 I'm delighted to welcome Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace to join me in a conversation as part of our conference today. Mr Wallace has given a big speech this morning at the National Army Museum and has raised some of the issues that we've been talking about this morning. I've been thinking about how one might start with this. As many people have said, it's the 9th of May, Russian Victory Day. Vladimir Putin's spoken, you've spoken. He's accused the West of preparing an invasion of Russian land, NATO being a threat. You selected this day to make a keynote speech on the Ukrainian conflict. You're a former soldier. As you've watched this conflict unfold, what are your thoughts about the course of the conflict and where we may go next? The reason I did the speech was, despite how it appeared in some newspapers, it wasn't necessarily about Putin. It was really about the failure of the general staff of the Russian army to both speak truth to power but also to prepare their forces properly. I had to be slightly careful because I didn't want to show any sympathy. What the Russian are engaged in is an illegal invasion and every soldier, whether they're junior or senior, has a responsibility in that. From a professional point of view as a soldier, you have to marvel at the betrayal really of many of those people and many of those people who are not all in support of the war will get no voice. It's quite important if you're ever going to try and penetrate the Russian system to make the point that suffering does not excuse culpability. Today will be a whole X size in the Russian, I mean remember it is the Soviet effect for the Union who fought the Second World War, not the Russians alone. I think Ukraine marked the day before but nevertheless it was a collective endeavour but you won't hear any culpability in any of it. No one ever asks whether suffering is actually a sign of failure at high levels. So the purpose of the speech was to make sure that President Putin doesn't wrap it all up, put the cloak of this great defeat of Nazism around himself and use it for his own imperial ambitions, which is exactly what he has been doing. I think that is very important to challenge that assertion. If you read his essay he wrote 2020, it's another piece of amazing fiction that he positioned himself as the saver at World Russia or the Soviet Union as the saver of the world. Actually we all know it was much more complicated, he plays down the Ribbentroff pack which effectively allowed the Russians to dismember Poland, transport people from the Baltics and that's all forgotten. He never registers that Britain really stood alone for pretty much two years before they turned up. I think it's just important to register that today there are lots of people dying, suffering unnecessarily strategically because of the illegal invasion and then tactically because of utter incompetence in the Russian general staff. Now I don't want them to be successful so don't please make that mistake. That's why the Army Museum is important to remind people that the people who pay the price of imperialist ambitions or rewriting history or indeed general staff who like to have lovely parades but don't actually deliver the effect on the ground is the young soldier. That's where we're a get to now and even worse than that it's the people that are their targets which is Ukraine. Obviously we're holding this conference at King's College in the university and the auditors are going to hear from our student panel at the end of the day who are providing the conclusions and hopefully a summary of the day. So I asked the students if they would give me some questions for you as well and they've been quite forthright and on this question they were saying were you intending to wind up the Russians with the speech and are you hoping to achieve something specific? I mean they've read it and they thought that it was a challenging speech. But I think if you ignore the sort of sub-ed written headlines in the newspapers and read the actual speech in full I wasn't trying to wind up. I think I was trying to make the point that there is culpability in this. The culpability within the Russian system. I remember going to St. Petersburg years ago and being told you don't understand more people died defending the city than the whole of you lost in the Second World War. And I remember saying slightly sheepishly from the back of a minibus at the time I think to the guide as a soldier I'm not sure a casualty rate is a sign of success. And when I went to Moscow about a week before the invasion and Shoigu said to me you know no one suffers like us as a sort of boast. And I said in the meeting that I don't want anyone to suffer. I remember saying I've seen too many of my own soldiers buried to want people to do. This was the stage when we were trying to persuade Russia to stop it and they were slightly thrown when I said I don't want Russians to suffer. I mean it's not it's not a and the problem it's been used to avoid culpability. And I think you know there are now body bags coming home in their tens of thousands potentially into Russia if they haven't been cremated