UK Defence Crisis: Money Rising, But Capability Stalled by Institutional Gridlock

The back-to-back resignations of Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns on 12 June 2026 expose a fault line across NATO. Both departed over the government's defence plan, citing insufficient transformation despite rising budgets. Carns' subsequent criticism—that the MoD refuses to confront sunk costs in legacy programmes, choking out new capabilities—captures a structural challenge most allies face: converting spending commitments into actual military capability requires cancelling underperforming projects. Political inertia blocks that. The constraint is no longer fiscal; it is institutional.