Several news outlets are using this as a headline, somewhat OTT imo, but I'm referring to the Review published yesterday by the government and of course the different POV around how much we can spend and the timing of changes (and tax implications!)
The basics:
The review of Armed Forces came out yesterday, it was the first one since 2010.
"Led by Lord Robertson – a former defence secretary and Nato secretary general who conducted Labour’s last defence review in 1998 – it has consulted 150 external experts, received 8,000 submissions to a call for evidence, and runs to 48,000 words"
Apparently "the armed forces “lack the mass, resilience and internal coherence necessary to maintain a deterrent effect and sustain prolonged conflict”. Philip Stephens of the Financial Times wrote that those conclusions “are viewed within Whitehall as wholly uncontroversial”. There are 62 recommendations all of which the government accepted.
There are lots of detail in the all the newspapers, with disagreements about is it enough and is it soon enough.
As well as an increase in troops the main shift takes account of new ways of warfare (AI, robots, lasers) and a fundamental change in the overall picture of what the threats are, and of course how much we should spend on the military as opposed to other needs.
(I noticed that the government are considering a scheme where young people can do an optional one year sampling of military life (as opposed to Sunak's ideas of a compulsory military service)
news.sky.com/story/ai-robots-lasers-and-gap-years-in-armed-forces-key-details-as-uk-to-become-battle-ready-13378251
is a good summary
