Nothing proves the UK’s “Nato-first” approach like stockpiling the British Army’s ammunition and heavier equipment in a number of storage facilities dotted around Europe.
This is one piece of advise that the authors of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) gave to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in their report on 2 June 2025.
The rationale behind the move is to ensure Nato readiness and eliminate the need for the Army to undertake tricky logistics across the channel in the moment of conflict.
However, the move could also render pointless the recent construction of new storage spaces for British armoured vehicles across the UK.
Military mobility in Europe
While prepositioning vital equipment around Europe makes sense given the UK’s newfound strategic focus on the Euro-Atlantic region, the actual mobility of military equipment and platforms on the continent has proven difficult to date.
Certain countries have devised mutual assurances for a military corridor through their respective territories, such as the continental route through the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland as well as a Nordic route through Norway, Sweden and Finland.
However, there are complications from a technical perspective given the different load capacities on roads for transporting tanks and armoured vehicles in different countries.
There are also financing issues, as the European Union’s (EU) military mobility fund has run dry. There are no funds available for additional projects in the final two years of a multi-year settlement to improve defence logistics.
Inflection point
The advice points to a narrower strategic calculus in which Russia is the “immediate and pressing threat” to UK security interests, the document suggests.
This can be seen as an inflection point. Should the MoD implement this measure then the UK will devote most of its limited resources to the Russian threat over other looming adversaries such as China, a country that had once held a greater response in the Integrated Review Refresh back in 2023.
Of course, this is not an either/or scenario. The SDR still considers China a “sophisticated and persistent threat” as the authors acknowledge that UK defence will likely face Chinese technology wherever and with whomever it fights, and the superpower will also continue to conduct espionage and cyber attacks against Britain.
For now, it appears the UK will ‘tilt’ back to Europe while the United States pivots its entire posture to the Indo-Pacific and homeland defence.
To that end, it is notable that the Review groups the Middle East with the Indo-Pacific “as the next priority regions after the Euro-Atlantic” for defence engagement, something the Refresh did not do.
Suffice it say, “fundamentally, the UK’s longstanding assumptions about global power balances and structures are no longer certain,” the report concedes.
