Category Archives: Defence policy

David Miliband condemns ‘absurd’ lack of cooperation between EU and UK

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Former foreign secretary to call for next government to seek much closer ties with bloc on foreign policy and defence issues

David Miliband will on Wednesday urge British ministers to forge closer links with the EU and condemn the “absurd” lack of cooperation between London and Brussels on foreign and defence issues.

The former foreign secretary will give a speech at the Irish embassy in London in which he will criticise the Conservatives for their attitude towards the EU and call on the next government to seek much closer ties.

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About 270,000 UK forces records exposed to Chinese hackers

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Payroll data at risk includes names, bank details and addresses of current and former force members, government sources suggest

An estimated 270,000 payroll records belonging to nearly all members of Britain’s armed forces have been exposed to Chinese hackers in a breach at a third-party contractor that was discovered a few days ago.

The data at risk includes names and bank details for full-time military personnel, part-time reservists, including at least one MP, and veterans who left after January 2018. It was managed by a private contractor, SSCL.

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Europe’s political leaders have been slow to recognise financial reality of long wars

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Ukraine needs western munitions badly but it remains unclear how much more artillery the UK is prepared to produce

Two years and two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started the biggest war in Europe since 1945, and Rishi Sunak has announced that the UK’s own defence industry should be placed “on a war footing”. Speaking on a trip to Poland, the prime minister noted that one of the central lessons of the Ukraine conflict was the need for deeper stockpiles and for the arms industry to “replenish them more quickly”.

Ukraine’s leaders will be too polite to point it out but this has been evident on the battlefield for some time, although Sunak is not the only European leader to take time to grasp the scale of what is required to fight off sustained Russian aggression, the bombing of civilians and infrastructure every day. With US military aid on pause for four months, and only now poised to restart, the combined result is that Russia is gaining ground.

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MoD accused of ‘go-slow’ with half of £900m Ukraine fund unused

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Delays mean just £404m of the money donated by nine countries has been committed or spent

More than half of a £900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts.

The UK-led International Fund for Ukraine counts nine countries among its donors. Critics claim its provision of weapons to the frontline has been slow.

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RAF shot down Iranian drones heading for Israel, Sunak confirms

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Prime minister says UK was involved to save lives in Israel and neighbouring countries

Rishi Sunak has confirmed that RAF Typhoons shot down a number of Iranian drones overnight and said the UK’s involvement helped save lives in Israel and neighbouring Arab countries.

The prime minister did not provide the number of drones hit, although the UK’s contribution is likely to have been significantly less than the 70 claimed by the US and dozens reported knocked out by Jordan over its airspace.

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Fourth former UK supreme court judge signs letter over Israeli actions in Gaza

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Number of signatories warning Sunak over breach of international law in arming Israel rises to more than 750

A fourth former supreme court justice has put his name to a letter warning Rishi Sunak that the UK is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel, as the number of legal experts signing the letter rose to more than 750.

Lord Carnwath joins Lady Hale, who was president of the UK’s highest court, and lords Sumption and Wilson, in urging ministers to act to prevent the “plausible risk” of genocide in Gaza.

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Majority of voters in UK back banning arms sales to Israel, poll finds

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Exclusive: YouGov survey indicates loss of support among people in Britain for Israel’s war in Gaza

A majority of voters in Britain back a ban on arms sales to Israel, according to a YouGov poll.

One of the first up-to-date assessments of whether Israel is losing public support in key allied states, the research also suggests most people believe the Israeli government is violating human rights in Gaza.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Nato ministers agree to plan for greater alliance role in coordinating Ukraine aid, says Stoltenberg – as it happened

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Allies will plan for ‘greater Nato role in coordinating security assistance and training’, says Nato secretary general

They have become a familiar sight in the skies above parts of Russia: long-range enemy drones, buzzing their way to another target.

In the biggest Ukrainian onslaught inside Russian territory since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion two years ago, Ukraine has in recent weeks carried out a series of attacks on Russian oil refineries and ports. On Tuesday, it hit a refinery and drone factory in the industrial region of Tatarstan - more than 800 miles from the border.

Allied support to Ukraine is a fraction of the resources needed for deterrence and defence of North Atlantic area and yet the successful defence of Ukraine greatly impacts the overall cost of Nato’s defence.

Serious long-term support of Ukraine requires predictable, equitable and robust allocation of resources.

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UK’s ever more expensive nuclear submarines will torpedo spending plans for years to come

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Whoever wins the next election, a reckoning is overdue on the costs of Britain’s nuclear deterrent

When Rishi Sunak visited Barrow-in-Furness on Monday he said the Cumbrian town was “mission critical for our country” because of its role building four new nuclear submarines to carry the UK’s nuclear weapons. If you believe Sunak’s erstwhile ally, Dominic Cummings, then that mission faces serious problems.

Cummings, once Boris Johnson’s most powerful adviser, said this month – in characteristically aggressive terms – that spiralling costs were making a mockery of the government’s budget plans. He wrote on X: “the nuclear enterprise is so fkd [sic] it’s further cannibalising the broken budgets and will for decades because it’s been highly classified to avoid MPs thinking about it.”

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Foreign Office official floated idea of giving honour to fixer for Saudi royals

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Salah Fustok alleged by UK prosecutors to have been a middleman for nearly £10m in payments to Saudi prince

A Foreign Office official floated the idea of giving an honour to a businessman who was later alleged to have helped facilitate millions of pounds of bribes to a Saudi prince and his high-ranking associates.