or hidden. There are therefore tens of thousands of injured Russians coming home. They can hide that they can bully it you know shame the widows into not speaking which we saw when the curse went down. I don't remember the lady was in fact injected by an agent in the middle of an audience. You can see on live on YouTube when one of the wives of the curse actually says well where is it and they inject her as she's complaining. So they can do all that but I think it's important we pointed out and make it very very clear that the huge amounts of what is going on is unnecessary and the generals you know a good general would have told the truth to Putin by now. So you were security minister and long serving security minister at the time of the Salisbury attack. Has that shaped your approach to Russia? I mean you were one of the people who spoke out quite early about the challenge of Russia. Yeah I mean I think you know to deploy nerve agent on a country soil is a really big step. They won't have been taken freelance that would have been think I remember said at the time you know authorised at the highest levels in the Russian government. So this is nerve agent right this is not a you know this is not running someone over the car. It's a proper deployment of a military capable chemical weapon when it was deployed on our streets and there was a bit of debate inside government about you know why were they so bad in doing it and so far as you know they all got caught they appeared on Russia today talking about cathedrals and actually started to look a bit comical but dangerous. And were they ten foot tall or did they not care or and you know I think at the time and I've been to visit Ukraine. I've been to Ukraine five times both as security minister and defence secretary and you know what goes on. I know what they do in many parts of the world. You've seen what Wagner's done in Libya. You've seen what they've done in Syria and the world has not been paying attention to the nature of the regime. And I think we forget too much because we either look in our own backyard and only really care about that or we we remove the person and in a sort of effectively a totalitarian regime the person is more important than anything else. You can have all your analysis you like but if there's someone who takes that view of the world and as you can see in his own writings he's convinced himself all sorts of things. You have to take that seriously and you have to prepare for that because you know he is he's got a view he doesn't seem to want to change it doesn't seem to listen to anything alternative and it's a dangerous view. So we're going to have to live with Russia for the moment we have to live with with President Putin. There have been references today already in this conference about whether or not we've returned to a new Cold War. I'll be interested to know whether whether whether you find the analogy even the term useful. But no one can deny that there have been repeated references to nuclear weapons and to questions of escalation risk escalation. Little talk about the management of it to be frank. How far do we have any off ramps in this crisis when the rhetoric at times seems to be going in an extraordinary warring direction for the public. Yeah I mean it's the one thing that's difficult to read which is some of the tools we usually relate to being less escalatory like sanctions economic tools actually in the Kremlin have the opposite effect. They're more escalatory in in some of their minds because it's harder to hide from your public economic punishment. It's it's much easier potentially to hide military casualties. They have a track record in being able to do that in 2014 in the Donbas. There were lots of unmarked graves and you know actually funn enough even the great patriotic war. One of the characteristics of of the Soviet side at the time was they didn't ever really seek to find out what happened to many of those people. There were many many families in the Soviet system who never knew what happened to their father and grandfather. It wasn't a whereas we had a sense of trying to account for it. So look let's not forget the effort the world took to try and persuade Putin not to do this. You know this was not like we didn't all try. We didn't all bend over backwards. You know presidents prime ministers people went to the Kremlin. People still do as we see. President Macron is often trying to engage with President Putin asking him not to do it. It wasn't like he wasn't asked and I said to Shoigu that I said look you know you don't understand that if you didn't do this the world would relieve a really big sigh of relief. And he just said well we have no plans to invade Ukraine. I mean it was sort of you know it was only about 10 days before I mean I was born yesterday. So I mean I think yeah look we are dealing with a difficult issue. Cold War analogies. I'm sure someone out there is desperate trying to look for another phrase. A modern Iron Curtain phrase or Cold War. I think the key thing here is to ask NATO which we did at my last defence ministers conference is they need to set a long term plan. You know how we