Britain to get defence boost to send message to Moscow — and possibly Trump

PM Starmer pledges sweeping changes to UK defenses in response to growing threats from Russia and cyberattacks.

The United Kingdom will build new nuclear-powered attack submarines and create an army ready to fight a war in Europe as part of a boost to military spending designed to send a message to Moscow — and Washington.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses” as he pledged to undertake the most sweeping changes to Britain's defences since the end of the Cold War more than three decades ago.

“We have to recognise the world has changed," Mr. Starmer told the BBC. “With greater instability than there has been for many, many years, and greater threats.”

The Government is to respond to a strategic defence review commissioned by Mr. Starmer and led by George Robertson, a former U.K. Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General. It's the first such review since 2021, and lands in a world shaken and transformed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and by the re-election of President Donald Trump last year.

Months after Britain's last major defence review was published in 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson said with confidence that the era of “fighting big tank battles on European landmass” is over. Three months later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

Mr. Starmer's centre-left Labour Party Government says it will accept all 62 recommendations made in the review, aiming to help the U.K. confront growing threats on land, air sea and in cyberspace.

Defence Secretary John Healey said the changes would send “a message to Moscow, and transform the country's military following decades of retrenchment, though he said he does not expect the number of soldiers, currently at a historic low, to rise until the early 2030s.