03 Jun The Strategic Defence Review: 10 Key Takeaways

On the 2nd June 2025, after almost a year of waiting, the UK Government released its much anticipated Strategic Defence Review. At 144 pages long, the Review explores, in depth, the challenges facing UK defence and national security and provides 62 recommendations (all of which the Government has accepted) on how to respond to these challenges. Here are ten of the key takeaways:

1. The UK is moving to a position of ‘war-fighting’ readiness. 

If you thought the 2023 Integrated Review was a sombre read, the 2025 Strategic Defence Review sets out an even bleaker picture of the global environment, and issues a rallying cry for a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to national security. Particularly striking is the outline on page 31 of the ‘potential effects of war on the UK’s way of life’ which succinctly and clearly elucidates what might happen if the UK were to engage in state-on-state war as part of NATO in 2025. 

In response, the Review’s guiding principle appears to be the dictum, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’. The Review therefore calls for the UK to move to a position of ‘war-readiness’, through a swathe of commitments to improve defence capabilities, such as a £1.5 billion investment in an ‘always on’ pipeline for munitions. It also includes plans for the creation of a ‘Defence Readiness Bill’ which would give the Government ‘additional powers in reserve to support the mobilisation of industry and Reserves’. 

2. However, still no commitment to 3% GDP defence spending. 

Despite the clear sense of urgency in scaling up and transforming the UK’s defensive capabilities to meet growing global threats, the Review doesn’t commit to increasing defence spending beyond its existing “ambition to reach 3% in the next Parliament, subject to economic and fiscal conditions” outlined earlier this year.

While there are very real challenges of increasing defence spending further, and it would require difficult trade offs, it is near impossible to achieve many of the ambitions outlined in the Review without a further increase in defence spending. 

The commitment also falls short of the 5% GDP defence spending target United States President Trump is pushing for from NATO allies, and the 3.5% GDP spending target that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wishes to see. The latter is particularly challenging given the Review’s strong focus on ‘leading within NATO’, especially given other NATO members are rapidly scaling up their defence spending. Poland, for example, has increased its defence spend from 2.7% in 2022 to 4.2% in 2024, with a further increase to 4.7% expected in 2025.

3. A ‘NATO-first’ and Europe-focused defence and security policy. 

With war still raging in Europe, and the United States ‘adapt(ing) its regional priorities’ – as the Review very diplomatically puts it – it is unsurprising that NATO and Europe take pride of place in the Review. The Review emphasises the ‘unequivocal need’ for the UK to step up its support for NATO and for Euro-Atlantic security, arguing that ‘the Alliance must be the starting point for how the (UK’s) Armed Forces are developed, organised, equipped, and trained’.  

While the Review states that ‘NATO-first’ is not ‘NATO-only’, the limited attention given in the Review to regions beyond the Europe-Atlantic highlights how regionally concentrated the UK’s defence and security efforts will be. The Indo-Pacific and the Middle East are recommended as the ‘next priority regions after the Euro-Atlantic for Defence engagement’, but there are no substantive new commitments to either, and engagement there is caveated by the fact they must avoid ‘detracting from deterrence efforts, warfighting, and capability development in the Euro-Atlantic’. Notably too, the Review states that efforts to deepen bilateral and minilateral relationships should be ‘geared to strengthening Europe’s security architecture’, reaffirming the centrality of Europe in UK defence and security policy. The so-called ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ which dominated the 2021 Integrated Review, and featured in the 2023 version, is all but phased out.

4. Nuclear deterrence is the ‘bedrock’ of UK national security. 

Gone are the days of former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn declaring that he wouldn’t fire nuclear weapons if he were Prime Minister, with nuclear deterrence now taking a front seat in the Strategic Defence Review. The Review warns that ‘Russia’s increasing reliance on nuclear coercion will be the central challenge for the UK and its NATO Allies in the coming decades’ and declares that sustaining the nuclear deterrent should therefore be Defence’s ‘top priority’. 

In response, the Government has pledged to invest £15 billion in the sovereign warhead programme this Parliament and to build up to 12 new attack submarines. The Review also recommends that the UK explores enhancing its participation in NATO’s nuclear mission and that it commits to ‘not extending the life of the Dreadnought class submarines beyond their intended end-of-service dates from the mid-2050s’.

