Risk vs reindustrialisation at Farnborough
Andy Burnham wants to reindustralise but can it be delivered through an agile defence?
Underneath the roar of the Americans showing off the ritzy F-35A and the grace of the UAE’s National Aerobatics Team at the Farnborough International Airshow, the revamped Labour government sounded some revived vibes about their defence strategy.
‘We are going to reindustrialise this nation and create the jobs and opportunities people desperately want to see,’ the UK’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham said in a vertically-filmed video show played to attendees of Defence Minister Wes Streeting’s speech.
He said the civil aerospace and defence sector alone would support half a million jobs by 2030. Two-thirds, he said, were outside of London and the South-East of England.
‘We want to go further … we are going to honour our commitments on defence and use that investment to transform people’s lives and we are going to work even more closely with our allies.’
Burnham’s initial signals, which were sounded on his third day in Number 10, raise several questions.
The first is what he will define as ‘commitment.’ Technically, the UK has resolved to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035 in line with NATO allies. But for that promise to be taken credibly, the 2030 goal is important, as Burnham’s hand-picked Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey told us when he quit Keir Starmer’s cabinet in June.
Healey said in his resignation letter that the UK was on track to hit 2.68 per cent of GDP, but thought that it should be 3 per cent. So will he deliver on his own words now that he has control over the public purse? And if so, how much sooner will they pump the funding into defences and with what money? Cuts, taxes or borrowing?
It will be difficult for Healey, an excellent choice for Chancellor, to maintain credibility if he is not willing to proceed with the decisions he was urging his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, to make when she was denying him the money. We will likely see more in Burnham’s post-summer ten-year plan that he has promised.
The second, and perhaps more challenging question Burnham’s thinking on defence raises is around reindustrialisation.
Streeting, a young, ambitious, reformer and right-winger, who was desperate for the gig but was not Burnham’s first choice for defence (it was Reeves), spoke in person at Farnborough after Burnham’s two-minute video message. He said that Burnham and Healey understood defence and the pressures and priorities that defence was facing, as well as the opportunity that defence presented in meeting Burnham’s stated goal of economic growth in every postcode and growing employment opportunities.
In his speech, he set out a predilection for another r-word — risk.
‘Investment is only one side of the coin,’ Streeting said.
‘Modernisation without investment is impractical, but investment without modernisation is irresponsible.’
He pointed to the reform and modernisation that he carried out in the NHS to slash the post-COVID waiting lists as the mantra he would follow in defence.
‘We need to do things differently,’ he said.
He said a cheap new weapons system for the Royal Air Force’s Typhoon fighter jets that can take down drones, instead of expensive missiles which NATO has been using, was deployed in 42 days.
‘This is a mark of where we need to be. That means changing the way we do business and … I will direct my department to take a new approach to risk. Not every decision will come off, but that’s the price of moving at the pace of modern warfare, where delay and inaction pose the greater threat.’
This is an echo of a relatively unnoticed but genuinely meritorious speech that the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave last year about the need to accept less perfect, less expensive but faster-produced weapons.
A reminder, the innovation cycle in Ukraine can be as short as a few weeks.
So, inviting risk is welcome. But how does this sit with a reindustrialisation and British-first defence industry policy?
‘The Prime Minister has spoken passionately about his ambition to re-industrialise Britain. Defence is, and will be, at the forefront of that mission,’ Streeting continued.
‘We will be unapologetic about backing Britain, British ingenuity, British workers, communities in every corner of this great country. Defence will not just be a recipient of the proceeds of economic growth. It will be a central contributor to building that growth, a driver of prosperity in parts of the country that are crying out for the backing they need to make their contribution to the challenge of our time.’
Prioritising local big defence companies and domestic builds can be the very reason why major projects blow out in costs, overrun in delivery times or fail altogether — just look at Australia’s disastrous decade in trying to sort out how to buy or make submarines.
The glossy example of the UK’s new risk-prone approach was the Collaborative Combat Air (CCA) programme called StormFighter. Earlier, Streeting helped reveal BAE’s first contestant, an impressive whale-shaped jet called Brontanax.
‘With the advent of CCA, and their integration with crewed platforms like the Typhoon, we will make the RAF Europe’s first sixth-generation air force. These uncrewed autonomous fighter jets will provide us with eyes and ears, carry missiles and confuse the enemy. Five at a time and 500 miles ahead of the Typhoon pilots controlling them, crucially, at a fifth of the price of that aircraft,’ he said.
But Brontanax hasn’t even flown. The government wants to get it in the air next year and StormFighter operating by the end of the decade.
The UK is entering a crowded market late.
Across the carpark sat Australia and Boeing’s version called Ghost Bat. When I stopped by the stand, the Pentagon’s acquisition team was also visiting.
Boeing and the RAAF debuted its Ghost Bat prototype as far back as 2019 and this month took part in a massive exercise led by the Pentagon across the Western Pacific that imagined the need to defend against, amongst other things, cruise and ballistic missile attacks.
China fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, NATO takes note
Ankara: For the second time in two years, China has tested a nuclear-capable missile in the Pacific.
A Ghost Bat practised combat alongside a US aircraft, as well as refuelling.
The model displayed at Farnborough had a missile that would be externally attached on show, but the next generation of Ghost Bat will have the weapons inside, making the combat drone stealthier.
Burnham and Streeting are making some nice noises, but these new kids on the block will need to demonstrate how they plan to square an industrial-strategy-first approach to defence with the urgent need to scale up cheaper systems fast at best cost to the taxpayer.
