“What we have to work on is how to get there. In theory, you can do nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, a huge dollop of cash at the end. Cumulatively it would cost you nothing, apart from the last bit where you jumped £52 billion. But you can’t really run a defense budget like that. The reality is that we will work with the Treasury to ensure that we have a budget that grows to meet the threat and our ambitions.” The defense secretary, who was reappointed this month after backing Mrs Truss in the Tory leadership contest in the summer, said: “The reason I backed Liz Truss was that the risks we were prepared to tolerate in the middle of the decade are not risks. they want to tolerate more in light of Russian aggression. “There are certain risks we can no longer take. And that’s why I wrote to the Chancellor last March to say, the things we didn’t get in IR [2021 Integrated Review of defence and security] what we asked for, we need it”. On Saturday night, the Ministry of Defense revealed that five RAF aircraft had joined an exercise in Australia that will see the UK armed forces train with Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other Indo-Pacific nations, until in December. The planned increase comes after Boris Johnson signed off on a £24bn cash boost over the next four years, which Wallace said “was the first time we’ve had a proper, sustained genuine upward arrow, not fake efficiency savings. -arrows, from the Cold War. In remarks that appeared to simultaneously praise Kwasi Kwarteng and criticize Rishi Sunak, his predecessor, Mr Wallace added that it was clear that “Kwasi will be a great, open chancellor … He is not going to close the door on number 11 and hide behind it’.
