Operation Epic Fury Has Exposed the Catastrophic Gap Between Defence Spending and Defence Capability

The United Kingdom has, depending on the source, the world’s fifth- or sixth-largest defence budget. In the 2024/25 financial year, Britain spent £60.2 billion on defence — approximately $82 billion at current exchange rates — representing 2.3 per cent of GDP. For much of the post-Cold War era, this figure exceeded Russia’s military expenditure. The UK spends significantly more than France, yet consistently receives considerably less in return. The wastage in the UK defence budget has been flagged for decades, alongside a procurement system that is dysfunctional, chronically over-budget, and riddled with institutional inertia. The question that should haunt every British taxpayer is brutally simple: where does the money actually go?

The answer has never been more starkly illustrated than in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury on 28 February 2026. Israel — ranked among the world’s fifteen largest defence spenders, with military expenditure of approximately $46.5 billion in 2024, some 40 per cent less than Britain’s — deployed approximately 200 fighter jets in the largest combat sortie in Israeli Air Force history. Those aircraft struck over 500 military targets across western and central Iran, delivering more than 1,200 bombs in the first 24 hours. The operation achieved air superiority over Tehran within 700 sorties, neutralised Iran’s air defence architecture, and eliminated the Supreme Leader alongside senior IRGC commanders. An Israeli F-35I recorded the first-ever air-to-air kill by an F-35 against a manned fighter, downing a Russian-made Yak-130 over Tehran. The campaign was preceded by months of strategic deception — senior commanders returning home in unmarked cars on the Friday evening, official vehicles left parked to maintain the satellite imagery of routine, while 200 jets stood armed and ready.

What did Britain manage? Four Typhoons deployed at the request of Qatar, from which a single aircraft shot down one Iranian drone. RAF F-35s from Akrotiri intercepted a handful of Shahed-class drones — after one had already struck a hangar at the base, prompting a partial evacuation and the relocation of service families. Britain’s sovereign territory was attacked, and the immediate response was to promise that HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer, would be relocated from the English Channel — except it first needed to be brought out of maintenance, re-rolled for a different mission, and fitted with the correct weaponry. The Prospect union revealed that the Portsmouth naval base was operating on a nine-to-five weekday contract under Serco, with workers volunteering evenings and weekends to get the vessel ready. Departure was delayed by over a week. France, by contrast, dispatched the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle with its air wing and escort frigates to the Eastern Mediterranean. Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge was right: the delay had “completely undermined Britain’s international standing.”

Prior to the conflict, the Royal Navy had precisely one vessel in the entire Middle East theatre: HMS Middleton, a mine hunter. Not a frigate. Not a destroyer. A mine hunter. And this is the same Royal Navy simultaneously building next-generation nuclear-powered submarines at Devonport under the AUKUS pact — absorbing billions while the surface fleet withers to the point where it cannot put a single combatant to sea when British sovereign territory comes under fire.

The divergence becomes clearer through the lens of financial economics. Israel spends approximately 8.8 per cent of GDP on defence — four times the UK’s ratio — but even before the post-October 7 surge, when its military burden sat at 4.4 per cent, its force structure was configured for one overriding purpose: operational effectiveness. In option pricing terms, Israel’s capabilities function as a portfolio of deeply embedded call options on rapid escalation. Each element — the F-35I fleet, the Iron Dome batteries, the precision-strike stockpiles, the intelligence networks — represents an option exercisable at speed when the strategic environment demands it. These options are maintained at low premium cost through conscription, indigenous manufacturing, and a procurement culture that prizes speed over process. On 28 February, Israel exercised those options simultaneously and at massive scale.

Britain’s defence posture resembles an out-of-the-money put option with enormous premium decay. The UK pays extravagantly to maintain the appearance of a hedge — the nuclear deterrent, the carrier strike groups, the global basing network — but when the moment of exercise arrives, the option turns out to be worthless for the contingency at hand. HMS Dragon in maintenance, four Typhoons begged from a training squadron, a mine hunter as the sole naval presence east of Suez: this is what premium decay looks like in military terms.

The broader dynamics reinforce this. Le Chatelier’s Principle tells us that when an external stress displaces a system from equilibrium, the system adjusts to counteract the disturbance. Operation Epic Fury represents the most dramatic exogenous shock to the Middle Eastern security equilibrium since the fall of Saddam Hussein — Iran’s air defences shattered, 150 freight vessels stalled in the Strait of Hormuz, missile salvoes raining down on Dubai, Doha, and Bahrain. Israel’s force structure was pre-configured to exploit precisely this disequilibrium, designed to apply overwhelming counterforce when the system is most susceptible to reshaping. Britain’s force structure is configured to resist change — designed for a post-Cold War order of stable alliances and graduated escalation that no longer exists.

Perhaps most telling is the behaviour of the Gulf states themselves. Qatar requested RAF Typhoons — four of them — but the deeper military cooperation is flowing through the Abraham Accords architecture. The UAE’s air defences dealt with 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles, and 541 Iranian drones in the first 24 hours, a performance enabled significantly by Israeli-origin defence technology. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince vowed military force against further Iranian incursions. The emerging Gulf security architecture is built around American power projection and Israeli technological sophistication, with Britain relegated to a supporting role that its budget should not permit.

The structural reasons are well documented. In 2023/24, nuclear spending consumed approximately £9.4 billion — roughly half of all UK equipment spending. The Dreadnought programme and warhead replacement absorb resources at staggering scale, with £15 billion committed to warheads over the current parliament alone. Israel maintains its nuclear ambiguity at a fraction of the cost, channelling funds into precision-strike capabilities and the layered air defence systems proven under fire. Meanwhile, all five of the Royal Navy’s other Type 45 destroyers were also in various stages of maintenance when the conflict erupted — not a single destroyer was ready for immediate deployment. Britain maintains over 2,000 military bases domestically, sovereign bases in Cyprus, facilities in Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar — a force structure that is broad but extraordinarily thin, configured to show the flag everywhere while unable to fight effectively anywhere.

Prior to 2022, the UK outspent Russia on defence. Yet credible estimates suggest that had Britain mounted a similar-scale operation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the military would have lasted approximately two weeks before exhausting its reserves and ammunition. We could not have sustained four years of war. If the UK was spending more than Russia, why were we getting approximately 15 to 20 per cent of the capability in return?

Keir Starmer’s government has committed to spending increases — £62.2 billion in 2025/26, rising to £73.5 billion by 2028/29 — with aspirations to reach 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035. But unless the fundamental pathologies are addressed — the procurement failures, the nuclear-conventional imbalance, the AUKUS programme consuming resources that might otherwise put warships where they are needed — more money will simply mean more waste at a higher price point.

Israel’s lesson to Britain is not that it should spend more. It is that it should spend as though the money matters. A nation that deploys 200 jets to strike 500 targets, achieves air superiority over a hostile capital within 48 hours, and executes a campaign of strategic deception that catches the enemy completely off guard — all on a budget 40 per cent smaller than Britain’s — has something to teach the world about the relationship between money and military power. The £60 billion question is not whether Britain can afford to defend itself. It is whether it can afford to keep pretending that it already does.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)