Britain’s top military and intelligence chiefs are issuing their starkest warnings in decades, urging the entire nation to prepare for an era of heightened danger and uncertainty as Russia’s threat to the UK and NATO grows. At the heart of this call is Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, Chief of the Defence Staff, who declared in London this week that the United Kingdom faces the most perilous security environment in his career. The message: defense and deterrence can no longer be left to the armed forces alone—every Briton has a part to play.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Sir Richard laid out the case for a sweeping, society-wide response to the multifaceted and escalating challenge posed by Russia. According to the Ministry of Defence, he described a landscape transformed by Moscow’s growing military capabilities, persistent hostile actions, and explicit ambitions to undermine the Western alliance. “The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career and the price of peace is rising,” Sir Richard told the audience, adding, “the trend, from Russia in particular, is worsening, and that is the key argument for action.”
His speech comes amid a chorus of concern from across government. Blaise Metreweli, the newly appointed chief of MI6 and the first woman to hold the post in the agency’s 116-year history, echoed these warnings. She described Russia as “an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist threat,” and cautioned that the Kremlin’s export of chaos is a deliberate strategy that is unlikely to abate until President Vladimir Putin is forced to alter course. “The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement, and we should be ready for this to continue,” Metreweli stated, according to BFBS Forces News.
For Sir Richard, the challenge is not just about military might. He pointed to a “whole-of-society response” as essential, encompassing not only the armed forces but industry, universities, the NHS, and critical infrastructure. “It needs a whole of nation response that builds our defence industrial capacity… and ensures and increases the resilience of society and the infrastructure that supports it,” he said, as quoted by BBC News. He stressed that deterrence depends as much on national resilience as on military strength, warning, “failure would affect the infrastructure and economy that underpins our broader national life.”
The statistics are sobering. Russia’s armed forces have expanded to more than 1.1 million personnel, consuming over 7% of GDP and about 40% of government spending, according to Reuters. The military is now highly combat-experienced, benefiting from years of fighting in Ukraine, and is rapidly advancing in drone warfare and the development of destabilizing weapons such as nuclear-armed torpedoes and nuclear-powered cruise missiles. Sir Richard cautioned, “We should be under no illusions that Russia has a massive, increasingly technically sophisticated, and now highly combat-experienced, military.”
The threat is not abstract. The UK faces daily cyber-attacks from Russia, and Russian agents have conducted sabotage and assassinations on British soil. Knighton referenced a recent incident involving a Russian spy ship suspected of mapping undersea cables near UK waters, underscoring the vulnerability of the nation’s critical infrastructure. “Every day the UK is subject to an onslaught of cyber-attacks from Russia and we know that Russian agents are seeking to conduct sabotage and have killed on our shores,” he told the RUSI audience.
Despite the gravity of these warnings, Sir Richard noted that the Russian threat is not yet felt as acutely in Britain as it is among some European allies. Countries like France and Germany have already increased defense procurement and are exploring forms of national service. Last year, the UK government floated compulsory service proposals, which were dismissed by Labour as a gimmick, but the debate is far from settled. The Chief of the Defence Staff emphasized, “Sons and daughters, colleagues, veterans ... will all have a part to play. To build. To serve. And if necessary, to fight. And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means.”
To bridge the skills gap and accelerate training, Sir Richard announced £50 million for new Defence Technical Excellence Colleges. These institutions will offer thousands of short courses to upskill both new hires and existing staff in the defense sector. “Five colleges in England, and others across the UK, will gain specialist status and major new funding to train people in the skills needed to secure new defence jobs, and help deliver on the ambitions set out in the Strategic Defence Review,” he explained, as reported by BFBS Forces News. The move comes as a response to recent findings by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the National Engineering Policy Centre, which highlighted a significant engineering skills gap and recruitment challenges in the defense industry.
Building resilience, Sir Richard argued, means more than just preparing for traditional conflict. It requires making Britain a “harder target” for hybrid threats—those that combine military, cyber, and information warfare. “Building this industrial capacity also means we need more people who leave schools and universities to join that industry,” he said, urging schools and parents to encourage young people to pursue careers in defense and related fields. Harnessing the full potential of the UK’s universities, energy and manufacturing sectors, and the NHS is central to his vision of a nation ready to withstand and recover from crisis.
The government, for its part, has pledged to increase defense and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035—the largest sustained rise since the Cold War. As Sir Richard put it, “I find myself in a position that none of my predecessors during my career have faced, looking at the prospect of the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War. And that is because the price of peace is increasing.”
Yet, the ultimate goal remains the avoidance of war. “While the price of peace may be rising, the cost of strong deterrence is still far, far less than the cost of war,” Sir Richard concluded. He called for a national conversation on defense and security, warning that the risk to NATO and the UK is growing, even if it feels less immediate than in Eastern Europe. As the commander of the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord Ben Key Jenkin, recently warned, the UK is close to losing control of the Atlantic Ocean to Russia for the first time since World War II—a sobering reminder that history’s lessons are never far behind.
As Britain faces a future marked by uncertainty and rapid technological change, its leaders are making it clear: the responsibility to defend the nation now rests with everyone, not just those in uniform.
