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Your questions answered: How depleted is the UK’s stockpile given all the aid for Ukraine?
After a week off to run our Putin: The Man and his Motives series, we are back with our lunchtime feature in which our analysts and foreign correspondents answer your questions on the war in Ukraine.
Today’s comes from Richard Sm, who asks: “Given all the UK military equipment given to Ukraine, how depleted are the UK’s military forces in its ability to defend itself?”
Our military analyst Sean Bell has the answer…
As the second-biggest donor, the UK has committed £4.6bn in military assistance to Ukraine so far – £2.3bn last year and a commitment to match that funding this year.
The UK has sent anti-tank missiles, artillery guns, air defence systems, armoured fighting vehicles, antistructure munitions and three M270 long-range multiple launch rocket systems.
Although the British government is committed to supporting Ukraine over the longer-term, most of the high-tech precision weapons provided have had to be sourced from war stockpiles.
Modern weapons are sourced using a lengthy procurement process that involves developing a list of MoD requirements, running a competition to secure the best value for money from industry, and then procuring sufficient weapons to meet national requirements for the next few decades.
The UK – like most other nations – holds sufficient stocks of critical weapons to meet near-term needs, and routinely must “take risk” when budget restrictions limit the number of weapons that can be procured.
Therefore, the West does not hold excess stocks of weapons in its stockpiles, and any shortfall in weapons cannot be swiftly addressed.
So, surely all weapons provided to Ukraine leave a gap in the UK inventory and therefore compromise national security?
The MoD defence budget – and thus military capability – is based on a set of assumptions around threats and timeframes.
It is likely that Russia featured in the UK threat analysis and therefore the UK would have configured its military capability accordingly.
However, since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia has depleted – significantly – its military capability and therefore poses a reduced threat to the UK, at least in the near-term.
This provides a degree of political flexibility to reduce war stocks and support Ukraine.
The West is also understandably cautious about providing its most modern weapons to Ukraine for fear of them falling into Russian hands.
An example is the UK’s decision to provide Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles – these weapons are very capable and provide Ukraine with a unique, long-range precision strike capability.
The Storm Shadow first saw operational service in 2003, and although the UK procured around 1,000 of these capable missiles, less than 200 have since been used.
The UK plans to upgrade some of the remaining missiles, but the rest would be surplus to requirement and would have to be decommissioned – at a cost.
By supporting Ukraine with some of these “surplus” missiles, it helps not only Ukraine, but also the UK, and limits the risk to national security.
Regardless, providing military support to Ukraine is not without risk, and there are significant MoD efforts to work with the UK defence industry to address any shortfalls, while also providing a more sustainable pipeline of future military support to Ukraine.
You can read previous answers here (and submit a question in the form above)…
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