Asked if this meant cuts to programs or pushing them back, Knighton said: \u201cAll of those things are options under consideration, but so is the level of ambition we might take and these are straightforward facts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Defence is currently locked in a battle with the Treasury over the Defense Investment Plan (DIP), which was originally meant to be published in the fall last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The DIP is intended to build on the strategic defense review (SDR) and put hard numbers against the government\u2019s plans before an uplift to defense spending from 2027.<\/p>\n
The Times reported<\/a> that military chiefs have warned Starmer of a \u00a328 billion shortfall over the next four years, after POLITICO revealed<\/a> growing fears of cuts to the U.K.\u2019s security capabilities within defense circles.\u00a0<\/p>\n The army chief refused to confirm the figure cited by the Times, saying details of his meetings with the PM were classified.\u00a0<\/p>\n Quizzed about British support for Greenland following Donald Trump repeating his intention to take over the Danish territory, Knighton said he had not been involved in any plans to directly defend Greenland and that NATO continues to provide \u201can impeccable security guarantee\u201d for its members.<\/p>\n He also addressed Starmer\u2019s newly signed declaration of intent to station troops in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia.<\/p>\n Knighton said he was \u201cconfident\u201d in Britain\u2019s ability to meet this requirement despite the armed forces\u2019 commitments elsewhere, but would not guarantee their safety. \u201cThere is no such thing as a zero risk in an operational environment,\u201d he told the committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked if this meant cuts to programs or pushing them back, Knighton said: \u201cAll of those things are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[98826,21129,59,57,58,420,151,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-366437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-air-defense","9":"tag-defense-budgets","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-greatbritain","13":"tag-keir-starmer","14":"tag-military","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}