SpaceWar.com reports: “British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans Monday to inject an additional $20.3 billion into the country’s nuclear weapons program to combat the ‘threat from Russia’ and China and build 12 new nuclear-powered attack submarines.

The new spending is part of a major Strategic Defense Review unveiled by Starmer at a military contractor on Clydeside in Scotland, home to the country’s Trident submarine nuclear deterrent, aimed at restoring Britain’s fighting capability and making it ‘war-ready’ within two years for a conflict in Europe and/or the Atlantic.

‘We are moving to war-fighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces. When we are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, the most effective way to deter them is to be ready, and frankly, to show them that we’re ready to deliver peace through strength,’ Starmer said.

‘I believe the best way to deter conflict is to prepare for it.’

The plan, was Starmer said, ‘a blueprint to make Britain safer and stronger, a battle-ready, bomber-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities, equipped for the decades to come.’

However, he stressed that it would be a ‘NATO first’ policy, putting the military alliance at the center of everything the United Kingdom did…”