The UK is set to publish a Defence Investment Plan on 2 July that redirects military spending away from large warships and toward drones and uncrewed systems, modeled on tactics used in Ukraine's war against Russia, the Ministry of Defence said on 29 June, according to Politico.
The shift marks one of the UK's biggest armed forces overhauls in decades. Where Britain's military strength has for decades rested on expensive crewed platforms—aircraft carriers, submarines, guided-missile destroyers—the new plan follows what the Ministry of Defence described as a focus on "cheap systems destroying high-value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years."
What the plan cuts
The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) will provide no new funding for up to eight Type 83 guided missile destroyers and Type 32 frigates, vessels that had been central to plans to expand the Royal Navy's surface fleet during the 2030s.
In their place, the UK will fund at least six Common Combat Vessels, designed to act as control ships for uncrewed systems including Type 93 underwater anti-submarine vessels, Type 91 uncrewed missile platforms, and Type 92 and Type 94 unmanned sensor platforms for air and sea.
Drone investment and Ukraine's example
The plan adds roughly £15 billion to the UK's £270 billion defense budget over the course of this parliament, according to the Financial Times. Of that, £5 billion is earmarked for what the government calls a drone transformation, with the Ministry of Defence citing Ukraine's monthly drone use as the model: the 200,000 drones which are used each month by Ukraine as the benchmark the UK wants to match.
The plan also funds what the Ministry of Defence calls Europe's biggest drone testing center, paired with a new task force tasked with continuously scaling drone production for British forces.
Ross Exley, vice president of defense strategy at Hadean, a UK tech company on the government's Defence Industrial Joint Council, said: "Technology on the battlefield is changing at lightning speed. The clear lesson from Ukraine tells us that drones have changed the character of warfare."
Air power and political context
The Royal Air Force shift includes a national Collaborative Combat Air program to develop autonomous jets flying alongside crewed aircraft—linked to the British-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme developing a sixth-generation fighter.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, senior associate fellow at the RUSI defense think tank, said Britain needs to retain a large navy as a global trading power but must shift focus toward becoming "much leaner and meaner." He added it was "slightly ironic that Britain started training the Ukrainians back in 2022, and now they could be very much training us — they are showing us how war should be fought these days."
The DIP will be published by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in one of his last acts before stepping down. Its implementation will fall to Andy Burnham, who is expected to become prime minister later this summer. Under the plan, the U.K. will move toward—but not yet reach—NATO's target of 3.5 percent of GDP on defense spending by 2035; the Ministry of Defence has not set out a clear funding pathway for hitting that target, and U.K. spending currently trails Germany, France, and Poland.
The plan follows last year's Strategic Defence Review, which found that "state conflict has returned to Europe," and comes after a funding crunch that prompted former Defence Secretary John Healey to resign earlier this month.