whatever happens in Ukraine I think Putin will still be there right. I mean Putin certainly in the short and middle time he's 70 years of age. He's got plenty of time in a sense. So the question is how do we contain Russia. How do we reassure our allies and how do we provide resilience to other allies to make sure they are not victim or subject to sub threats. You know lashings out or manipulation at the end of this conflict or war. And I think that's the challenge we have to do. So we have to get the international sort of NATO membership to think long term. Now whether that manifests itself in a Cold War and Iron Curtain or nothing like that for anyone right. Section State defence is calling for a new Iron Curtain. I'm not. We need a plan. We need to see a plan across the whole of the international community through NATO. Well I'm going to come on to NATO in a minute. But you mentioned sanctions there. What do you think needs to be done with the sanctions tool to make it a more effective coercive part of your armory in effect. It doesn't seem to be achieving the ends we want yet. I know Americans have talked about like a 12 week, 4 to 16 week timeframe or whatever. But can we make the sanctions more effective? Well I mean Britain's been quite vocal and wanting to be harsher on the gas sanctions. I wouldn't underplay however that when eventually that does happen in a broader sense that that won't have an effect. You know Russia is fighting the war in Ukraine with 65 to 75% of its land forces. They will have to be refurbished. They will have to be re-equipped. That won't be able to be done. The time they get round to trying to do that I suspect the sanctions will be much harsher anyhow. I think there are a number of consequences of sanctions that haven't yet been felt but will be. Photographs of people at cafes in Moscow is not actually a benchmark of where the sanctions are working. Look at the ruble, look at its long term challenges when it has to both get knowledge, people services and technologies. Huge amounts of what's been exposed here is a large part of their military capabilities based on western technologies or components. Well that's not going to happen. So I think we've been more vocal at gas and we have to effectively be tougher on that. Britain has tried to move that further. I think we'll get there is oil I think is the latest one they're talking about. But in many other areas they're already finding it difficult. But we knew they built up reserves. I mean he's got lots of reserves which he will try. But he cannot miss the fact that the western international community plus Australia and others are actually quite unified. I mean in a converse way if things moved towards negotiations of some sort which might involve parties other than the Ukrainians and the Russians. Do you think there would be a withdrawal? This comes from the students by the way. Do you think there would be a withdrawal of sanctions relatively quickly potentially? Or are we essentially looking at a posture towards a Russia that has done something like that? Well certainly the characteristic of most of these sanctions are punitive rather than deterrent. I mean and I think to be fair the Ukrainians were often asking for sanctions earlier as a deterrent rather than punitive. You'd hear a number of the international community saying well he hasn't done it yet. So being punitive they have to be punitive let's be honest for what he has done or what the regime has done. Look I think it is and we have to be very careful here. It is for Ukraine to choose its future and where it wants to settle or not settle or go with this conflict. And I think it would be quite wrong for me to sit here and either put conditions on Ukraine or tell Ukraine what piece it has to make. That is for Ukraine. The thing worth fighting for for all of us is the freedom to choose of a sovereign nation. What it chooses with that choice, with that freedom is entirely up to that. It's the same as Finland and Sweden. President Putin would love it because it would fit with his narrative that NATO is there trying to seduce Finland or Sweden or was encouraging them to join. We're not actually. We would absolutely understand and recognise the importance of the freedom to choose. But Sweden and Finland will be very close allies of the United Kingdom whether they choose NATO or not. We have a squadron of British tanks in Finland right now. I think the first time ever. But my God I would stand up and defend their right to choose. And if you listen to the President of Finland's speech of New Year, it was a very good speech about that. So I think I'm not going to start putting stipulations on Ukraine. That is for Ukraine. I do, of course, want to help them negotiate from a position of strength, not weakness. That's why we're standing by and will continue as long as they wish us to do so. You're teasing me with NATO. NATO summit's coming up next month. The Sherpas will be out there. They'll be already drafting the communiques, which will say solid things. How resilient do you feel at the stage the NATO alliance is as we face potentially a summer continuation of this conflict well