2.3% also includes 1.3 billion pounds of support to Ukraine, including donated military equipment, as it struggles to defeat the Russian invasion.
Wallace received public support from Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who backed calls for more defense spending during an appearance in the parliamentary committee.
Ms Truss said: “I agree with the Secretary of Defense’s concerns. We have a real problem with the availability of defense equipment, given the enormously increased security threat in Europe and we need to increase our industrial capacity.
“I’ve said before that the free world didn’t spend enough on defense after the Cold War and now we’re paying the consequences.”
General Sir Patrick Sanders, a British Army chief of staff, said the cuts were “perverse” and that the UK must be “unequivocally prepared to fight” if Russia invaded NATO territory.
He said: “It would be perverse that the CGS [Chief of the General Staff] They advocated reducing the size of the army as a ground war raged in Europe and Putin’s territorial ambitions extended to the rest of the decade and beyond Ukraine. “
Jeremy Hunt, who is expected to run against Johnson in any Conservative leadership contest, has said spending should reach 4% of GDP.
Johnson denied that the 2019 Conservative election manifesto promised that the defense budget would increase by 0.5% above inflation each year would be broken.
But government figures have privately admitted that he is not expected to be affected. It is still unclear how the promise can be fulfilled, given current spending levels and 11% inflation forecast this year.
Defense “has lived with a diet of smoke and mirrors”
Although No. 10 edited an initial draft of his speech, Wallace used his address to the Royal United Services Institute to argue for increased defense spending following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Just as governments respond when the NHS has a winter crisis, “so should they themselves when the very threat to security that sustains our way of life increases,” he said.
Wallace added: “For too long, the defense has lived with a diet of smoke and mirrors, empty formations and fantasy savings, when in recent years threats from states have begun to increase.
“Right now, Russia is the most direct and urgent threat to Europe, to our allies and these coasts. I mean seriously when I say that there is a very real danger that Russia will attack a wider Europe. In these days of long-range missiles and stealth, distance is no protection.
“Now is the time to point out that the peace dividend is over and that investment must continue to grow before it is too late to deal with the resurgent threat and lessons learned in Ukraine. It is time to mobilize. be prepared and relevant. “
However, The Telegraph may reveal that more explicit criticism was also included of NATO and the UK’s current commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defense.
It is understood that the original draft of the speech included a line on how the two per cent promise had been fulfilled in 2014 and that, for the next decade, it was time to do more.
The line was removed after Downing Street intervened on Tuesday morning, as it had implications for spending. The intervention followed newspaper reports that Mr Wallace wanted £ 10bn a year in additional military spending.
Both No. 10 and No. 11 were blinded by suggestions that Mr. Johnson was about to announce a major increase in defense spending, according to several sources.