The United Kingdom’s much-awaited Defence Investment Plan is finally published, detailing the Ministry of Defence’s spending commitments for the coming years.
On 30th June, the British government published the United Kingdom’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP). The DIP has been the subject of controversy: Its initial publication date of 2025 slipped to early 2026 and thence to the summer. The document finally saw the light of day at the end of June. Delays were blamed on wranglings between the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Treasury, the UK’s economic and financial ministry. Specifically, the Treasury and MOD were at loggerheads on how to address a $23 billion gap in the country’s defence funding plans. The disagreement caused the resignation of John Heeley, the UK defence secretary, and armed forces minister Al Carns on 11th June. The UK MOD had been offered $15.3 billion by the Treasury, over $7 billion less that what was needed to make good these funding shortfalls. To further complicate matters, the British government has pledged to increase defence spending from 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2027 to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035.
The DIP sets out what capabilities the UK will acquire to meet the goals the country articulated in the 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The SDR outlined the country’s strategic priorities in the coming years and how these will be addressed. As Armada has reported in the past, the SDR pledged to establish a Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) Command. The command will be responsible for overseeing electromagnetic manoeuvre for the achievement of Electromagnetic Superiority and Supremacy (E2S) at the strategic, operational and tactical level.
The Defence Investment Plan promises to invest $383 billion over the coming four years into UK defence. Of this money, $3.3 billion will be invested into the country’s CEMA Command. However, while the DIP doth bring, the DIP doth take away. Some legacy capabilities have been chopped to free funds for new assets. In the Electronic Warfare (EW) realm the DIP says the Royal Air Force’s Beechcraft Shadow-R1/2 tactical/operational Communications Intelligence (COMINT) gathering platforms will be retired ahead of their planned 2030 out of service date.
Regarding specifics, the DIP states that the planned $3.3 billion investment will include cash for “automated detection and response to counter advanced threats”. Up to $172 million will be invested in Project Crenic to procure jammers for force protection against radio-controlled improvised explosive devices and Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Other CEMA commitments include the “adoption of standards for interoperability and (to) sustain electromagnetic capabilities across maritime, land and air”. A further $6.6 billion will be invested between 2030 and 2035 in CEMA capabilities “to enhance our ability to provide a secure cyber and electromagnetic environment – essential for UK Defence and broader national security interests”. As to exactly what capabilities will be acquired to make this vision a reality, it is difficult to say as the DIP states that “(d)ue to the sensitivities of technology under development, further details are held at a higher classification”.
Analysis
As is sometimes the case, policy documents like the DIP end up raising more questions than they answer. Conspicuous by its absence is the British Army’s Project Poynting/Cornerstone land forces cyber and electronic warfare system. As in the land forces communications domain, the recent history of UK land forces EW procurement has been unhappy. Initial plans to overhaul UK land EW capabilities occurred in 2003 with the launch of Project Soothsayer that was then cancelled in 2009 amidst cost overruns. Soothsayer was replaced by Project Landseeker in 2009 only to be cancelled a few years later. The latest attempt, in the form of Poynting/Cornerstone, commenced in 2022.
MOD sources recently shared with Armada that the preferred industrial team for both the Cornerstone and Poynting programmes had been finalised. A formal announcement, they continued, is still to be made as the unsuccessful team was yet to be debriefed on the reasons it failed downselect. This information implies that Poynting/Cornerstone is still going ahead. Nonetheless, concerns abound regarding the shape of this capability. A key lesson learnt from the ongoing war in Ukraine concerns the vulnerability of large, vehicle-mounted, static EW systems to attack by artillery and UAVs. The UK land forces’ new EW capability will need to be survivable as well as capable. Delays may have crept into the programme to reconfigure it thus. The technology underpinning Poynting/Cornerstone will need to be easy to update, perhaps in hours, as the tactical and operational electromagnetic battle develops. Both sides in the Ukraine war have exploited large networks of unattended, attritable jammers, electronic support measures and C2 systems deployed over large areas to electromagnetically deny spectrum to the adversary, particularly to fly UAVs.
UK land forces simply cannot be without this capability either delivered through Poynting/Cornerstone or via the enigmatic procurement of capabilities to enable “automated detection and response to counter advanced threats”. As Armada has made clear on numerous occasions UK land forces have waited over 20 years for new EW capabilities. The force can wait no longer if it is to ensure it can perform electromagnetic manoeuvre to win and sustain E2S in future conflicts.
by Dr. Thomas Withington
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