Clifford Beal

Keir Starmer has now been shamed into increasing the defence budget to 2.5 percent by 2027, a welcome move but one that will barely touch the sides of the problem. With the Strategic Defence Review being released in a few months (maybe), hard choices will still have to be made on which capabilities to fund. They can’t all be supported, and reconstituting a depleted army and boosting munitions stockpiles will probably be the priority. But there’s another area that has been badly neglected for decades: air and missile defences at home. Being the first nation to be subjected to bombardment by ballistic and cruise missiles some 80 years ago, one might believe that Britain would be prepared for a similar attack in the current day. Sadly, the missile defence picture has changed little.

Aeschylus is credited first for the time-worn aphorism that in war, truth is the first casualty. But in the next major conflict, truth could find itself joined by virtually all information.  As a society at war, we face becoming blind, deaf and dumb once the balloon goes up. Britain and most western countries have put all their eggs in one large basket: that of digital communications. In a time of global conflict, this could be a risky and painful prospect. The rise of digital communications has been a boon but has also opened society to grave risks through cyber war. Ukraine found this out in the first years of its war with Russia. Just as worrying has been the penetration of television, the internet and streaming radio by hacker groups, both military and criminal.