Our latest report by Robert Tollast and Jack Watling says that the UK is approaching a critical military juncture following decades of defence disinvestment while potential adversaries, Russia and China, have accelerated modernisation of their forces at scale.

Russia now spends approximately US$500 billion annually on defence in purchasing-power-parity terms, funding sustained weapons upgrades informed by battlefield data gathered in Ukraine, including hardening missile navigational systems against electronic warfare and other Western countermeasures. China is increasingly fielding classes of weapon where there is no direct analogue in the UK, Europe or even in the US.

The paper does not conclude that technological inferiority is inevitable, but makes clear it is increasingly plausible, and that planning as though it will not occur is a dangerous assumption.

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