The recent House of Lords debate on air defence capabilities provided insights into the United Kingdom’s plans for strengthening its front-line defences and managing technological dependencies.
Lord Craig of Radley asked about tangible additions to the UK’s air defence capabilities in the next 12 months, “My Lords, I too have warned before of the potential threat to the United Kingdom mainland from the air and of a second Battle of Britain. What new air defence capabilities will be added to the front line in the next 12 months?”
In response, Lord Coaker outlined ongoing upgrades: “We are upgrading the radar on the Typhoon fighters as part of the air defence, we are seeing the F35B capabilities, and we are looking at what further investment is needed in air defence.”
He further highlighted enhancements to ground-based defences, including “the T45 upgrade to Sea Viper, which deals with ballistic missiles, and the Sky Sabre capability; we currently have seven and are in the business of purchasing more of those.”
Lord Purvis of Tweed shifted the discussion to the UK’s dependency on satellite technology, pointing to the volatile influence of major private providers such as SpaceX and Palantir. “The Minister must know that any of our future defence capabilities will be dependent in some form on satellite technology, so can he reassure me that… we will not be dependent on a single satellite provider or on any individual provider?” he asked.
Acknowledging the critical role of satellites, Lord Coaker spoke on the importance of the UK’s relationship with the United States: “Of course, we need to ensure that we protect the systems available to us that protect our own country, but… one of the most important relationships we have—if not the most important—is with the United States of America.”
He described the UK-US partnership as pivotal, stating that it “defends not only our freedom but the freedom of Europe and the values that we all stand for across the world.”
So Lord Coaker is pleased with the upgrades announced by the previoius government.. It’ll be interesting to see what Labour are going to do.
On the subject of satellite capabilities, does anyone know what happened to the Anglo -Indian company that specialised in LEO satellites, that HMG brought out of receivership a few years ago? I have forgotten what is was called,
I thought the question was about progress over the next twelve months, actual capability increase in the next 12 mths won’t be much changed in that time period in regard to what was mentioned. F-35, no Meteor but a few more aircraft with what limited capabilities it has in the role. Typhoon, radar still years away. May be a few more LandCeptor/SkySabre, do we have any idea how many we have? Sea Viper when does that become operational?
I believe we have 8 “Systems”
2 per Battery, and there are 4 Batteries.
Each Battery is split into 2 Fire Groups, which in other countries are a Battery, so you could say we have 8 Batteries.
Each FG has a radar, support vehicles, and launchers…. that is the unknown, 2, 3 nobody seems to know.
This info comes from UKAFC.
We have 7 sky sabre units. Is that all? That’s nuts. 7 units to provide air defence for the British army. Is that all? Should be at least 10-12 batteries not seven units. Which have around 56 ready to launch missiles.
Come on. Get serious.
HMG don’t get serious on Defence mate they just Get Stupid 🙄
Better than it initially was. The original purchase was of 3 batteries (split into 2 fire units each with 1 Saab Giraffe radar and 3 launch vehicles, 8 missiles on each vehicle) and the previous Rapier (of which he were left with about 24 launchers by the time it left service) had a range not much more than StarStreak and was really designed to counter low altitude interdictors, such as the Su-24, striking runways – pretty much incapable of area defense and negligible in the anti missile role. The main thing with SkySaber is it’s designed to protect the army and only the army when deployed on the frontlines, it’s not envisioned to be deployed on UK soil, not practiced at being deployed over military bases or critical infrastructure and certainly not civilian centers, and even if it was decided to use it that way there simply wouldn’t be enough to do both that still still provide cover to the army wherever they would be fighting.
I do think CAMM-MR is a must when that matures, you could combine the batteries to include 1 CAMM fire unit and 1 CAMM-MR fire unit so wherever they are deployed you instantly get a layered defensive zone with both points and wide area defense capabilities, 10 or so batteries like that would be enough to cover any foreseeable threat. But that’s just my unprofessional imagination playing general with no budget, the comments on the SDR do seem to all emphasize air defense as a key feature so all I’ll say is be cautiously optimistic – we aren’t the only country in this position and many of those others have recently started making big purchases to fix it, I can’t see why we won’t follow suit.
What do you class as a “unit” ?
There is 1 MRAD Regiment in the British Army, with 4 Batteries. See my post above and Rowans too.
If we are so concerned we should probably do something about it
‘He described the UK-US partnership as pivotal, stating that it “defends not only our freedom but the freedom of Europe and the values that we all stand for across the world‘ Is that supposed to make us feel better? The values that we all stand for, has he not noticed that the values Trump and Musk are threatening at the moment are akin to those of Putin? Threats of Convenient Imperial possession taking from the weak even from weaker allies indeed, with threats of economic destruction if there isn’t compliance and deliberate attempts at de stabilisation of any State that doesn’t toe the line of our new alien overlords. Musk has even been calling on Trump to overturn Britain’s Democratic Govt. These words from Russia and China would be not only frightening but deemed on the edge of a declaration of war, but from the US apparently it’s just a bit of a joke or negotiating stance. Really? I suspect in essence we are to the US what Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus are to Russia expendable and cannon fodder for their egotistical ambitions. MAGA failed last time when yYou checked it beyond the self serving hype few of the promises became real, industrial jobs declined. So how does v2 gain traction? Imperial dreams and conquest and threats are usually the prime method just as Putin has done to try to convince his even more gullible people former glories are here. It’s the tactics of the banana republic and scarily Musk has been sending bananas to Space and calling it a ground baking payload so maybe it’s a sign of things to come. Meanwhile we just buy your heads kowtow and hope for the best.
Good grief.
That’s all you got? Putinistas really are pathetic 🤡💩
We should have a proper UK SAM defence not just the Army Sky Sabre. I would suggest we buy an ASTER 30 system with block 1 missiles like the French and Italians. Then upgrade the missiles to block 1NT/block 2. These units should cover key areas of the UK. These systems should be backed up by Sky Sabre with medium range missiles. Our key RAF/Navy and C3 sites should also have anti-drone defences e.g. advanced AAA and jammers.