‘Drones in, destroyers out’: Starmer’s Defence Investment Plan is scrapping real warships and replacing them with fantasy fleets

Now, as you read this, the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan is quite literally being printed off in Downing Street ahead of its presentation to the public and press and it already looks like we may have lurched from one problem into another.

For years the Ministry of Defence was too slow to absorb the lessons of modern warfare and Ukraine. Drones, electronic warfare, cheap precise kit, battlefield transparency and technology that is not too expensive to destroy were all unfolding in real time, while the British system still looked as if it wanted to buy the next version of the last war.

Now, suddenly, the pendulum seems to have swung hard in the opposite direction. It is drones on land, drones at sea, drones in the air, autonomous systems, hybrid vessels, uncrewed missile platforms, command hubs and networked warfare. The full future-war vocabulary has arrived.

That is welcome, up to a point. But the answer to decades of slow, expensive, old-world procurement is not to pretend that glossy concepts and unbuilt autonomous ships can replace real military capability that we may need very soon. That is the danger here.

The Defence Investment Plan is being sold as the moment Britain finally future-proofs its Armed Forces. Sir Keir Starmer says it will keep Britain “safe and secure long into the future”, while Dan Jarvis argues that the character of warfare is rapidly changing and that uncrewed systems are defining conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. They are right about the change, but recognising it is not the same as being ready for it.

The clearest example is at sea. Only a few months ago, Britain was rushing one of its ageing Type 45 destroyers, HMS Dragon, towards the eastern Mediterranean as the threat from Iranian and Iranian-backed ballistic missiles loomed.

That is exactly the sort of mission a serious navy must be able to carry out: air defence, missile defence, deterrence, presence and reassurance. The Type 45s are far from perfect, too few, ageing, overstretched and with well-documented problems, but they exist.

They are real ships, crewed by real sailors, carrying real weapons and doing real tasks in a dangerous world.

Now we are told the Royal Navy will no longer pursue the planned Type 83 destroyer as the direct successor. Instead, Britain will procure at least six Common Combat Vessels, hybrid ships designed to act as command hubs for uncrewed systems, extending reach and firepower without a proportional increase in crew or cost.

Alongside them comes a promised flotilla of futuristic systems: Type 91 missile platforms, Type 92 underwater sensing platforms, Type 93 extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicles and Type 94 sensor platforms.

It all sounds impressive, but the awkward question remains: where are they? The Type 91 “arsenal ship” concept, which is supposed to add depth to the fleet’s missile capacity, was still in a pre-concept phase as of last year.

One Navy source put it bluntly: "Pre-concept essentially means there are some AI-generated-looking images of a futuristic ship, a series of meetings, and a shared understanding of how British defence procurement tends to work."

In other words, if Britain had to fight a serious war next year, there is a real risk that the plan to replace existing capability would still be months away from being finalised, let alone tendered out and actually ending up in production. That is not strategy, it is vibes with a procurement code.

LBC has been reporting on this problem for years, hollowed-out forces, recruitment and retention crises, training shortages, stockpile concerns, readiness gaps and the brutal pace at which Ukraine has reshaped modern warfare. The battlefield is not waiting for Whitehall to finish its review cycle.

Al Carns understood this. When the former Armed Forces Minister resigned, it mattered because he was not just another minister making a political gesture. Carns is a decorated former special forces officer who understands the difference between a plan that sounds modern and a force that can actually fight. Speaking to LBC, he said Britain needed to be ready to fight the next war, not the last one, which is a line that should still be nailed to the door of the Ministry of Defence.

But that principle cuts both ways. Britain must not cling to old platforms simply because they are familiar, yet it must also avoid the opposite mistake: discarding hard capability in favour of fashionable language about autonomy before the replacement actually exists.

The next war will not care that the PowerPoint looked futuristic or that ministers spoke about a “hybrid navy”. It will not care about concept images of uncrewed missile ships with sharp angles and dramatic lighting. It will ask a much colder question: what can you deploy today, what can survive, what can shoot, what can be repaired, what can be replaced, and what happens when the enemy starts destroying it?

Drones are now central to that answer. Ukraine has shown that cheap systems can destroy expensive assumptions, that naval drones can reshape entire theatres like the Black Sea, and that FPV drones can transform the front line. Britain absolutely needs drones in huge numbers, alongside counter-drone systems, embedded electronic warfare and a mix of cheap expendable mass with high-end platforms. It needs a Navy capable of integrating uncrewed vessels, underwater sensors and missile platforms into a wider network.

But that is not the same as saying drones replace everything. They do not. A drone does not replace an air-defence destroyer, a concept vessel does not replace a missile magazine, and an autonomous system that has not yet been designed, built, tested and deployed does not protect British sailors or territory. There is a difference between transformation and fantasy.

The concern with this Defence Investment Plan is that the Government is trying to look bold without paying the full price of being serious.

Ex-Defence Secretary John Healey resigned because he did not believe the funding was sufficient to transform the Armed Forces and meet the threat, and Al Carns resigned too. That should have set alarm bells ringing across Westminster. Instead, ministers appear determined to present a slightly larger settlement as a decisive break with the past.

It is not enough. The reported figure of around £14.5 billion may exceed the previous offer, but if defence officials believed something closer to £28 billion was required, then this is not a transformation plan, it's compromise dressed up as a transformation.

The real issue is that Britain has spent years allowing its Armed Forces to become too small, too stretched and too brittle. The Navy has too few escorts, the Army has shrunk, ammunition stocks are insufficient, air defence is thin, and recruitment and retention remain chronic problems.

Procurement is slow, while housing and morale have been neglected. These are structural failures that cannot be fixed with slogans, and certainly not by assuming drones will solve everything.

The most dangerous mistake Britain could make now is to learn only half the lesson from Ukraine. The lesson is not simply “buy drones”; it is that modern war rewards speed, mass, adaptability, electronic dominance, industrial capacity and the ability to replace losses quickly. It rewards militaries that learn faster than their enemies and punishes those who mistake prestige for power or plans for readiness.

That means legacy programmes should be challenged and outdated assumptions discarded, but it also means new ideas must face the same scrutiny. The Common Combat Vessel may prove to be a smart move, the Type 91 concept may become a useful missile platform, and a hybrid Navy may indeed be the right direction. But until those systems exist, function and arrive in meaningful numbers, they cannot substitute for the capability Britain already has.

Oh, and once a Type 91 has actually been designed, commissioned, built, tested and is ready to go it will still need ages while the crew (drone sailors?) learn how to use it.

Britain must prepare for the next war, not the last one, but it must also be ready for a war that begins before the next procurement vision leaves the drawing board. That is the reality Whitehall too often fails to grasp. The enemy gets a vote, Russia, Iran, China, proxies and militias alike, and none of them will wait for us to perfect our future force.

So yes, build the drones, the uncrewed missile ships, the underwater sensors and the hybrid Navy. Push the Armed Forces into the world that Ukraine has revealed so brutally. But do not pretend that concepts are capability, do not scrap before you can replace, and do not confuse modern language with military power.

Above all, do not tell the public Britain is being kept “safe and secure long into the future” unless the Armed Forces are also strong enough to keep us safe next year. That is the real test of this Defence Investment Plan, not whether it sounds futuristic, but whether it can fight.

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