into the autumn? So, I mean, I think NATO has worked actually incredibly well. Contrary to the allegation that was braindead, it's actually the opposite. It's harsh, but it's true. Ukraine is not in NATO. I've been open about that for months and weeks. For years a number of nations wanted to move at different speeds, but it isn't. Within NATO's borders, NATO has very quickly stepped up in military support around those borders. For example, we've got a company in Bulgaria. We've got six Typhoon aircraft in Romania. We've got two battle groups at the moment in Estonia. We've got a good few hundred troops, royal engineers and infantry and light cavalry in Poland. We've got ships deployments, et cetera. We're not alone and there's a huge amount. I think there's 100,000 United States troops in Europe at the moment. NATO has responded. It's remained consistent. We didn't cancel cold response up in the high north. 35,000 troops, including troops attached from Finland and Sweden. Actually, we have come together very well. Some countries move at different places, but there are 30 members. We've all got there, so I think it's worked well. I think the next challenge for it is long-term. What are we going to do with this, Russia, as it is? How are we going to provide that resilience and containment and reinforcement? Or whatever we have to do, but fundamentally, I think it has worked very well. On that looking forward point, what does success look like for NATO? Forgive me for putting Ukraine to one side here, because the challenges that this invasion, this crisis has thrown up, some people talk about it being existential for a number of entities in Europe. What does NATO need to come out of this stronger rather than weaker? I think it needs to have shown that deterrents can deliver deterrents. That's why we come together. It's a defensive organisation, contrary to allegations by President Putin. You provide defence through deterrents. If this conflict doesn't overspill, if Putin, through all the words, doesn't escalate, and if anything does happen, we are in a position where we can provide that resilience and reassurance to our fellow members, and that's absolutely what works for NATO. That's ultimately what we're there for. We are a self-defence organisation, and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong. So, there's lots of talk about expansion. You sort of semi-referenced it in an earlier answer. How could NATO expand at the moment without giving President Putin an excuse to take action somewhere else or to demonstrate to his support whatever it is? I told you so all along. It seems that NATO is likely to expand very soon, isn't it? NATO is never going to expand into Russia. It's quite interesting. I think I've lost count of the number of international statements signed up by Minister Lavrov or indeed Putin on the right to respect a nation's freedom to join an alliance. Funnily enough, when I went to Moscow, having seen how Lavrov played games with the Liz Trust, I made sure I read in detail their so-called draft treaty. I then looked at, compiled all the times Lavrov or Putin had declared that we respect a nation's right to choose an alliance, and that goes back to, I think, 1991, 1989. We've got declarations, the Starna declarations. You've got declaration of declaration where the Russians put their name to it. I remember George Robertson telling me that at one stage they'd put out this thing and Putin put his name to it. So just because a country is small doesn't mean to say Putin gets to pick and choose when his declarations and Lavrovs come into force. So I think the reality is that if President Putin wants to make an excuse to do things, he's already proven he'll make it up. He's already made up that apparently the Nazi halls of the Ukrainians were about to come and invade Russia. He's made it up. He's announced it again today. He's talked about it again today. Do I think if Sweden and Finland join NATO it'll be provocative? I don't think so. I mean, he was told. I mean, 2014 he was warned, you do this. The consequence of invading Crimea is more spending on defence and more NATO, and that's exactly what he got. No one hid that, very, very clear. That's why the EFPs are in Estonia, in Poland, very clear. We warned it publicly. Everyone talked about it. I said it in Moscow that if you do these things you'll get more NATO. So he can't be surprised. And the reality of it is he makes his strategic blunders more than he makes his strategic successes. That still doesn't sound like many off-ramps, though, out of this crisis. I mean, this seems to be, and this was mentioned this morning at the first panel, we seem to be in a position where there is almost doubling down by every party to this terrible conflict at the moment, except for the four civilians who are there. NATO is doing it to reinforce its deterrent posture, but the question is how will we get out of this crisis? I mean, you must find it a bit dizzying. I'll ask you, is it dizzying? The latest thing at the weekend was that there was some speculation that there might even be a referendum in Switzerland about NATO membership. This is quite