Declassified UK: What is Defences Spending For?

Posted: 13th October 2026

What is Defence Spending For?

Anna Stavrianakis

Regular Contributor
Declassified UK

Once again, military and defence matters are in the news: from the sudden withdrawal of US bomber aircraft from RAF Fairford after a suspected terrorist incident, to the Tories’ pledging of £10 billion for an air defence shield in the mould of Israel’s Iron Dome.

This is germane timing for the release of a new report from the Transition Security Project think tank, “Posturing To The World”, which sets out some startling facts about the costs of the UK’s military orientation, both economic and strategic.

The authors draw our attention to the difference between the territorial defence of the UK homeland, and a military posture that is global in scope with UK military bases on five continents and a history of offensive operations overseas – and to the economic and strategic costs of the latter.

The UK has spent more than £51 billion on its participation in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya since 2001, for example – wars that were crimes, not mistakes.

They also advise us that maintaining the UK’s current nuclear posture of continuous at-sea deterrence will cost us – the taxpayers – £116 billion between now and 2040.

And they point out the awkward fact that, for all the talk of financial pressure on military budgets and the clamorous demands for increased spending, waste and fraud are endemic to the Ministry of Defence, while arms companies continue to profit handsomely.

87% of military procurement programmes are delayed or over-cost; since 2010, the MoD has wasted an estimated £14 billion on cancelled procurement projects; and it had an estimated potential fraud exposure of about £2.1 billion in 2024/25.

What to make of this picture, which differs so markedly from what we’re told about the imperatives of increasing military spending? To my mind there are three things this report raises that the UK public deserve better informed, more reasoned debate about.

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First, political, military and economic elites usually conflate defence of the homeland with a globally oriented military posture. In short, when they say ‘defence’ spending, I say ‘military’ spending.

It’s imperative at a time of ecological and cost of living crisis, as well as of diversifying international risks and threats, that we have a reasoned public debate about what defence spending is actually ‘for’.

Second, the British public are increasingly cognisant of the costs of US pressure and domination of the international system, and of the legacies of Britain’s imperial past.

We deserve a more mature debate about the opportunities as well as challenges for a small, multi-racial power like Britain in a fracturing, multipolar world.

And third, political economy goes hand in hand with grand strategy. Britain’s military commitments are expensive, wasteful and riddled with fraud; but crucially, they also don’t ‘work’.

Britons are neither safer nor richer as a result of high military spending and high-tech military ‘solutions’. The Afghans, Iraqis and Libyans, let alone the Yemenis or Palestinians, certainly aren’t either. We all deserve better.

Best wishes,

Anna Stavrianakis

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