I’ve just come back from Ukraine and the magnificent Black Sea port of Odessa where one thing was abundantly clear: Kyiv is our teacher now.

Attending a security conference there, British speakers discussed tanks and ships while Ukrainian leaders spoke about drones and tech. Less than 24 hours later, we saw why.

Kyiv’s Operation Spiderweb destroyed a third of Moscow’s strategic bombers, the planes used to murder civilians and threaten the West with nuclear annihilation.  

Audacious, seemingly impossible in fact, Spiderweb smuggled 117 drones on to Russian soil over a period of 18 months and caused devastating explosions in Russian bases thousands of miles away.

And Ukraine succeeded because its planners focused obsessively on one question: will this work?

Every one of Kyiv’s decisions is measured against brutal reality, not political aspiration.

The contrast with Britain’s approach to defence could not be starker.

While Ukrainian officials speak with the clarity that comes from existential threat, our Defence Secretary, John Healey, spent his weekend performing semantic gymnastics on TV.

We saw what Ukraine could do in Operation Spiderweb - an attack of audacity, imagination but, also, intense practicality

We saw what Ukraine could do in Operation Spiderweb – an attack of audacity, imagination but, also, intense practicality

Firm commitments, including raising defence spending to a very necessary three percent, were transformed into mere ‘aspirations’ under the gentlest questioning.

This predictable retreat is the reality behind today’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR).

Many of the proposals – more submarines, for example, new munitions factories, improved housing for service personnel – are very welcome.

So are the plans outlined in the review to give electronic warfare a dedicated cyber command.

Yet none of this can work without firm financial commitments. And Healey’s uncertainty has exposed a dangerous gap between Labour’s military ambitions and financial reality.

The economics of war are brutal to those who think politics can replace the truth. And while Russia can see, day by day, that Ukraine is serious, Moscow will conclude that we are not.

Our opponents don’t merely listen to what our Government says, they see what it actually does and where the cash goes.

So, yes. We do need 12 new nuclear submarines.

We need to build them to deliver on our commitment to the AUKUS security partnership with Australia and the United States. And we need them to maintain the intelligence picture essential to our future.

With China’s naval expansion accelerating, the submarine programme addresses head-on the challenges we face in the Indian and Pacific Oceans – not least protecting the freedom of navigation that underpins global trade.

We also need the munitions factories promised in the SDR.

Healey backed us when the Conservative government called for the same thing. And I am supporting him now for putting our plans into action.

The SDR’s £6billion commitment to build six new ammunition factories is exactly the kind of unglamorous but vital infrastructure investment that wins wars.

A dedicated command structure for cyber warfare recognises that modern conflicts are fought as much with keyboards as Kalashnikovs.

Remember, it wasn’t Ukraine’s navy that sank the Russian flagship Moscva and scared the Black Sea fleet into port, it was Kyiv’s tech-savy army.

Using airborne drones and unmanned submarines, Ukraine has transformed the Black Sea from Russia’s boating lake into a piranha pool.

Ukraine’s digital warriors have even turned Russian soldiers’ own mobile phones into tracking devices, so helping prove that the ‘keyboard is now a weapon of war’, as Healey rightly put it.

Yet on current budgets, these ‘aspirations’ simply won’t happen. Aspirations don’t sink enemy submarines or intercept hostile missiles.

Only careful military planning and firm financial commitment make us safer.

We must also start to think differently – and very much more clearly.

How, we might ask, does the recent £3.4billion deal to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – then rent back the military base there – help us in our current plight?

Ukrainian units smuggled 117 drones into Russia over 18 months then destroyed a third of the Russian strategic bombers that menace us with the threat of nuclear attack and kill Ukrainian civilians every night

Ukrainian units smuggled 117 drones into Russia over 18 months then destroyed a third of the Russian strategic bombers that menace us with the threat of nuclear attack and kill Ukrainian civilians every night

This vast sum of money will be taken, piece by piece, straight out of the defence budget! It is the logic of the madhouse.

Perhaps most concerning of all is the fantasy that our drastic recruitment problem can be fixed without a radical change of approach.

The SDR plan to boost army strength to 72,500 sounds impressive until you confront the brutal reality of Britain’s recruitment crisis. The disconnect is stark.

This isn’t about patriotism. Young people today are just as determined and impressive as any generation and can fight just as hard. It’s about economics.

The private sector pays better, offers an easier life and often better career prospects for exactly the talented and self-reliant people that the Armed Forces need the most.

Experienced personnel are leaving faster than we can replace them. And they take irreplaceable institutional knowledge away with them.

You can’t build a 21st-century military on 20th-century employment terms.

Clear thinking particularly matters as we approach crucial decisions about investments in, for example, the Tempest fighter programme, the Type 31 frigates and the Ajax armoured vehicle programme.

All these require sustained political commitment over decades.

Ukraine is showing us how to do it. There, officials speak with the clarity that comes from existential threat.

They’ve scrapped kit that doesn’t work and squeezed the cash they do have to deliver the kind of operation unimaginable only a few years ago.

With a few thousand dollars-worth of drones, they have just destroyed $7billion of Russian aircraft. That really is resetting the economics of war.

Here in Britain, meanwhile, gestures are made and promises trailed, but there’s no new money – and nothing scrapped to save money, either.

Sadly, I’ve seen all this before. First when I was in uniform, and three more times from the vantage point of Parliament, where I have been both chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and security minister.

Labour’s reluctance to make the hard choices that serious defence policy requires is the fundamental problem facing Britain and its Armed Services alike.

You simply cannot promise military modernisation, and maintain social spending commitments, and avoid difficult conversations about taxation or borrowing. It’s just not honest.

Something has to give, and Healey’s weekend retreat suggests it will be defence capability.

Learning that Ukraine’s success doesn’t come from grand strategic documents but from prioritisation and relentless adaptation is a lesson we need to take – and urgently.

Their commanders don’t have the luxury of ‘aspiration’. Every shred of resource must deliver measurable results against a determined enemy. We need to do the same.

We must start with the honesty that Britain deserves and ask what we can actually afford.

Better a smaller, superbly equipped military than a larger force struggling with obsolete equipment and unfilled ranks.

It means having frank conversations with the public about the real costs of security in an increasingly dangerous world.

It means building alliances and learning from those who are at the cutting edge – fighting for their existence.

Most importantly, it means distinguishing between hope and need.

As we have just seen, determination and innovation can multiply modest resources into devastating effect.

But that requires leaders willing to make hard choices rather than soft commitments.

When a Defence Secretary starts hedging his bets in public or makes obviously unfunded commitments, it sends a signal to allies and adversaries alike that Britain prefers warm words to cold truths.

For all the impressive thinking in the SDR – and there is plenty – it’s not actually a plan until we agree to spend the money that’s required.

Meanwhile, our enemies in Beijing and Moscow are watching.

***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk