Britain could be dangerously exposed if international tensions erupt into open conflict, a former Army officer has warned, accusing the government of failing to provide the armed forces with the resources needed to confront an increasingly unstable world.
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford, who spent 20 years in the British Army, delivered a stark assessment of the country’s military preparedness, declaring Britain was “very badly prepared” to counter threats from hostile states.
He accused the Labour government of being “either unwilling or unable to fund defence properly”, as mounting pressure over military spending collides with competing demands on the public purse.
The warning follows a £2bn cut to front-line Army equipment funding, described as a “funding re-prioritisation”.
The Army has also been instructed to suspend non-essential training exercises to save money, the Royal Navy faces shortages of key assets and the RAF has issues with aircraft availability.
For Crawford, these pressures raise an uncomfortable question: what happens if Britain must respond to a serious security crisis before it can rebuild its military capabilities?
“We live in dangerous times,” he told the Express, warning that Russia and other potential adversaries were testing Western resolve.
“There’s no doubt that we are being probed by Russia and perhaps other competitor states like China, North Korea and Iran, just to see what they can get away with.”
He pointed to tensions surrounding the Falkland Islands, China and Taiwan, and India and Pakistan as evidence of a volatile international landscape where regional confrontations could escalate with little warning.
“We have to be prepared for what might come, and it might come in the quite immediate future,” he told the publication.
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Crawford stopped short of predicting that war would reach Britain within three to five years, but challenged policymakers to consider the consequences of underestimating the danger.
“What if they’re right?” he asked.
He argues that defence spending should rise to 3 per cent of national income immediately, eventually reaching 5 per cent by the end of the decade. Such ambitions would require ministers to make difficult decisions over taxation and public spending.
Welfare spending is forecast at approximately £333.7bn in 2025-26, according to the House of Commons Library, compared with around £60.2bn for defence, according to the Ministry of Defence.
“The annual welfare budget is almost six times the defence budget,” Crawford said.
He warned that inadequate investment could carry consequences far more serious than an uncomfortable budget debate. “If defence isn’t funded properly, and push comes to shove, we won’t need a welfare budget, because we’ll be under someone else’s rule.”
Crawford likened military spending to insurance: an expense that can seem unnecessary until you desperately need it.
“You have to have it, but you hope you never have to use it,” he said. “At the moment, we are probably at the ‘third party, fire and theft’ end of the spectrum.”
For Britain, the danger is that rebuilding military strength may take years, while a crisis could develop in a matter of days. Ministers must decide whether to invest in readiness now—or risk discovering the cost of being unprepared when it is too late.
However, Sir Grant Shapps, the former defence secretary, warned, “The next attack on Britain may not look like the start of a war.
“It may look like an ordinary Monday morning when everything suddenly stops working.”
Shapps, who warned in 2024 that Britain had entered a “pre-war world”, said the discussion about military readiness remained essential but risked overlooking the infrastructure on which modern society depends.
“We spend a great deal of time debating whether Britain has enough missiles, aircraft, warships and troops to defend itself,” he said. “And rightly so, because there are serious concerns about our military readiness.”
But he asked whether the country was devoting comparable attention to defending its electricity supplies, hospitals, banking systems, water networks and communications.
“Russia doesn’t need to invade Britain to threaten Britain,” he said, pointing to cyberattacks, sabotage, disruption to energy supplies and attacks on critical infrastructure as methods of causing serious damage without provoking an immediate conventional military response.
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