CDS warns Armed Forces may have to dial back ops and training because of funding

The Chief of the Defence Staff has said the Armed Forces will have to dial back operations and exercises if they don't get more money.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton's warning comes after John Healey stepped down as Defence Secretary because of his concerns over military funding.

The head of the armed forces told the Lords International Relations and Defence Committee he has concerns about the cash needed for training to support operational capability.

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Air Chief Marshal Knighton said: "The thing that I'm most concerned about is the level of day-to-day activity funding, the resource departmental expenditure limit, because that funds operational activity and drives exercises and training.

"Those are the things that make sure the men and women of our Armed Forces are as ready as they can be with the equipment that they have got today, and without changes to the settlement, as John Healey set out, then those areas will come under pressure."

ACM Sir Rich added: "We will have to dial back our activities and our exercise and operational activity if the level of resource funding that's available to us does not increase. Now that's still to be debated and decided."

He told the committee that day-to-day costs had soared thanks to inflation, pointing to an 88% rise in the cost of aviation fuel in the past year, putting additional "pressure" on the Armed Forces.

He said: "It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that there's going to be no impact as a consequence of the settlement."

John Healey stepped down as Defence Secretary last week – criticising government plans to increase defence spending to 2.68% of GDP instead of 3% by 2030.

In his resignation letter he said: "Your DIP (Defence Investment Plan) financial settlement – which I was first given in full on Monday afternoon this week – falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time.

"The extra support is backloaded when the pressure of operations and imperative to speed up readiness to fight is in the first two years and it rises to just 2.68% of GDP in 2030, when we will reach 2.6% next year with the investment we are already making.

"You spelled out the threats last week: 'It is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in Nato, that there could be an attack by Russia on Nato as soon as 2030'."

The CDS also told the committee that there needs a clear planning assumption for the UK to get to the target of spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035.

He said: "Nato expects us to spend 3.5% of GDP on hard defence and that's the commitment that the Prime Minister has made – that's what all the other nations bar one has committed to do and I think it would be essential that we do that to retain that credibility and that leadership position, and that's why I'm so pleased that that's what the Prime Minister has consistently committed to."