Not long before World War I, HMS Dreadnought, a battleship that made all existing vessels obsolete, was launched at Portsmouth in the presence of the King-Emperor Edward VII. Fire-breathing patriots soon took up the cry, "We want eight and we won't wait.”
Winston Churchill, then a young home secretary in a government committed to spending more on welfare, wryly noted of the popular clamor for a naval race with Germany: "The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.”
British debates about defense spending follow a familiar trajectory, although this time it’s politicians, rather than civilians, insisting that more should be spent on firepower. A military revolution in warfare is under way, too. Drones, off-the-shelf technology far cheaper than dreadnoughts, are being deployed to lethal effect on the battlefields of Ukraine and further afield — the daring "Spider Web" raid recently destroyed as much as a third of Russia’s strategic bombing force based thousands of miles away from Europe.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.