicians have invested their political capital in driving that change with absolute unwavering commitment. That is the challenge for our Labour government – to achieve the level of change recommended in the Review in the face of so many other competing challenges. The military and the civil service cannot achieve this unless political leadership is committed to the Review and, crucially, prepared to take risk. That requires money, resolve and societal support at a level not seen since the height of the Cold War.
