David, thank you very much. Thank you all for inviting me here.
Under your leadership, this institution RUSI really has gone from strength to strength in your last five years despite your first two years as Chair being that very tough period for us all during Covid.
So David let me thank you this afternoon, to Rachel and the hugely impressive team here at RUSI, not just for this conference, for hosting us for these two days but also for serving as not just simply a long-standing critical friend to government – yes long standing but much needed critic of the government.
And really in the way that the world changing the way as it is and defence is changing in the way that it is – I think we need this institution’s expert independent voice to be heard more loudly now than ever.
So thank you for the work that you have done and thank you all of you involved in RUSI.
At the outset now perhaps I can take the opportunity to say a few words on the deteriorating situation in the Middle East.
Because this is a dangerous moment for the entire region. And we as a government have been consistent, clear and strong.
We have always supported Israel’s right to security and we have had grave concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme.
And I repeat the call on all sides to show restraint this afternoon.
Because a diplomatic resolution rather than military action is the only route to lasting stability in the region.
And in terms of our UK operational response, the military assets including the additional Typhoon jets announced by the Prime Minister have begun arriving – the first wave have already arrived and the rest will follow in coming days.
And I have ensured that force protection is now at its highest level.
So this operational response is to protect our personnel, it is to reassure our partners and it is to reinforce the urgent need for de-escalation.
Returning to today, to your programme – I remember last year’s Land Warfare Conference – I think it was one of if not the first public speech I gave after having the privilege of taking up this job. And it came just a week after the Prime Minister kicked off the Strategic Defence Review.
And I told you in this room actually back then that it would be a Review that would be done with the Army, and not to the Army.
And I hope with General Walker giving the SDR what he called his “unequivocal support and commitment” this morning – you’re confidence that we met that promise.
And some of you in the room here, you were part of dozens of submissions that we had from serving personnel, for which we are really grateful.
And not just the submissions including formal discussions with senior Army officers but actually I hope you see in the SDR the proposals in the core submissions from the Army have been accepted in the review by the reviewers almost in full.
And this is an SDR that will transform our Army – transform it to meet the challenges and threats in the decades ahead.
And it will do so by combining the future technology of drones and AI with the heavy metal of our tanks and artillery to the deter threats we may face.
Many of you have been around for long enough to have seen previous reviews. Many of you have been around for long enough probably to be thinking – well great promises but we’ve seen so many of these reviews put on shelves and gather dust next to the previous reviews that came before.
The point that I stress today is that for me and everyone in defence, the ten months of hard work to get to the point where we have launched the SDR is just the start not the end of the work that is needed.
So our adversaries aren’t hanging around and nor are we.
And have a plan now in government to make Britain safer, secure at home and strong abroad.
2.6 per cent of GDP on defence in 2027 as the Chancellor confirmed last week in the Spending Review. This gives us the means to implement the SDR.
And the SDR is a review, a defence review – the first for a generation – which aims to build out rather than hollow out our armed forces.
A review that is backed by an ambition to hit 3 per cent of GDP spending in the next parliament. And a review that is matched and underwritten by the prospect of a decade of rising defence investment.
It will bring big changes to our armed forces.
You discussed it this afternoon with that top level distinguished panel – the SDR will see an integrated force – greater than the sum of its parts – but that does not mean a lessening the importance of the Army.
The SDR made promises of an Army that is larger in size and greater in lethality.
And today, I’ll speak about how I’ll play a role as Defence Secretary alongside General Roly to deliver on those pledges.
Let me start with what matters most to me and that’s our people.
To maintain advantage, every Army must evolve with the times. Technologies emerge. Tactics advance but the one thing that stays constant is the need for talent.
Ultimately, it is people who win, it’s the people who prevail, it’s the people who win wars.
The British Army has in its ranks some of the finest soldiers the world over.
But for too long, our Army has been asked to do more with less.
And like most things in life, building up is actually harder than cutting down.
But we are acting already to stem the losses that we’ve seen long term in recent years, and while reversing that long-term decline can’t be done overnight – that will take time – but I want the number of full-time soldiers to rise to at least 76,000 into the next parliament.
And let me set out some of the elements of how we will do that.
First, I really don’t recognise the claims that you often hear in the media and from the commentators that somehow the next generation don’t want to fight for their country.
In the last decade, one million young people applied to join the military. They are the very lifeblood of the Army.
Every day, young men and women stepping forward in search of the opportunity, the sense of purpose and pride, in search of something greater than they have in their lives at present.
And yet of that million, more than 3 in 4 simply gave up in large part because of long delays in the process.
They gave up before they were even recruited or rejected.
So in response, we’ve set new targets, we’ve scrapped old policies and red tape and we’re starting to turn those numbers around.
And my pledge to you is that the Army will have the pipeline of people it needs to defend our nation and our nation’s interests.
And just as we’ll encourage more people to join, we’ll persuade more people to stay. And we’ll do that by renewing the nation’s contract with those who serve and the families who support them as they serve.
Better pay, better housing, better conditions, better kit.
