The MoD has blown more than £1.2 billion in a single year on scrapped spy plane upgrades, a failed radio system, decommissioned warships and crashed drones. The Mail has the story:
Officials admitted to £1.23 billion of losses across 17,622 separate cases in 2025/26.
It follows write-offs of £1.9 billion the previous year, meaning the department has lost more than £3 billion in two years, as ministers plead for extra money to rearm.
Topping the list last year was £408 million knocked off the value of building work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the Berkshire factory that makes warheads for Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
Another £254 million was lost when the MoD pulled the plug in 2025 on an upgrade of the RAF‘s secretive Shadow spy planes. …
Project Morpheus, the Army’s long-delayed replacement for its Bowman battlefield radios, cost £236 million to cancel after more than £690 million had already been spent on it by 2023. …
Eighty-six million pounds of half-built projects were written off. …
A scheme to build solar farms on the defence estate was cancelled at a cost of £5.8 million, and a project to replace thermal imaging cameras and laser rangefinders was terminated for £8.3 million. …
On top of the losses, the MoD made 7,080 special payments totalling £169 million, including £48.5 million compensation in historical cases of veterans sacked for being gay.
The Mail’s full list of MoD waste is worth reading in full.
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