Informative · Defence spending

Britain just ranked near bottom of NATO on keeping its rearmament promises

22 October 2026 · 22 October 2026Share

A Royal Navy ship moored in Portsmouth Harbour. File photo. Colin Smith · CC BY-SA 2.0

A House of Commons committee just found Britain near the bottom of a NATO league table.

The table ranks how well NATO countries are keeping their rearmament promises.

Britain comes 31st out of 32. Only Iceland ranks lower. And Iceland has no military at all.

So who found this out?

The House of Commons Defence Committee. It published a report called Defence in the High North a day ago. The committee is chaired by Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough. His committee spent from March to July this year gathering evidence. They visited Norway, Denmark and Greenland.

The report's big worry is the High North. That's the Arctic and near-Arctic waters north of Britain.

It says the UK does not have all the capabilities it needs to operate there. And it says Royal Navy equipment readiness is far worse than the government's own stated requirements.

Now here are the numbers.

The Royal Navy has 11 frigates and destroyers in service. The requirement linked to NATO is 19. That's five Type 23 frigates and six Type 45 destroyers, against a need for almost double.

And here's a sharper gap. The Navy needs eight of its 13 frigates fitted with Sonar 2087. That's the towed-array sonar used to hunt submarines. It currently has five fitted. All five are Type 23s.

So the committee says this: no more towed-array Type 23 should leave service until a new Type 26 frigate replaces it, one for one.

The report also says Britain has let its submarine under-ice capability lapse.

Why does any of this matter? Because the committee says Russian submarine and sabotage forces in the High North pose a direct risk to the UK. That includes Britain's nuclear deterrent. And the Ministry of Defence itself has accepted there is a serious anti-submarine warfare gap.

The report also warns of sabotage. Undersea data cables and energy pipelines could be hit even in peacetime, it says. And in a war, Atlantic resupply routes and British infrastructure could be under threat.

The rest of this story is for Silver and Gold members.

Locator map of European NATO member states. File photo. Oliver Prokop · CC BY-SA 4.0

One date runs through the whole report. 2030.

That's the year British and allied intelligence assessments say Russia could be capable of attacking a NATO country.

Tan Dhesi says quote "work to rectify these vulnerabilities cannot start soon enough".

That's the committee chair saying the clock is already running.

So what's the government's defence? Money.

Ministers have committed close to £300 billion in defence investment over four years. The aim is 2.7% of national income on defence. That sits inside a wider NATO commitment, which Britain has signed up to, to reach 3.5% of national income by 2035.

The committee does give credit here. It says the spending plan is the bedrock for deterring Russian hostility by 2030. But its finding stands. The money has not yet turned into readiness.

The committee also wants the government to look again at the Joint Expeditionary Force. That's the ten-nation group that Britain leads. It wants it focused more on the High North.

During the inquiry, the Ministry of Defence told the committee that equipment is held at different readiness levels depending on NATO's own requirements. It called anti-submarine warfare a core UK strength.

Since the report came out, the Ministry of Defence has pointed to a £330 million investment to protect undersea infrastructure.

The government is expected to give its full response within two months.

So what don't we know?

The NATO document itself, the one that ranks Britain 31st of 32, has not been published anywhere. It exists only as something the committee says it has seen. And it is not clear why a country that meets NATO's 2% spending minimum ranks so low on delivering its promises. It is also not known whether the government disputes the committee's finding at all.

For now, this is the official word from Parliament's own defence watchdog. Britain has the money. It does not yet have the readiness. And the deadline the government itself set keeps getting closer.

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Britain just ranked near bottom of NATO on keeping its rearmament promises

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