5. A ‘Defence dividend’.

A central premise of the Review is that defence should not only deliver for the UK in terms of security, but it should also drive growth and jobs in the UK. Through a £6 billion investment in munitions this Parliament and building at least six new energetics and munitions factories in the UK, the Government aims to generate over 1,000 jobs and boost export potential. A pledge to build up to 7,000 new long-range weapons in the UK is also said to support around 800 jobs, while 9000 will apparently be supported by a £15 billion investment in the sovereign warhead programme. 

At the same time, a new Defence Exports Office in the MOD will help to drive UK defence exports, and the MOD will also seek to establish a new partnership with industry that ‘maximises internal and industrial expertise, accelerates acquisition processes, manages risk and cost, and engages a wider set of suppliers’. The forthcoming Defence Industrial Strategy is therefore seen as an important opportunity to put some meat on the bones and to embed radical reforms that ensure Defence delivers for the UK economy.

6. No extra troops but a better deal for the armed forces. 

The British army is currently the smallest it has been in 300 years, with just 70,860 full-time trained soldiers, below the target of 73,000 and with more personnel leaving than joining each year. While the Review recommends that ‘a small uplift in Regular personnel should be considered when funding allows’, it stops short of committing to increasing the number of full-time trained soldiers in the immediate term (something it is widely rumored Defence secretary John Healey had pushed for).

It does, however, focus heavily on how to stem the workforce crisis in the armed forces. This includes commitments to £7 billion in funding in this parliament to modernise military accommodation, as well as establishing a career education pathway for the whole force by 2026 and developing a plan for creating more novel pathways into the armed forces, including offering shorter commitments to engage such as the MOD’s forthcoming plans for ‘gap years’. 

7. A ‘Tech-enabled’ defence power. 

Responding to the changing nature of conflict, not least lessons from the war in Ukraine, the Review outlines ambitions for the UK to be a ‘leading tech-enabled defence power’ by 2035. This includes plans for a new ‘Digital Warfighter Group’ to be deployed alongside conventional warfighters, the creation of a Cyber and Electromagnetic (CyberEM) Command cohering, but not executing, military action in this arena, as well as the creation of a ‘digital targeting web’ to enable more rapid, integrated battlefield decisions. The Review also recommends that at least 10% of the MOD’s equipment procurement budget is spent on novel technologies each year, to enable rapid commercial exploitation.

8. China is a ‘sophisticated and persistent challenge’. 

Having already moved the UK closer to China, and without the prominent internal China hawk wing that consistently challenged the last Government’s China policy, this Review hasn’t been plagued by debates about whether or not to declare China a ‘threat’ in the way the Integrated Reviews were. Instead it opts to refer to China as a ‘sophisticated and persistent challenge’. 

Nevertheless, the Review does highlight some of the threats China poses, focusing particularly on Chinese technology, its rapid military modernisation and growth in nuclear weapons. Despite identifying these challenges, the Review does not identify any direct solutions to them, although the Government will hope that efforts to modernise the UK’s own capabilities, particularly in cyber and technology, will help mitigate some of these challenges indirectly.

9. Public opinion matters. 

A highlight, and welcome innovation, in the Review is the inclusion of quotes from members of the public who engaged in the Reviews’ ‘Citizens Panel’ throughout the Review process. The panels and quotes reflect a renewed recognition of the importance of domestic consent for international decisionmaking. This is also reflected in a number of the recommendations, including around the need for a ‘‘National Endeavour’ public campaign around nuclear deterrence, as well plans for two years of public outreach events and improved education about the armed forces in schools. Domestic consent for foreign policy decisionmaking has always been a top priority for BFPG and it is great to see its importance recognised. Stay tuned because BFPG’s annual public opinion survey be back soon, featuring analysis of public perspectives of many of the issues covered in the Review.

10. …But public and parliamentary scrutiny could be better. 

All 144 pages of the Strategic Defence Review dropped in Parliament at 5pm on a Monday, just as wonks, journos and politicians had begun to close their laptops for the day, and after days of endless leaks and major press statements from the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary earlier in the morning. The result has been days of media coverage of the big headlines – like defence spending – and much less scrutiny, in public and in parliament, of the detail. This is only compounded by the fact the Review is, as these Reviews often are, long and unwieldy. Reading it is a slog, and while the two-page version of the Strategy (which I’d definitely recommend reading) is very welcome as a more accessible digest, it is to the detriment of the strategy that the full version is not more digestible, and that public and parliamentary scrutiny were not prioritised more highly in the launch of the Review. If the Government wants a whole-of-society response to defence, it has to start by enabling and encouraging proper scrutiny.