The thing that really has troubled me most in the last month was the Continuous Attitude Survey that found that only 1 in 4 service personnel believe that they’re valued by society.
That has plummeted over the last 12 years. The best way to prove to those people, to our personnel that the nation cares is not just what we say but it’s what we do.
And that’s why it was important to me that last year we were able to award our service personnel the biggest pay increase for over 20 years. It was important to me that we could follow it up this year with another above inflation pay award.
Homes with mould, damp and leaks are a betrayal of their service and we’re starting to put that right.
We’ve bought back now 36,000 military family homes from a private funds into public control. We’ve pledged an extra £1.5 billion to put into military family homes in this Parliament as part of £7 billion investment that will go into military accommodation in the next few years.
We’re introducing a new Consumer Charter – the basics that any of us would expect from any home that we occupy, any home that we rent – we’re doing that for our forces families.
We’re extending Wraparound Childcare to those deployed overseas just to help make family life a little easier.
We’ve legislated in Parliament for a new independent voice – the Armed Forces Commissioner that will help improve service life and I’m happy to say that from last week applications for that post are now open.
Me, the ministerial team, General Roly, we all share a determination to make life better for members of our armed forces and the families that support them.
And in doing so, we will – for the first time in a generation – grow the British Army.
Warfighting and the welfare of our forces are not in conflict or competition. They go hand in hand.
We cannot have our soldiers worried about a broken boiler or how they’ll make ends meet if we want the Army’s organising principle to be – as General Roly said – “warfighting at scale”.
And in a more dangerous world, this is a shift we simply have to make.
Before I go further, I want to note that at least 15 people were killed and more than 100 injured last night in Kyiv, a grim reminder that whatever else is happening in the world, Putin’s war still rages on eastern flank of Europe.
Ukrainians are continuing to fight with huge courage – civilians and military alike and I just say to you that the UK and the UK Government’s commitment to those Ukrainians remains as steadfast as it has been from the start and we will stand with the Ukrainian people for as long as it takes.
We will stand with them and we will work with them and for the purposes of this conference we will also learn from them.
Because the revolutionary technology in Ukraine – helped by the UK – has been the drone.
So lethal in force, they’re now killing more people than artillery – the first time Offensive Support has been overtaken since World War One.
So systemic to strategy and tactics as the invention of the machine gun or to the heavy armour specialists in the audience – the tank.
So effective in targeting, that the Russian military has swapped armour for motorbikes to evade detection.
And so maximum in impact that we saw a little over 100 drones destroy or damaged more than 50 of Putin’s strategic bombers in Operation Spider Web.
This is why the SDR calls for that tenfold increase in the Army’s lethality. Credit must go to Roly for his foresight and his ambition in setting that out.
He set the ambition. He set the vision. And I’m backing that as Defence Secretary with the funding to deliver it.
So today I’m announcing and confirming that we from this year will be investing more than £100 million in new, initial funding to develop land drone swarms.
Our Autonomous Collaborative Platforms will fly alongside the Apache attack helicopters and enhance the Army’s ability to strike, survive and win on the battlefield.
You’ve seen the vision in the SDR, you’ve heard the plan from Roly earlier – this will be a game-changer. It will be applying the lessons from Ukraine in a world-leading way, it will be putting the UK at the leading edge of innovation in NATO.
Alongside our ability to move forward with greater combat mass, we’re investing in AI and drones to strike further and faster through Project ASGARD.
In well under a year, we’ve developed and procured these recce-strike systems that allow our soldiers to connect the sensor to the shooter in record beating time.
These are systems already tested. These are systems that in part are already in Estonia. These are systems that we plan to deploy in 2027 as part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender Exercise.
The lessons from ASGARD will inform our new integrated Digital Targeting Web as recommended in the SDR. The SDR has challenged us to develop this over the next two years. And so in order to meet that challenge, I’ve also made the commitment that we will back that by £1 billion of new investment.
Finally, this isn’t just about the world-leading programmes that I’ve mentioned, but it’s also about embedding drones into our training, in our psyche and in our culture.
And by doubling spending to £4 billion on uncrewed systems in this Parliament through the SDR and by establishing a new Drone Centre we’ll accelerate the use of uncrewed air systems across all of our services.
The Army will train thousands of operators on First Person View, Surveillance and Dropper drones.
This summer, the Army will begin the rollout of 3,000 strike drones followed by a further rollout of over 1,000 surveillance drones.
And we will equip every Section with a drone.
And together, this work marks a crucial shift in our deterrence. It sends a clear signal to anyone seeking to do us or our allies harm and sets the pathway to an Army that can indeed be ten times more lethal.
Let me draw if I may to an end by saying that the British Army has always been a force feared by our adversaries and respected by allies.
And in this new era of threat, we will be asking more of our soldiers. And it is only right our soldiers expect more of their government.
In return, they’ll be members of an Army with better pay, with better housing, with better kit. They’ll be members of an Army greater in lethality, greater in size.
An Army that makes Britain safer – secure at home and strong abroad.