UK must prepare to fight wars with artificial intelligence and in space, defence secretary says

The government’s long-awaited review on preparing Britain’s armed forces for wars of the future is to be launched on Tuesday with a focus on challenges including the increasing harnessing of artificial intelligence for military use, and the possibility of confrontations in space.

A new team will be formed in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to analyse the combat horizons with a fund of up to £160m to counter emerging threats under the Modernising Defence Programme (MDP).

The range of programmes under “Defence Innovations” in the coming year will concentrate on drones, digital communications for commando operations and virtual reality training.

Gavin Williamson is due to tell the House of Commons: “Our adversaries and competitors are accelerating the development of new capabilities and strategies. We must keep pace, and conceive of our joint force as consisting of five domains, air, land, sea, cyber and space, rather than the traditional three.

“To drive innovation and change through the department I am launching a transformation fund. Next year, I will ring-fence £160m of the MoD’s budget to create this fund for innovative new military capability. I will look to make a further £340m available as part of the spending review.”

A permanent “net assessment unit” will be based at the MoD following the steps taken in analysing a new Arctic strategy which examined the scenario of confrontation and hostilities in the so-called high north. External experts will be brought in from a range of professions to “bring fresh perspectives and challenge policy makers”, the defence secretary is to say.

Mr Williamson will tell MPs: “We can be proud of what we have achieved since 2015. But we must also be vigilant. National security challenges have become more complex, intertwined and dangerous since 2015, faster than we anticipated. Persistent, aggressive state competition now characterises the international security context.”

The defence secretary recently announced the appointment of a new top echelon of military commanders who are due to lead the armed forces in future wars.

The new head of the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord Admiral Tony Radakin; the head of the RAF, Air Marshal Michael Wigston; Vice Admiral Timothy Fraser, the vice chief of the defence staff; and General Patrick Sanders, the new chief of Joint Forces Command, are all regarded as reformists who will question conventional wisdom.

The unveiling of the MDP comes a week after the head of the UK’s armed forces warned that the international security landscape was at its most uncertain politically and strategically in living memory, with instability the “defining condition” and where threats to “our nation are diversifying, proliferating and intensifying very rapidly”.

“Constant confrontation” across the world is “reminiscent of the first decade of the 20th Century” when great power competition ended with the conflagration of the First World War, General Sir Nick Carter said in his annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute.