Britain 'not ready' for war and has less than three years to prepare, minister warns

Al Carns, minister of state for the armed forces, warned the UK's forces were under-prepared for any future conflict, with "much of their hardware stuck in the past".

“When it comes to deterring Russia, we have three to five years before we have to fight a significant confrontation with a major state, a geographically constrained conflict in some shape or form,” he told The Times.

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"And the reality is, whether we like it or not our military in a lot of cases hasn’t changed from the Eighties and Nineties. We’ve got to move faster, and on everything."

It is the starkest warning yet given by a UK minister, who usually reassures the public about the threat of war in public statements.

Mr Carns is a former Royal Marine colonel and was elected MP for Birmingham Selly Oak at the 2024 General Election.

He was deployed to Kyiv during the Ukraine-Russia war and was summoned to the Ministry of Defence’s Whitehall HQ to brief officials on the changes he had seen in the battlefield.

Having not been convinced that Britain's defence system was "moving as fast as I wanted to", he quit his special forces operator role and went into politics.

The 45-year-old Scot is most concerned about drone warfare, which is "unrecognisable" from the first two years of Russia’s invasion.

He claims that a single drone now has the same lethality rate as 22 artillery rounds, and that 87 per cent of all casualties on the Ukraine front line are caused by drones.

"Whoever integrates drones, autonomy and AI into the way we fight will win the next conflict," Mr Carns warned.

His words come after the UK hit Russia with its largest wave of sanctions since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine four years ago.

Sir Keir Starmer has vowed the UK would stand by Ukraine until Russian aggression is defeated and paid tribute to “the incredible resilience of the Ukrainians”.

Discussing the Prime Minister's defence plans, Mr Carns said he is keen to see the rise in defence spending that Sir Keir promised to be accelerated.

He wants the figure to hit 3 per cent of GDP by 2029 instead of 2.5 per cent, and stresses the PM wants that too.

Mr Carns joined the Marines at 19 and had been deployed to Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Iraq, as well as serving repeated tours of Afghanistan before his move to Westminster.

He was awarded a rare Distinguished Service Order, a Military Cross for bravery, an OBE and a mention in dispatches.

The MP is also still a reservist and carried out a week of Arctic training in Norway this month.