Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Al Carns (Birmingham Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Everyone in this debate will rightly speak about defence spending, procurement and ammunition, and those things all absolutely matter, but I want to ask a broader question: what does warfighting readiness actually mean in 2026? For too long, we have measured military strength by the number of ships afloat, aircraft we fly or tanks we field, and those capabilities will remain essential, but recent conflicts have reminded us that wars are rarely won by militaries alone; wars are won by nations. They are won by industries that can out-produce an adversary, economies that can absorb shocks, and societies resilient enough to sustain conflict over time.

I have seen this at first hand in Ukraine. Time and again, I have met individuals whose courage is beyond question, but courage alone is not enough. Success depends on whether ammunition arrives when it is needed, whether new technology can be adapted in weeks rather than years, and whether industry can keep pace with the demands of the battlefield. The side that learns, adapts and regenerates fastest gains the advantage, and that should challenge how we think about readiness.

Warfighting readiness is no longer simply the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence. It is an industrial strategy, an energy strategy and a technological strategy. Ultimately, it is a national resilience strategy. If our energy networks are vulnerable, if our communications can be disrupted, if our supply chains depend on hostile states, if our British industry cannot rapidly increase production when conflict begins, our armed forces will inherit those weaknesses from day one of any crisis. That is why resilience must sit at the heart of our national security.

We often talk about stockpiles, and rightly so, but I think the more important question is not how many missiles are sitting in a warehouse today; it is how many missiles British industry can produce every month after six months of sustained conflict. Modern warfare consumes munitions at a pace that few of us can comprehend or imagine, but Ukraine is teaching us lessons: 7,000 to 10,000 drones flying a day; 12,000 artillery rounds fired a day; and 1 million drones, in some cases, produced over two months.

[Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)]

I recently met a number of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-up companies that want to produce drones and autonomous systems and to integrate AI more, but they are concerned about the pace of change in the MOD. Does my hon. and gallant Friend believe that the MOD needs to start pacing up and getting on with the job of working with these companies to provide us with the sort of protection we need?

[Al Carns]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Data is the new gunpowder. AI is absolutely critical in defence, and we should use all of our technological advantage to move faster and further than ever before. We should be bold and jump to the next generation of systems, and not wait for anyone else to lead—we should lead ourselves.

The lesson from my perspective is clear: stockpiles matter, but the ability to regenerate them matters even more. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to rebuild munition stockpiles, expand domestic production capacity and invest in British defence industry. Those are investments not just in military capability, but in national resilience.

The same is true for technology. Ukraine has demonstrated that innovation cycles measured in months can outperform procurement cycles measured in decades. Drones, autonomous systems, software and artificial intelligence are changing warfare at an extraordinary speed, and it will only ever get faster. Readiness, therefore, means building a procurement system that can adapt just as quickly, giving innovative British companies a route into defence and ensuring that our armed forces can evolve as rapidly as the threats they face. We have at present over 10,000 people in Defence Equipment and Support—that is, 10,000 people doing procurement. I am not saying that it is inefficient, but I am saying that bureaucracy sometimes gets in the way of speed.

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[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

It is an honour to succeed the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) who opened the debate—a very timely debate it is, too. I particularly commend the point that the former Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak, made about this being a whole-of-nation approach, because we are preparing for war. We might actually be at war in some senses, because Russia is knowingly saying that it is conducting a war against NATO, and we are certainly subject to a hybrid war against our national infrastructure—hacking our hospitals, closing down Jaguar Land Rover and harassing our shipping. This is a very low level of war, but we have certainly been under attack from the way that Russia rations gas to western Europe as a weapon. Turning energy into a weapon, turning food into a weapon—Russia is doing the lot, and the writing is on the wall.

The Government still have not woken up to the fact that the head of NATO, and even the Prime Minister at Munich, has said that we have to be ready to fight a war—a shooting, kinetic war—against Russia by 2030. There is no sign in the implementation of policy that the Government understand the urgency of that. There are plenty of people in Government who get the urgency of this, and I met some of them with Lord Robertson earlier this week to be briefed on national resilience, but there is a deep reluctance in the Government to recognise that to mobilise for war is not about the armed forces and a few branches of Government. Armies may fight battles, but nations fight wars. If the whole nation is not galvanised to do what is necessary, to be ready for what is going to happen, and to make the sacrifices and suffer the pain of diverting resources to less popular things than the popular things that Governments tend to spend their money on, we are not ready for war.

[Derek Twigg]

The hon. Member is making a good and strong point. Does he agree that, frankly, it boils down to the fact that the Government must be much blunter with the British people about the nature of the threat we face?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Yes, and I think the Government have plans for that, but they keep pulling back because it is a difficult thing to talk about. The spin doctors and spads will tell their political masters, “Oh no, don’t talk about that—the polling says it is terrible.” I am afraid that we have to confront the polling. We have to confront the population with the ugly truth: this country is at far greater risk than it has ever been since the height of the cold war.