Defence: a conversation

By Richard North - November 20, 2025

A certain amount of publicity has been given to the Defence Committee Report published yesterday bearing the title: “The UK contribution to European Security”.

One might, though, have a little difficulty tying the headlines to the report, although this may be partly due to the Committee itself which entitled its press release “Defence Committee: ‘questions raised about UK’s fundamental ability to defend itself’”, with the first paragraph reading:

In a report published today, the Defence Committee sounds the alarm over the UK’s ability to defend its homeland and Overseas Territories, finding that we may be failing to meet our NATO Article 3 obligations to “maintain and develop individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack”.

Taking its cue from this, we have the Guardian offering: “UK lacks plan to defend itself from attack, warn MPs”, with the sub-head: “Public should be told nature of threat posed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says defence committee chair”.

The BBC posts something very similar on its website, reporting “UK lacks plan to defend itself from invasion, MPs warn”, while the Mail goes for something more ambitious, declaring: “Britain has NO plan to fight off an invasion, MPs warn – as Defence Secretary vows to build more weapons in the UK”.

The Telegraph started off the day with a piece headed: “Britain not ready to defend itself, review finds”, adding the sub-head: “UK ‘lacks plan to protect homeland’ in face of growing threats from China and Russia, MPs told”.

This gathered stature during the day, ending up with the overnight report for today’s print edition, headed: “The terrifying lack of missile defence leaving Britain open to attack”, with the sub-head telling us: “As the ‘thorn in Russia’s side’, the UK’s military targets and civilian infrastructure are more vulnerable than ever”.

The Times, however, took a different tack, running a report headed: “UK to mass produce explosives for first time in a generation”, in which was embedded a reference to the Defence Committee report.

The themes were linked by the sub-head which told us: “Thirteen sites identified for ‘energetics’ factories to make arms needed to defend country from attack, after pressure to end reliance on the US military”, the latter being one of the points made by the Defence Committee.

Coincidentally, yesterday also brought us a speech from defence secretary John Healey, setting out the threats to which (in his view) the UK was exposed.

The speech was given in the wake of the Russian spy ship Yantar which was threatening UK waters between 5 and 11 November, which Healey took to be a “stark reminder that we are in a new era of threat”, in a changing world.

According to Healey, this changing world is less predictable and more dangerous. In the past year alone, he says, we’ve seen the Iran-Israel war drag the Middle East close to the brink, armed conflict break out between India and Pakistan, and Chinese spies targeting our democracy at home.

We’ve also had Putin escalate still further his war in Ukraine and just this last year we have also seen Europe’s skies plagued by drone disruptions. We’ve seen Russian incursions into NATO airspace double and we’ve seen 90,000 cyber-attacks on the UK Defence system alone.

This, in effect, nicely sets the scene for the Defence Committee report, as Healey concludes that this new era of threat demands a new era for defence, “an era of hard power, strong allies and sure diplomacy”. And as the threat grows, he adds, “Britain must step up”.

It is there that the Committee steps in, rather than stepping up, with its own particular contribution The public, it says. need to understand not only the necessity of defence but also their role in it.

It goes on to tells is that it (the Committee) is “very supportive of the concept of a national conversation on defence” and it recommends that the Government (and MOD in particular) seek to increase public awareness of recent attacks against the UK, including sabotage, and cyber-attacks, through regular public briefings.

Understandably, given its lamentable performance on just about everything, and especially procurement, the Committee feels that the MOD should not lead the national conversation. But its alternative is hardly better as it calls for the responsibility to be “personally led by the prime minister”, perhaps the most unpopular holder of this office since the dawn of time.

In times gone by, I might have explored the idea of a “conversation” further, although any attempt to promote a realistic dialogue might founder on the inability of the legacy media to report on key issues with any depth or understanding.

The Ajax controversy is a good example of this, where the emphasis is still on the noise produced by the vehicles – an issue important enough in itself but actually of lesser importance than the flaws in its main armament and the fact that the battlefield concept is probably obsolete, evidenced by the equipment and tactics dominating the conflict in Ukraine.

Another example is evoked by The Times piece on explosives, building on a government press release which tells us that multiple sites across the UK have been identified for new factories to make munitions and military explosives to boost the UK’s warfighting readiness.

This presages a building programme to remedy the situation where, for the past 20 years, the UK has been without the sovereign capability to manufacture explosives. We have been in the embarrassing and vulnerable position of having to import from France, the United States, and other sources, the basic material to fill the shells for the guns the British Army no longer has, and the propellant for its small arms ammunition.

But the point here is that, when in November 2005, it was announced that the very last military explosives factory left in the UK was to be closed down, I covered the event in my EU Referendum blog but in later despairing reports, in first this piece and then this, that, apart from Booker, the legacy media was not in the least bit interested in reporting such momentous events.

It is also the case that, in 2001, with the completion of the order to supply the British Army with SA80 assault rifles, the manufacturing facility in Nottingham was closed down, leaving us with no sovereign capability to produce rifles for our own Army, the first time since the 1690s that we have been without that capability – a lack that exists to this day.

With the SA80 projected to be taken out of service in 2030 – and urgent replacement being necessary, as the 5.56x45mm round lacks lethality on the modern battlefield – the race is now on to find a replacement, especially as US forces are moving to replace their squad weapons with the Sig Sauer 6.8x51mm XM7 rifle.

However, with only five years left to run, the MoD’s Project Grayburn, under which the new weapon will be procured, is still in the concept phase.

By the time the MoD gets round to deciding which weapon it wants, and has finished with devising its own specific modifications, every other Nato force will also be looking for replacements – in the interests of interoperability. The British Army will be at the end of a very long queue for its 170,000 new rifles.

Outside the specialist publications, though, I have seen no “conversation” on this in the legacy media. Perhaps Starmer could start one by explaining why, in 2001, Blair’s Labour administration gave up the UK’s capacity to manufacture its own military weapons.

But there again, if we are to have a conversation about defence and the ability to withstand an invasion, perhaps we should be ignoring Healey’s list of threats and look at what is happening in the here and now, as hundreds of thousands of military-age aliens land, uninvited, on our shores.

Interestingly, the Telegraph, in its piece, opens by asserting that, were the Battle of Britain to take place again today, it would probably not be the UK’s finest hour.

When Germany tried its conquest 85 years ago, the paper says, the much larger Luftwaffe was held off by “The Few”. But today, the opening salvoes in the skies would be Russian missiles, and rather than having “The Few” to defend it, Britain now has “next to nothing”.

But had the Germans invaded – not that that was ever going to happen, “The Few” notwithstanding” – the initial seaborne assault would have been launched in dinghies rather like the one shown in the picture above.

Today, the shock troops of the new invading army are plucked from their dinghies in mid-Channel by British vessels – Border Force cutters or RNLI lifeboats – and comfortably housed and fed at the taxpayers’ expense, their numbers being left free to rape and murder their way round the country, as the home secretary plots to bring in more of them.

If we are to have a “conversation” about defence, therefore, this new “Battle of Britain” might be the better place to start.