Chancellor announces £1bn spending uplift for MOD

30 Oct 2018 01:16 PM

Chancellor announces £1bn spending uplift for MOD.

As part of today’s Budget 2018 the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced an additional £1 billion for the Ministry of Defence across 2018-19 and 2019-20. 

Coupled with funding already announced in March 2018, Defence will have benefitted from an additional £1.8 billion over 2018-19 and 2019-20. This funding will focus on modernisation efforts and to meet emerging and continuing geo-political threats. Capabilities to be prioritised include offensive cyber, anti-submarine warfare and the continuous at sea nuclear deterrent. 

This additional funding to ease immediate pressures comes at a time when the MOD continues to work on the Modernising Defence Programme ahead of a Comprehensive Spending Review next year. 

It was also encouraging to see the announcement of a £10m donation to the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust to support veterans with mental health needs.

techUK welcomes this additional funding and looks forward to working with the MOD and industry as the UK Defence sector enters this crucial spending review period. At a time when technological change has the capacity and potential to realise a more efficient Armed Forces in areas such as cyber, artificial intelligence and big data, techUK will be highlighting key areas where technology can be better leveraged and utilised. This will begin with the "Addressing the barriers to digital tranformation in Ministry of Defence" paper to be released in November.