extraordinary in a matter of months. There's a referendum about everything in Switzerland. That's right. I genuinely hold very true to the tenant that effectively people choose NATO and NATO doesn't choose it. NATO is not some country that goes around the world trying to absorb things. It is an organisation of people with the same values who believe in self-defence, not offence. Choosing off-ramps, there may be lots of off-ramps. I mean, we've already seen President Putin shaping today, potentially, a sense of about the Donbass. I'm here to defend the Donbass and defend our people in the Donbass. He may be certainly capable of writing a story that fits his narrative, if he wishes to do so. But, you know, the world can't stand by and watch him invade sovereign nations, commit war crimes. Well, his forces are committing alleged war crimes and go around bullying the world and not expect us to stand by our values. Freedom isn't free. That's the motto above the South Korean War Memorial. Let's put it another way. At the moment, there are a number of supposing battle-winning components that you would expect a successful army to have. Technology, leadership, intelligence, support of the population. Well, he's wrong on all those four, right? So, it turns out that the Ukrainians don't want to welcome him with flowers and banners. It turns out that his superior technical forces, the way they're deployed, don't work. They're not as necessarily superior in some areas that he would lead to the belief. His intelligence was clearly wrong in many areas, and his judgment of international community was wrong. There is one component he still has in his back pocket, which we should really worry about, which is brutality, which is if you win your war by killing, murdering, raping, bombing civilian territories, breaching all human rights, all Geneva Conventions, corruption, and that becomes the battle-winning component. The message that sends around the world to other adversaries is incredibly dangerous, that you don't actually need to have all the best kit or the best training or appropriate rule of law. You just need to be able to be more brutal than the other person and more prepared to destroy everything in your past. Now, that's been said in, you know, generals and philosophers have said those for decades. That is still the untested component, you know. They're not interested in occupying Maripole. They've destroyed it. I mean, they will use it. They will use the port. But they're hardly invested in something to save there, and where we see it, you know, it's destruction. So I think that is a really important thing. It's why it matters to the international community and it should matter that if Putin is successful in Ukraine, then watch out. OK. I don't want to fall into the narrative of Putin about this being Russia versus NATO. But just before I move on to implications for Britain, NATO as an organisation, its leading nation, what very long ago, had a president who was questioning its relevance and its future. That person, those views could easily be part of the next election in America. European allies continue to question the role of NATO in European defence as compared to other security and defence structures, as you know and as you will discuss. I'd just go back to this question of how far this, and we're trying to look at the future as well, how far the defence of Europe and ultimately the NATO's role in it will be affected by this crisis. Are we already seeing that some of those difficult questions about the relevance of NATO are now essentially being put to bed? Well, I mean, I remember when President Trump was, you know, the president, I remember the December NATO Leaders' Summit and having lunch with him and a few others of us had lunch. Actually, my reading of President Trump's questions on NATO was more about a view of are we in the United States taken for granted by other members of NATO who aren't paying their way as opposed to anything else? President Trump was always about money, he was about money, right? So he'd be saying I'm putting in X percent, 3 billion or whatever it is, billions and billions in NATO, and these countries are getting a free ride, as he would view it. And I think the 2 percent club wanting to get people to pay more for their security. I don't think that's unreasonable, and I think actually I'm off to Washington after this. I mean, that's heard across the aisle. There is a sense of how much is Europe going to put in the pot to help contribute to its collective defence. I think that it's perfectly reasonable that many countries, including the UK, have all taken peace dividends over the last 30 years and been very quick to bank in the end of the Cold War, to necessarily step up when their security got going. So I don't think that was him actually fundamentally saying he doesn't believe in the collective self-defence or anything else. I think it was a sense of, I did an interview saying taking for granted, what I meant was, I think America, we in Europe must not take America's support for granted. We must recognise that they spend a lot of money to do it. And what I would say is this incident has