Mike Martin

Mike Martin

Liberal Democrat — Tunbridge Wells

Speaking in the House of Commons on 2 June 2025

Debate

Strategic Defence Review

Contribution

This defence review gives us a long shopping list of technological advances—the cyber command, digital backbone, drones, AI—and that is right and proper, but the British military is tiny. Recently, the Select Committee heard that if we had to fight tonight, we could scratch together five ships and 30 planes. The person who told us that was the former head of the MOD’s own strategic net assessment office. Does the Secretary of State agree that the lesson from Ukraine is that to fight and win wars, we need to have a mass of force—a large force—with tech that is good enough, rather than a small, perfectly formed, high-tech force? Is that lesson being heeded in the review?

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