The UK will commit an additional 1,000 troops and one of its two new aircraft carriers for the defense of NATO’s eastern flank, the Secretary of Defense has announced, while Downing Street unveiled £ 1bn in additional military support for Ukraine.
The forces will be deployed to defend Estonia, where the United Kingdom already has about 1,700 troops deployed, but will be based in the United Kingdom, ready to go out to defend the Baltic country if deemed necessary.
Speaking at the NATO summit in Madrid, Ben Wallace said the UK would “assign a brigade” to Estonia, effectively increasing the number of British troops available to around 3,000, and said it would be more efficient to base some of the forces in his home. and their teams in Germany.
The commitment is part of NATO’s renewed European defense force, which will include 300,000 troops across the continent prepared in case Russia threatens a military attack on any member of the alliance.
A substantial part of the UK’s commitment to the defense force announced at this week’s Madrid summit would be naval, Wallace added: “We will invest a lot of the Navy. I think we will dedicate one of the carrier groups to it.”
The United Kingdom operates two aircraft carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales, which have a fleet of support ships, known as the aircraft carrier attack group. Warships would be engaged with rotating NATO, Wallace said.
Separately, Downing Street has said it nearly doubles the UK’s commitment to military support in Ukraine with an additional £ 1bn.
Although No. 10 did not give details on what the money could be used for, Wallace said some would probably be spent on supplying the long-range rocket artillery that Ukraine was looking for along with the United States and other countries. of NATO.
The UK had previously shipped three M270 weapon systems, as part of a package of 10 pledges by the US and Germany. The UK would also send electronic warfare equipment, air defense systems and more ammunition, Wallace added.
Eight NATO defense forces are based in eight countries on the east side of the alliance, from Estonia to Bulgaria, and on Wednesday NATO members agreed to increase them to the size of a brigade. in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Germany has already agreed to increase its engagement with Lithuania, but faced criticism when it emerged that most of the additional 3,500 soldiers it offered would be based on its own soil, ready to move quickly east if necessary.
But Wallace defended the decision and argued that a surprise Russian attack on the Baltic country was unlikely. “You won’t get a massive surprise,” he said, noting that Russia placed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders for several months before it invaded in February.
Existing plans to defend Estonia and the other Baltic countries were obsolete, Wallace said, because the existing plan was to allow “60 days to take the tanks there.”
But he added that Russia’s attack on Ukraine had changed everyone’s thinking: “Very aptly, the Baltic states said, ‘Well, what we just witnessed in Ukraine is that if you wait five days, no one is left alive. So we don’t want to take the risk and wait until our car ferry arrives with the tanks’ ”.
Wallace also tried to minimize differences in defense spending with the number 10, indicating that he wants budgets to increase by the end of the current spending review period in April 2025. Governments had taken “a peace dividend “after the end of the cold war. , but now was the time to “continue the investment.”
The minister said he agreed with Boris Johnson that the current target of spending 2% of GDP on defense was “set at a different time” and that “Russia was not the same as it is now”. But he declined to say whether, as leaks suggest earlier in the week, the budget should increase between £ 10bn and 2.5%.
When asked in a TV interview at the summit if he disagreed with Wallace on the defense budget, Johnson dodged the question, saying only that spending had “massively increased” in recent years.