Keir Starmer could ramp up the UK's defense spending plans faster than planned as the MoD reeled off new purchases for Britain's armed forces.
Starmer told this weekend's Munich Security Conference, "Time and again, leaders have looked the other way, only re-arming when disaster is upon them. This time, it must be different. Because all of the warning signs are there."
Those warning signs are emanating from Russia, he said. "Its hyper-threats extend across our continent, not just threatening our security, but tearing at our social order."
He argued "We must spend more, deliver more, and coordinate more."
Today the BBC reported the UK Prime Minister was considering a "significant increase" in defense spending. Rather than boosting the defense budget to 3 percent of GDP in the next Parliament, the broadcasting corp said it was told of proposals to achieve this by theend of the current Parliament.
That potential boost emerged as the MoD announced a range of new spending commitments.
These include the delivery of theSONUS weapon detection system to troops over the next 12 months. The system detects acoustic pressure waves from gunfire, mortars and explosions, allowing troops to pinpoint their resource
Critically, this is done without emitting an electronic signature that could allow adversaries to pinpoint the defending troops. The rollout of the £18.3 million contract is well ahead of the original five year plan.
Meanwhile, the MoD said it will spend more than £400 million on "long range weapons" including hypersonic systems.
This will be through the Stratus joint missile program with France and Italy, and includes work to develop a stealth replacement to the Storm Shadow missile.
Separately, the announcement flagged that Britian's "new long-range weapon program with Germany is progressing rapidly" with a "joint study phase about to begin."
This is focused on a system named Deep Prevision Strike, with a 2,000 km range, that is due to come into service in the next decade.
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Not all the UK's defense related spending is as explosive. Last week, the MoD struck a new enterprise agreement with Red Hat to "to enhance cloud-native and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and improve interoperability across MOD operations and approved third-party providers nationwide."
This will feed into the MoD's effort to "standardize its digital environment to include the adoption of cloud-native application development and provide more consistent user experiences and an enhanced security footprint across various workloads and services."
Adopting the cloud is aNATO wide concern, as defense and targeting becomes increasingly data-driven.
Channel warhorse Computacenter will help with "ongoing onboarding and access of the enterprise agreement."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
