segunda-feira, 2 de junho de 2025

Starmer to announce commissioning of up to 12 new attack submarines

 


28m ago

08.09 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/jun/02/defence-spending-review-army-navy-air-force-keir-starmer-latest-live-politics-news

Starmer to announce commissioning of up to 12 new attack submarines

As mentioned earlier, the Ministry of Defence has been trailing parts of the strategic defence review for days. Here are three press releases they issued last week and over the weekend.

 

More than £1 billion to be invested in pioneering ‘Digital Targeting Web’ to spearhead battlefield engagements, applying lessons learnt from Ukraine to the UK Armed Forces.

 

More than £1.5 billion extra for forces family housing means more than £7 billion to be spent on military accommodation in this Parliament, tackling the poor state of forces accommodation across the country.

 

The UK will build at least six new munitions and energetics factories and thousands more long-range weapons to strengthen Britain’s Armed Forces and create new jobs across the country.

 

And here is an extract from the news release issued overnight, saying Keir Starmer will announce the commissioning of up to 12 new attack submarines. The MoD says:

 

The prime minister will announce … that the UK’s conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine fleet will be significantly expanded, with up to 12 new SSN-AUKUS boats to be built.

 

The increase in submarines will transform the UK’s submarine building industry and, following the £15 billion investment in the warhead programme outlined, will deliver on this government’s Plan for Change, supporting 30,000 highly skilled jobs up-and-down the country well into the 2030s, as well as helping work to deliver 30,000 apprenticeships and 14,000 graduate roles across the next ten years.

 

The announcement comes as the government unveils its new strategic defence review tomorrow. The externally-led review is expected to recommend that our armed forces move to warfighting readiness to deter the growing threats faced by the UK. The report makes 62 recommendations, which the government is expected to accept in full.

 

41m ago

07.56 BST

Keir Starmer to unveil strategic defence review and put UK on ‘war-fighting readiness’

Good morning. In his great history of 20th century Britain, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, David Edgerton uses the phrase “warfare state” to describe the UK under the post-war Attlee government, and its successors. He does so to make the point that, although we think of that period as the era of the welfare state, defence spending was still huge (around 10% of GDP in the early 1950s). Keir Starmer is not going to get anywhere close to that, but “warfare state” still feels like a useful term to describe at least the direction in which he wants to shove Britain, as the strategic defence review being published today will indicate.

 

Starmer will be interviewed on the Today programme shortly. Here is Dan Sabbagh’s overnight preview story on what the defence review will say.

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