Sending UK ships to police Strait of Hormuz ‘a fantasy’,

Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Independent that more money needs to be spent if the government wants to "plug many of the under-resourced gaps in defence". "Britain is certainly still the beneficiary of strategic depth of alliances, of some pretty impressive niche capabilities within each of the services." "But its armed forces are very much in a what you might call a transitional period, where we're moving from an era of small wars to one where large-scale conflict is very much a believable contingency. And that process of transition is by no means complete." Asked about Mr Wallace's warnings, Dr Kaushal said: "I think it's probably true that in order to plug many of the under-resourced gaps in defence, more money needs to be spent."