jolted lots of countries to come forward with the planning, spending increases to actually spend their way back into it. And also the point about other European nations, it's Sweden and Finland that seem to be big European, not in scale, but very respected European members of the EU who, the first point of call is actually, I think maybe, will explore NATO. It's not European Union thingy, which is always developing. I mean, along with what I've been around, it's been developing into some form of strategic compass or whatever it's calling so. And I think what's been interesting in this position is when it comes to security, people do trust that Britain does what it says. It does come and stand by you. We might not have everything to do it with. We don't have past divisions to do it with. And I know a lot of my colleagues and everyone would like us to have more. But we do turn up. We are there on day one. In fact, in Ukraine, we were there on day, whatever, many years ago, 2015, we did orbital. We were there on the ground. And we've got a squadron of tanks in Finland right now. So we do. And I think that's something to be proud of. So let's turn to Britain then. The papers are full of a cost of living crisis. You're talking about increased spending by some members of NATO. Is the UK going to spend some more on defence? It's going to be a difficult ask, isn't it? The public don't actually link, even though we may intellectually link it, do the public link the cost of living crisis with the crisis in Ukraine? Not entirely. How are you going to get the resources that you need? To encourage your colleagues in NATO and other forces to support you? I think at the time we got the 24 billion extra, we were the first to have a big jump. And the Prime Minister was very supportive. It was the biggest, I think, single jump since the Cold War. And it was very important at the time when the threat was what it was to make sure that we modernised the army. I mean, the army's land fleet is woefully behind its peers. And you can lay the blame for all sorts of reasons, but fundamentally, it needs definitely to modernise. We needed to take some strategic decisions on type of complex weapon systems. And all sorts of things were incredibly important. And we did get that funding for it. And as I see here now, we've got the extra funding for operations to support Ukraine and our lethal aid that we've been doing. That was in the media over the weekend, the 1.3 billion. And we will continue to be able to meet the current commitments. Of course, and I said it all the way through the process, as a threat change, we should also be prepared to change. I don't think it's impossible to persuade the public of the importance of stability. I mean, the one thing I bring from being the security minister is, you know, the world is a very fragile place, right? I remember the Home Office was very clever at making its case to the Treasury for more money. After a terrorist attack, the Treasury would manage to always present sort of economic consequences. You know, this terrorist attack here costs the economy 1.4 billion. It would show how much it costs to prosecute a terrorist. It would show that loss of business to, let's say, Central London when a terrorist event happens is X, and make the economic case to the Treasury that you want to invest in counter-terrorism because the consequence of not is this. And I think it is possible to persuade both inside government the importance of security and that food security, energy security is all in there, matters. And I think, you know, if I go back to the 1980s and things like that, you know, the public perception of where defence fit in was much higher. I don't think that's impossible to turn that round. I think you just have to have a concerted campaign to tell people the importance of defence. I mean, you'll know in your world you're constantly trying to make it relevant to people why you need to understand defence. And I think it's a really important... It is a really important issue, but nothing's for nothing. You know, there are a number of distinguished writers about British defence policy and British defence reviews over the years. You oversaw the defence component to the integrated review. And one of the things many of these authors have always written is that the one thing defence secretaries have to avoid is saying anything too big lest it be proved wrong. The integrated review did a tilt the Indo-Pacific, and we end up with a crisis in Europe. It's a law of defence reviews that if you do anything new, it may not appear to be the right thing. As you look back on the review and as you think about the next step, how well do you think the review is standing up? I'm sure you will say it's doing very well. But I suppose looking forward six to 12 months, do you see a need for what the Tony Blair administration had to do after their well-received review of 1998 where they had to have a new chapter to the Street Defence Review? I know you're not going to say there's going to be a massive change, but do you feel in terms of reviewing our posture and our approach we're pretty well set at the moment, or will