Government spending on defense in the UK 1998-2022

In 2021/22, the United Kingdom spent approximately 48.6 billion British pounds on defense, an increase of around four billion pounds when on the previous year. Compared with 1998/99 when the UK spent approximately 39.5 billion pounds on defense, there has been an increase of around 9.1 billion pounds.

NATO and the two percent pledge

The United Kingdom is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) a military and political alliance initiated on the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Members of NATO are expected to spend at least two percent of their Gross-Domestic Product on defense, a target which the United Kingdom just missed between 2015/16 and 2017/18 when it was 1.9 percent. Prior to 2016 the United Kingdom’s defense spending was always above this target and was higher than three percent of GDP before the mid-1990s.

Global military spending

Compared with the rest of the world, the United Kingdom spent the eighth most on defense, less than the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, India, France and Russia, and Germany. In terms of military spending as a share of GDP, the UK was behind ten other countries in 2019, especially Saudi Arabia which spent 8 percent of it’s GDP on defense.