Top advisor warns NATO allies 'not ready' for war amid Middle East tensions
Grace Cassy, an adviser to the British government's defense review, told POLITICO the UK has "a long way to go" before it is "UK ready" to fight a potential adversary, adding that the West is moving too slowly to adapt to new military technology.
A leading defense advisor has issued a stark warning that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are not prepared for war.
Grace Cassy, an advisor to the UK government's defense review, told POLITICO that the UK still has "a ways to go" before it is ready to confront potential adversaries.
Cassy pointed out that both the UK and its Western allies are lagging in adapting to new military technology.
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The strategic defense review, an independent evaluation of threats facing the UK, emphasized the need for Britain to be "battle-ready" by investing in advanced capabilities, munitions, and long-range weapons.
While many top ministers have accepted these findings, Prime Minister Keir Starmer reportedly refuses to set a timeline for spending 3 percent of the country's GDP on defense. Reports suggest this is the minimum necessary to fully implement the review's recommendations.
"There is a battle to maintain an advantage that's often quite short-lived," Cassy told Politico. "The cycles of innovation are incredibly short."
This is especially true when it comes to drone usage, according to Cassy. "You can fly it in one day, but maybe a week later you can't," she said, reports the Mirror US.
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"The SDR makes clear we've got a way to go before we could be ready to fight that way."
Politico has reported that Cassy, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, is among six experts appointed to a panel tasked with guiding the review. Cassy emphasized that the ongoing conflict in Ukraine significantly influences how reviewers perceive new battlefield technology.
Cassy pointed out that the U.K.'s slow procurement processes are one reason why weapon acquisition takes so long. Additional obstacles include a deep-seated aversion to risk-taking and an over-dependence on a small number of major defense suppliers.
"If we went up to 5 percent [spending on defense] tomorrow, but we're still in our old habits, we wouldn't be prepared for the future," Cassy stated. "We within NATO - not just the U.K. but every other NATO member state - needs to change in order to spend any of that new money better."
With Russia escalating its assault on Ukraine, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has instructed all member nations to start bolstering their defense. "We are already engaged daily in a struggle below that conventional threshold of war, which really does require us to invest properly in our wider defenses," she said.
The conversation about strengthening defense comes as Iran and Israel have started attacking each other following Israel's missile strikes on Iran aimed at destroying several nuclear facilities.
U.S. intelligence assessments, which are based on the same intelligence examined by Israeli officials, suggest that Iran's nuclear weapons are much further away than Israel appears to believe.