there have to be a look in the coming year, let's say? I think you've slightly mischaracterised the integrated review because the Pacific Tilt is not just about defence. It's about culture and science, British engagement culturally around the world. It wasn't just about, it wasn't like we're going to send aircraft carriers every week to the Pacific Ocean. And it also clearly identified Russia as our number one adversary. It also identified NATO as the cornerstone of the security of Europe. So I think those were absolutely true. I think, for what it's worth, the mistakes of the past of defence reviews have been a, that the appetite of number 10s, let's call it that, was never matched by the budget. And defence MODs either tried to accommodate the ambition without telling them the price tag. And in some cases some of those defence reviews were funded by rather fictional, what looked like, efficiency savings and targets that were never really true. But then the department spent those savings before they'd had them. I mean, I think the defence review before the one I did, where the George Osborne's one, I think it planned 11 billion pounds of efficiencies of which the department was allowed to spend 13 billion. It was that plus a small amount of new money. And if you say to any department in theory you've got it, you have to keep really tight hands on the purse string. And then if you then get ambition from number 10 or foreign office or whatever, you have to be a bit of a, I'm a bit belligerent by nature to people to say no. And if, you know, I think defence is a department where it can very quickly run away from you. If you are not careful, it can become very expensive very quickly. And you do have to spend some of your time fighting your corner to either say no to one department or no to somebody else because, you know, there is, it can get very quick, very expensive. And so I think you have to have your hand on that till... I think historically senior leaderships in MOD talks about the need to run the budget hot, which it sounds like you're moving away from that. In other words, having natural overspend. Well, I think you have to, this year I'm going to come in on budget. I think it's the first time in 30, 40 years. You have to... Well, you've got to also see the long and the short term. I mean, the Treasury doesn't like seeing long term. It finds it particularly difficult. You have to be quite tough with the armed services about make your mind up. What are we going to put on this new ship you're building right now because if you don't make your decisions now, let me tell you the bill will be much higher later. And we have that all the time. So you just have to be rather sometimes pedantic about it. But you also have to remind people of the ambition. You have to say, if you want to do more, that's fine, but it's going to cost you more. So the Air Force and the Navy were seen to be the winners in the last review. Is it the Army's turn now? Or let me put it a different way. Can you see a move back to perhaps a slightly larger Army? Well, the Army got 5.2 billion pounds of investments in new equipment. I mean numbers, sorry, not about spending. Go ahead. The winners and losers in the review. What I would say is, I think we're now in a place where our funding cycle slightly matches the cycle of the three services at Stratcom, even though Defence Digital is one of the biggest spending of the lot, is that the RAF, RNA cycle, where its investments, typhoon upgrades, F-35s coming online, P-8s, E-7s, their cycle isn't the right place. The Navy, type 26, type 32, Dreadnaught, the next generation of attack submarine. They're all in a place where some of the decisions have been made and it's now in their sort of delivery cycle and the Army was the one that was woeful behind. So if you look over the sort of 10 years of the Defence Command paper, some of the Army stuff was brought forward because the gaps in them was too much. Gaps in Landy W, gaps in Armoured vehicles, all of those were too high risk to tolerate and they got where they were. We needed to fix that. So I think they're in the right place. The size of the Army, I think it's quite interesting. People are already spending the money that we may or may not get one day. I'm getting lobbied for more tanks or more precision weapons or more deep fires and that's constant. Depending on usually what stable the person comes from, it is often linked. If I got some new money, would I suddenly treble the size of the infantry? I'm not sure. If you look, the lessons from Ukraine are showing real impacts on how you might fight a future war. So the lack of counter UAV is something that we should all worry about, really worry about. If I hold out of UAV batteries, there will not be huge human resource, there will be lots of capital there. So you are focused on the effect rather than counting ships and numbers, but you can't deploy a division? Well, I was in one of these divisions in North Germany, right? It usually turned out to be about a brigade and a half. In fact, when we last deployed a division, it was two brigades and a commander brigade I think in the Second Gulf War. So