Salah Fustok was alleged by UK anti-corruption prosecutors to have been a middleman for nearly £10m of payments to Prince Miteb bin Abdullah and other Saudi officials as “an inducement or reward” for the awarding of a contract by the Saudi Arabian national guard.

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US defence contractor paid commissions to Saudi firm later alleged to be conduit for bribes

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Harris had longstanding relationship with ABTSS, later alleged by British prosecutors to have handled or received illegal payments

One of the largest military contractors in the US paid commissions to a Saudi company later alleged to have been a conduit for bribes for the kingdom’s royal family.

A document disclosed in a UK criminal trial revealed that Harris Corporation, now L3Harris, paid commissions to the Saudi company for over two decades for services in the kingdom.

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Europe is unprepared for risks from Russia and Trump, says Airbus boss

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Aerospace group chief executive urges UK and Europe to pool efforts and merge fighter jet programmes

Europe is unprepared for war with Russia or the risk that Donald Trump could withdraw the US from Nato and needs to ramp up spending on defence equipment, the boss of Airbus has said.

Guillaume Faury, the chief executive of Europe’s biggest aerospace and defence company, said it was a “defining moment” for the continent’s defence industry, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought war to western Europe’s borders.

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MoD paid millions into Saudi account amid BAE corruption scandal

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Documents show officials stressing need to ‘keep the Saudis on side’ after revelations about notorious al-Yamamah deal

Britain’s Ministry of Defence moved questionable payments through its own bank account amid one of the biggest corruption scandals in history, despite concerns the money could be pocketed by the Saudi royal family.

Previously confidential documents show how the MoD agreed to make the payments to a Saudi bank account after the transactions came under scrutiny following an investigation by the UK anti-corruption agency, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

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MoD signed £8m deal with firm later alleged to be conduit for secret payments to Saudi prince

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Project Arrow contract signed amid scramble to keep on track £1.6bn defence deal and ran until at least 2017

The UK Ministry of Defence paid millions of pounds to a company later alleged to have been a conduit for secret payments to high-ranking Saudi Arabian officials including a member of the royal family.

The MoD payments, worth £8m, were made under a contract codenamed Project Arrow that ran until at least 2017, according to documents that surfaced in a criminal trial.

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Two men acquitted of bribing Saudis in huge British defence deal

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Jury acquits Jeffrey Cook and John Mason after lawyers argue payments were authorised by UK and Saudi governments

Two men have been acquitted of paying bribes totalling millions of pounds to high-ranking Saudis after they argued that they had been unfairly prosecuted.

Jeffrey Cook and John Mason had been accused of bribing a Saudi prince and his associates to secure and maintain a huge defence deal for a British company. But on Wednesday, a jury in London acquitted them after lawyers argued the payments had been authorised by the British and Saudi governments.

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UK minister says he ‘cannot disprove’ claims Afghans were unlawfully killed

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Johnny Mercer tells UK inquiry of reports SAS had killed civilians between 2010 and 2013

The UK’s minister for veterans, Johnny Mercer, has effectively admitted in front of a public inquiry that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.

Mercer told the inquiry on Tuesday that at one point, shortly after first becoming a minister in 2019, Mercer said he told the then defence secretary, Ben Wallace, that “something stinks”. His boss replied: “There is no new evidence, Johnny,” and the cabinet minster chose not to take any further action.

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UK closer to large-scale conflict than in many years, intelligence official says

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Official cites Ukraine war and China threat and raises concern over turnover of top government ministers

British defence intelligence officials say the UK is closer to a large-scale conflict than at any recent point, as the Middle East crisis intensifies while Russia pursues an expansionist agenda and China develops advanced weapons.

One senior official said the secretive 4,500-strong unit was the busiest it had been in at least a decade, and said the fast turnover of ministers made it harder to ensure key politicians were making informed decisions.

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UK committed to ‘protecting innocent lives’, says Shapps after Houthi attack

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British warship HMS Diamond targeted in Red Sea but no injuries or serious damage sustained

Grant Shapps said the UK remained “undaunted” after Iran-backed Houthis targeted HMS Diamond in the Red Sea during their latest round of strikes.

The defence secretary’s comments came after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that the Royal Navy warship HMS Diamond “deployed its Sea Viper missile system” to destroy the drone deployed by the Yemen-based Houthi group on Saturday. It said there were no injuries to the crew and no damage to the ship.

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US planning to station nuclear weapons in UK amid threat from Russia – report

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Missiles could be placed at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk in case of potential war between Nato and Russia

The US is planning to station nuclear weapons in the UK for the first time in 15 years amid a growing threat from Russia, according to a report. Warheads three times as strong as the Hiroshima bomb would be located at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk under the proposals, the Telegraph reported.

The US previously placed nuclear missiles at RAF Lakenheath and removed them in 2008 after the cold war threat from Moscow receded. Pentagon documents seen by the newspaper reveal procurement contracts for a new facility at the airbase.

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Army chief says people of UK are ‘prewar generation’ who must be ready to fight Russia

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Ministry of Defence clarifies it has no plans for conscription after Gen Sir Patrick Sanders says UK should take steps to place society on war footing

Downing Street has dismissed a warning from the head of the British army that the UK public must be prepared to take up arms in a war against Vladimir Putin’s Russia because today’s professional military is too small.

Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson said the prime minister did not agree with comments made by Gen Sir Patrick Sanders in a speech on Wednesday, and was forced to insist there would be no return to national service, which was abolished in 1960.

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