And so it appears that the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy has two siblings:

--a possible Defence White Paper, and
--a Defence and Security Industrial Strategy.

Short thread....

Here we have Carl mention a Defence White Paper. https://twitter.com/carldinnen/status/1358824423625797633?s=20

Reading between the lines, this appears to have had a difficult birth. The Minister on 08 Dec described there being a "plan for defence reform"; whilst Sir Lovegrove explained to the PAC on 04 Feb that...

...the MoD would publish a "specific defence publication" that addresses which capabilities would go & which would be invested in. Tellingly he also said...

..."we will be giving, in any event, in some form, considerably more information about the specific Defence programmes, over and above both the defence and security industrial strategy and the integrated review"...

...the "in some form" suggests there was no consensus at the time on this being a White Paper. There are also some big clues as to what to expect in the Defence White Paper / Industrial Strategy.

Space, cyber, R&D and networks.

There's another interesting tid-bit...

...Sir Lovegrove says there's an aim of having more of a forward presence and crucially, "less contingent force held at readiness". The first point is obvious from reading IOC 2025, the second point is perhaps more mysterious and ambiguous...

...does this mean deleting contingent forces, or shifting the contingency forces outside of the UK? Does it mean more of a forward presence in Europe? Our land contingent force is a division and a small brigade, that doesn't leave much to have "less" of...

...finally the PAC session sets out that the Equipment Plan will fundamentally change. It's explained that some capabilities will go, & some new ones will be added. The current EP has the projects you'd expect to see, a substantially different one will be very interesting to see

Kit mentioned as deffo staying in the EP: Ajax and Successor. Kit mentioned in the PAC session as exemplar: Type 31 (so presumably staying).

DCDS refuses to commit on the record re: CR2 and Warrior. Tellingly, he has no idea what the Type 32 is. But the surface fleet is to grow

Forgot to mention this tidbit. This is not the same as a funding commitment but HMT is allowing MoD to plan on the basis that the £16.5bn uplift will be recurrent from Yr 5 +0.5% a year. That's an extra £30bn planning war-chest for investing in post Integrated Review military kit