Professor Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) think tank, said the announcement was “a remarkable tribute to the persuasive powers of the Ministry of Defence”. “The Conservative Manifesto had committed to an annual real increase of only 0.5 per cent, and even this seemed under threat as the economics of the pandemic and Brexit began to kick in,” he said. “This will go down well in the new US Administration and with the UK’s Nato allies.”