After seeing Norway's Defence Industries expressing all their concern about whether the UK will actually order the things it promised to in return for Type 26, let's take a look at what UK's defence industry representatives told the Defence Committee 4 days ago. It's ugly. Kevin Craven, CEO of ADS, notes that equipment spending cratered rather than going up: "In terms of orders, what is probably interesting to note is that the equipment spend to the year ending March 2026 was £5 billion less than in the previous year". The DiP was "reasonably granular around the first four years of what, in old money, was the defence equipment plan, but thereafter less so. Even in those first four years, it was not clear whether around a third of the £298 billion announced is unfunded or not articulated in the right way." Julian David, CEO of TechUK, goes on to note "Last time we were here, we reported on our survey of members, and 73% said that the market has declined since the report; that was in May. Funding delays and reductions have hit 87% of respondents, and 93% of them are now reassessing investment or recruitment of people to focus in this sector." Stephen Philipson, CEO of MakeUK, with one of my favorite quotes: "The point that we get from many companies is that you cannot invest on press releases. We need detail and funding, and we need to make that work." Another huge quote from him is also: "(the DiP) It is nothing like an equipment plan. This is not investable as it stands at the moment. It gives you a thematic direction of travel in many areas, a lot of which is welcome and is great news, and attracts a lot of new companies into the market, but the questions are then around where the contracts, the programme and the procurement are. We do not have that yet, and that is the problem." It's as devastating as it could possibly be, behind the niceties and the ongoing attempt to say the DiP is "welcome". committees.parliament.uk/ora…