Defence plan delays undermine UK credibility with allies and industry
The Westminster government’s delay in publishing the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) has undermined the UK government’s credibility with its allies, and its ability to provide a stronger deterrent to its adversaries.
In a report into the Ministry of Defence’s 2024-25 accounts, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the long delay to the DIP risks squandering the opportunities provided by advances in technology, hindering the government’s attempts to modernise the Armed Forces.
It has been three years since the Ministry of Defence (MoD) published its Equipment Plan for 2023-2033, in which the PAC then found no credible plan to deliver the military capabilities government wanted.
Since then, the PAC expressed extreme disappointment last year at the continued lack of a plan setting out how the government would invest the funding increases set out by the high-level ambitions in the Strategic Defence Review.
The delay to the DIP, the PAC’s report finds, has been due to the lack of a decision from the MoD as to which capabilities, infrastructure and people it requires to transform the Armed Forces to be warfighting-ready within the available budget. It is also due to its failure to secure the cross-government agreement the DIP needs.
The PAC’s report lays out the impacts of the delay to the DIP, which include:
- An inability to provide a stronger deterrent to the UK’s adversaries
- A need now for the UK to recover credibility with its allies
- An inability to equip the UK’s Armed Forces for the modern battlefield
- Undermined credibility for the MoD with the defence sector
- Additional cost pressures on the defence budget
- An adverse impact on industry, particularly for smaller companies.
Time is money in procurement, and the PAC notes suppliers are now increasing their prices to take account of the international situation’s continued deterioration. The MoD must demonstrate the flexible use of the DIP to take account of the changing international context in decision-making on expenditure and capabilities.
With the delay also risking having weakened the UK’s defence industrial base, the PAC is seeking action from the MoD to mitigate impacts of this delay on suppliers.
The PAC’s report further finds that the MoD is placing unrealistic expectations on how soldiers can safely operate the Ajax armoured vehicle. Ajax has unresolved noise and vibration issues, with 33 soldiers reporting symptoms after operating them.
Five soldiers were still under medical review when the MoD appeared before the PAC in March 2026, at which time the MoD claimed Ajax is safe when operated and maintained correctly within its design parameters.
The MoD now expects soldiers to do maintenance checks every time they stop the Ajax vehicle. This seems unreasonable, given soldiers may need to use vehicles for long periods in combat, and the PAC is calling on the MoD to explain how the current required operating parameters and restrictions for Ajax are realistic and appropriate.
With an Ajax 2 package of upgrades now in development at an unknown cost, the PAC awaits to see, more in hope than expectation, whether these endeavours will succeed. The MoD must now set out precisely how much it will pay for Ajax, and why it still expects that it can be made fit for purpose.
Turning to the MoD’s ever-increasing nuclear expenditure, which made up 18% (£10.9bn) of the defence budget in 2024-25 (expected to rise to up to 25% in coming years), the PAC understands that a proper mechanism will now be set up to address a state of affairs under which public information about nuclear programmes is too sensitive for Parliament to properly scrutinise them.
This enhanced Parliamentary scrutiny, long called for by the PAC, must not be delayed by current political uncertainty, and the MoD must now set out how and when it will routinely provide Parliament with more detailed cost and performance information for the nuclear enterprise.
The MoD’s accounts further show a completely unacceptable failure to maintain accounting records to support £6bn+ of assets. The accounts do not provide a true and fair representation of the MoD’s financial position, due to a misclassification of historic expenditure by the Atomic Weapons Establishment as spending that had resulted in it developing infrastructure.
The report recommends MoD set out how it will prevent this happening again.
The PAC has long scrutinised the issue of recruitment and retention in the Armed Forces, and the latest public statistics for the year to October 2025 point to a corner being turned, with the number of people now joining up exceeding those leaving.
The MoD does not, however, know whether these improvements are as a result of its own efforts or if it can sustain them, and the PAC’s report makes recommendations targeted at helping it do so.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Much commentary has been expended recently on the months-long delay to the DIP. However, from this Committee’s point of view, the nation has now in fact gone years without a credible plan for UK military capability.
“Those responsible may argue there are good reasons for the DIP’s continuing absence, but our report makes clear that excuses to the effect of ‘taking the time to get the details right’ simply do not cut it.
“Whatever the content of the DIP when it eventually does appear, the damage from its absence has been done – to the nation’s credibility, to its safety, to its Armed Forces, and to certainty within its entire defence industrial base.
“Any government minister attempting to explain away this delay to the DIP should instead ask themselves what message the bureaucratic drift of the past months has given to the public, as well as the UK’s allies and its adversaries, and simply apologise.
“Whatever else the government hopes to achieve with the DIP, it has certainly gained the unwelcome honour of being the most anticipated document in my entire political career. As we still await its publication at time of writing, I know I speak for the defence interests of the whole UK when I say – this had better be good.
“Our Committee sadly must also add a chapter to the troubled history of the Ajax programme with this report. Our thoughts are with all those soldiers who reported symptoms from noise and vibration after operating these vehicles, and we were frankly astounded to hear officials explain that proper use of Ajax requires maintenance checks every time it is stopped.
“This is frankly an insult to intelligence, and much good may this advice do our fighting men and women if called upon to operate Ajax in combat. The MoD must now explain how it will make Ajax fit for purpose, and how much this will cost.
“Finally, given the ratchet effect of ever-increasing while opaque nuclear spending, about which both my and predecessor Committees have long warned, and in the context of a completely unacceptable £6bn accounting muddle around the Atomic Weapons Establishment, a new sensitive scrutiny mechanism is to be welcomed.
“Political uncertainty must not derail these arrangements, in order that the public may gain greater confidence that their money is being spent wisely.”