the thing I really wanted in that command paper is to do what it says on the tin. Now, people might not like me for that, but we get lots of top-trump collectors. Look at all these Type 45s. None of them work, or three of them work, and the rest are tied up and have been for years. What is the point in boasting? You've got so many units if they're not properly wrapped, as I'd call it. The thing on the road to Kiev is Russian forces that can stack up on parades, but if they don't have the proper comms, the proper protective armour measures to protect them from the proliferation of hand-held anti-tank, they can't integrate with air. They can't communicate because their comms are so rubbish they get exploited. They run out of fuel. The soldiers don't have any situation awareness. We've even found examples of downed Su-34s with GPS things stuck to the dashboard, or cockpit. So you can boast, you can line them all up and say how wonderful they all look, like the T-14, which we're still waiting to appear. I think when you were in the Army, I recall lots of officers telling me that they used to use mobile phones. I remember the early nickname for Bowman was better off as Map and Nokia. So whatever people say, and they may not like the defence command, but I'm sure they don't if they said defence or whatever, because I wanted to say do what it says on the tin rather than these big hollow forces that we've all served in. Now, we can argue about they were under resource all along, isn't that? That should have been fixed, and that's probably right. I served in those places. I remember we never had a laser range fighter on the warrior. We had lots of warriors, but no laser range finders. So every round you ever fired was discarded because you have a first round discard. I remember on my rangers qualifying I made for a laser range fighter every time I missed. But no one made those decisions. So I don't want hollow forces. Hollow forces don't deliver anything. So it sounds like you are focused on not over committing to things that Britain couldn't deliver. I guess my last question as we approach, as we come to the end of the session, is how far are we making assessment about what peer, let's say, peer competitors might be taking from this crisis? So as we look to the broader defence of Europe and not just Russia, are there any implications that you're seeing that we need to think about seriously? Which could have implications for spending as well? Yeah, and actually even before this, last time I was up at King's College I was going to see a wargaming, is that we've set up SONAC, which is a net assessment centre for us. We've just appointed, Johnson is our leech, I'm delighted about it. We absolutely need to incorporate sort of red teaming, wargaming, understanding our own vulnerabilities and really ask the difficult questions of ourselves and our armed services about the decisions they're making. I think that is the most important thing. I think if Minister Shoygood had a SONAC and it was up and running, some of their assumptions may well have been tested correctly. And I think it is really important that we keep this as an ongoing process. I mean, if I am successful in making the department truly threat-led, then part of informing what that threat is will be informing of our own vulnerabilities and therefore things like net assessment centres, things like academics and academia telling me that I've got it wrong or I've got it right or where we need to invest more money into R&D and it's over 6.6 billion into R&D till we get to see it, to make also some risk decisions because the one thing I'd say about my own service it is the most conservative of them all, the army. And letting go of certain capabilities to invest in others is sometimes quite hard. It's hard for the innovative generals who want to change something, it's quite difficult. You're only going to do that if you invest in R&D but then having invested in the R&D you actually incorporate it into your military. Many of us in this room would have gone to experimental days and saws be played and seen for years, robots and UAVs and you say okay so where is it? We'll come back next year and you'll see the same thing going round in circles. So we have to sometimes take some leaps. So is Britain leading that debate? I mean that's the last semi-question to this. The United States gets to lead a lot of that debate because it has such vast forces that it can take risk in one part while holding on to yesterday's battles with another. I mean it gets that choice. We as a smaller partner always will have to either follow their learning or take some risk. Now sometimes we do it very well and I think that's what we've got to get politically comfortable with. It's also what many in-arm chairs have to get politically comfortable with. So if I'm always trying to defend against yesterday's war then how much will we move forward as an armed forces unilactually? Now I can do that. I don't mind being unpopular but you know it is a risk because who knows and that is the challenge of Defence Security. Secretary of State, thank you very much indeed for filling my questions. Thank you.