Michael Fallon, UK Secretary of State for Defense, writes in Defense News : “2015 has been a tough year. It began with the appalling attack on Charlie Hebdo and ended with the worst attacks in Paris since World War II. Many more innocent people lost their lives to terror — on a Tunisian beach, on a Russian airliner and in a Malian hotel.”  

“Besides the curse of the Islamic State group (ISIL), we’ve seen a resurgent Russia undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and mass migration spilling into the Mediterranean. The diversity, complexity and concurrence of these events has been unprecedented, placing strain on our international-rules-based system.”  

“The UK is responding with bigger, stronger defense. As a new government, we were elected to deliver economic security and national security. So we’ve chosen to increase our defense budget year-on-year. We’ve upped our planned equipment spend by £12 billion (US $18 billion) to £178 billion ($268 billion). And our new Strategic Defense and Security Review provides a more assertive blueprint for action in the years ahead.”