{"id":142538,"date":"2018-06-18T01:42:54","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T01:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/defence-spend-rise-urged-over-russian-threat\/"},"modified":"2018-06-18T01:42:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T01:42:54","slug":"defence-spend-rise-urged-over-russian-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/defence-spend-rise-urged-over-russian-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Defence spend rise urged over Russian threat"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Silhouettes of British soldiers\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/11A60\/production\/_102088227_fd7a3c5e-44a0-4f85-9558-4c7816262bbe.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  PA                                                    <\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">The UK&#039;s armed forces need increased funding in order to meet threats from states including Russia, MPs have said.<\/p>\n<p>The Commons Defence Committee report said the level of defence spending should rise from 2% to 3% of total GDP.<\/p>\n<p>Chairman Julian Lewis said this would also help the UK fill existing financial &quot;black holes&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The Ministry of Defence said the UK has the biggest defence budget in Europe and continues to exceed Nato&#039;s 2% spending target.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, ex-commander of the UK&#039;s Maritime Forces Rear Admiral Alex Burton said Britain was in danger of losing its status as a &quot;credible military power&quot; and called for a rise in defence spending.<\/p>\n<p>The head of the Army, General Sir Nick Carter, has also previously called for increased spending, saying that Britain&#039;s ability to respond to military threats from Russia will be &quot;eroded&quot; without further investment.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>UK military credibility &#039;at risk&#039; over cuts<\/li>\n<li>What&#039;s happening to defence spending? <\/li>\n<li>UK &#039;must prepare for Russia fight&#039;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the committee&#039;s report, called Beyond 2 Per Cent, MPs said that failure to finance the military on a sustainable basis made it &quot;very difficult&quot; to have a long-term defence strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Increased spending was the &quot;only solution&quot; at a time when the UK faced a renewed threat from Russia and increasing challenges from terrorism, extremism and cyber-warfare, the MPs said.<\/p>\n<p>The report said defence spending was &quot;far too low&quot; and the government &quot;needs to apply the resources that are necessary to keep this country safe&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>It must move the level of defence expenditure back towards 3% of GDP, as it was in the mid-1990s, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The committee warned of &quot;serious deficiencies in the quantities of armour, armoured vehicles and artillery available to the British Army&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The lack of vehicle-mounted anti-tank weapons and self-propelled artillery and the need for modernisation of rocket artillery left the Army &quot;at serious risk of being outgunned by its Russian counterpart&quot;, it said.<\/p>\n<p>Other defence needs identified included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Greater anti-submarine warfare capacity<\/li>\n<li>The maintenance of the Army at a minimum of 82,000 personnel<\/li>\n<li>A layered air defence system<\/li>\n<li>A Royal Navy carrier group capable of protecting the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In January, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced a new review, the Defence Modernisation Programme, focusing solely on military defence.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Williamson has indicated he will demand more money if the review deems it necessary.<\/p>\n<p>The review&#039;s findings are expected to be revealed in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p>In December, analysis by the House of Commons Library found that between 2010 and 2015 the Ministry of Defence&#039;s (MoD) budget had fallen by \u00a38bn in real terms.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, spending has stabilised and in the last financial year (April 2016 - March 2017), \u00a335.3bn was spent on defence.<\/p>\n<p>In 2016, the UK had the fifth biggest defence budget - the highest of all EU countries - according to an international military study.<\/p>\n<p>Committee chairman Mr Lewis said:  &quot;The government now needs to look beyond the 2% minimum on defence spending, and begin moving towards a figure of 3%, to place our defence policy on a sustainable basis to meet new threats and fill existing financial &#039;black holes&#039;.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Defence is constantly described as the first duty of government.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The MDP is the government&#039;s opportunity to show that it means what it says.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: &quot;The defence secretary launched the Modernising Defence Programme to strengthen our armed forces in the face of intensifying threats and, while we welcome the Defence Committee&#039;s preliminary report, we will not speculate on the outcome of the programme before we share our headline conclusions.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright PA The UK&#039;s armed forces need increased funding in order to meet threats from states including Russia, MPs have said. The Commons Defence Committee report said the level<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}