This massive escalation also comes on the literal eve of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, where it has been reported that U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This conflict has already become the bloodiest war in Europe since the Second World War, with staggering human costs on both sides. According to verified data published by CNN, estimated casualties stand at about 450,000 Russian troops killed and 1.4 million injured, while Ukrainian forces have suffered approximately 150,000 killed and 625,000 injured.

Now let’s come back home a little bit to look at Westminster and the new Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which has triggered widespread warnings that the government has simply not gone far enough to fund national defence. To make the £298 billion, four-year numbers work, the Treasury achieved this funding package by quietly cutting capital budgets from other vital departments. They raided the Department for Transport’s rail infrastructure budget and slashed green energy funding under the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero by billions, effectively running a shell game to patch over the holes in the defence budget.

Today’s war is nothing like what generations before experienced in conflicts like the Second World War. Modern warfare is a highly hybrid conflict; for example, if we look at the recent aerial exchanges between the U.S., Israel, and Iran—which saw over 300 ballistic missiles and loitering munitions fired in single salvos—the fighting was defined by drones and heavy missile attacks rather than boots on the ground. We see a very similar reality playing out in the Russia-Ukraine war, which means the UK is actually right to redirect funding away from traditional legacy warfighting by scrapping bloated, slow-moving programs such as the Type 83 destroyer and the Type 32 frigate, which cost upwards of £1 billion to £1.5 billion per hull and take over a decade to build. Instead, the UK is committing £1.5 billion to a hybrid navy centered on advanced missiles, sensors, and undersea platforms, alongside a £5 billion autonomous systems envelope over the next four years. We should welcome this specific investment because the UK must prepare for the future of warfighting.

However, the government must go much further, and the DIP ultimately falls short because the government failed to reach the critical 3% GDP defence spending target within this Parliament—opting instead for a path to 2.7% by 2029—while also delaying the 3.5% NATO target all the way to 2035. God forbid Russia was to launch a war against the UK or NATO tomorrow, the UK would not be in a position to counter the Russian threat due to depleted ammunition stockpiles and a regular army hollowed down to an active strength of just over 70,000 personnel. We will be watching this failure very carefully.

The technical failure of the DIP is clear—but the political fallout is just beginning. To read the rest of this data-driven insider analysis on the Treasury-driven compromise that forced John Healey’s resignation, and whether Keir Starmer has left a deliberate fiscal trap for frontrunner Andy Burnham, upgrade to a paid subscription to The Strategic Desk today.

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