BELFAST — The UK’s most senior uniformed official gave a warning to lawmakers today that future military operations will be reduced if extra funding is not approved by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Treasury to support the Ministry of Defence.
Richard Knighton, chief of the UK defense staff, told a House of Lords committee that he is “most concerned” about day-to-day operations budgeting, which falls under a Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) account.
“Without changes to the settlement that, as [former Defense Secretary] John Healey set out” then operations, training and exercising “will come under pressure,” Knighton said.
Healey resigned from his post last week, amid a row over a defense funding plan, which he viewed as insufficient, and said “could make the country less safe.”
When asked by George Robertson, chair of the Lords International Relations and Defence Committee, if the UK will have to reduce its capabilities as funding uncertainty persists, Knighton said, “We will have to dial back our activities and our exercise and operational activity if the level of resource funding that is available to us does not increase.”
He further noted that the matter “is still to be debated and decided.”
It remains to be seen if Starmer and the Treasury will offer new UK Defense Secretary Dan Jarvis funding above £13.5 billion ($18.1 billion), a figure reportedly offered to Healey in a bid to stem a £18 billion gap to support big ticket acquisitions. The alleged budget is reportedly set to be partly funded by cutting other departments’ capital budgets by 1 percent.
The new funding is set to be included in the UK’s forthcoming Defence Investment Plan (DIP), billed to outline major equipment investments and cuts over the next decade. After months of delay, the document is expected to be published before the NATO Summit in Ankara next month.
“What we need is a clear path” to meet NATO’s core defense spending target of 3.5 percent GDP, Knighton said today. “We will need to settle what that trajectory is, because it’s that which gives us the ability to plan, and industry the ability to know what to expect.”
The UK committed at the NATO Summit in the Hague last year to hit the new alliance target by 2035. Starmer is proposing spending of 2.68 percent GDP by 2030, up from 2.3 percent spent in 2025.
Knighton revealed, however, that cuts are on the way near term. “In the [2025] Strategic Defence Review … the plan was for some capabilities to be removed from service, because they could be modernized, they could be delivered in more effective ways,” as the UK took heed of lessons from wars in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Middle East, he outlined.
He pushed back on any sense that the UK’s credibility in the eyes of NATO allies has been adversely affected by the DIP delay. Since taking up the post of chief of the defense staff last year, “One of the things that has struck me is just how valued the UK’s leadership is in NATO,” he noted.
Knighton pointed to two joint British-French missions, as examples of deployments where “other nations look to us to lead.” The European partners are committed to leading the coalition of the willing in Ukraine, and the maritime multinational mission in the Strait of Hormuz, once peace is restored in Kyiv and the troubled waterway.
The UK “may soon have to put our money where our mouth is” to adequately support those planned international operations, “but where’s the money?” Paul Taylor, senior visiting fellow at the Belgian-based, European Policy Centre think tank, told Breaking Defense today.
“There is an enduring mismatch between the UK wanting to exert leadership in NATO on defense” and its available resources, added the analyst.
