UK delivers missiles to Ukraine five months ahead of schedule

Morning Mr Bell, good to see you again. Re your rearming comment, if they can be 5 months early on these for Ukraine why can’t they be 5 months early on some defence stuff for the UK? Where’s the LMM-Starstreak for Shorad/GBAD? Any ER versions? Maybe CA will get a gig with its Skyhammer/Starhammer. Where’s Ancilia, Dragonfire, more NSM, mk41s for T31s, even a few more T31s for more presence?

“China. It is now though highly likely there will be a high intensity conflict begun by China against the US” This is thought by the current US regime and its Department of War who might choose a conflict to detract from their own internal issues that will be in full effect by 2027. This should frighten anyone who thinks Hegseth and co are fit to lead even a Boy Scouts outfit.

With china it’s interesting because it’s a communist country and how it works with its population.. no surprised mission based 5 plans.. you can set your watches to what they will do… China is going to invade Taiwan but it’s not going to do it a day before it’s planned for and told everyone. In the 14th 5 year plan Xia essentially told everyone to be ready for war by 2027.. so we know he’s not not kicking it off next year. The next five year plan is 2026-2030.. and the one after that will be 2031-35.. I personally think we will see one of these two five year plans give a good indication in which one it’s going to invade Taiwan.

Now you have to remember what chinas goal is.. it is no the defeat of the west and downfall of the U.S.. it actually has little interest in that, china likes order at its heart and these are not international communists committed to the spread of communism across the world.. they are nationalist communists, they don’t give two shits of the U.S. and Europe is capitalist or communism. Their only interest is china, the purity of Han china ( and Han is a culture not a race to the Chinese), but above everything the fundamental core of their beliefs system is the reunification of china and the final conclusion of its civil war.. this must happen. China must be whole and must be china no matter what, even if that is to the complete suffering and rebuilding of the world order.

But that is all china really wants, reunification and to be recognised as a peer power. If it takes a kinetic war with the west that lasts years in that last resort china will do that. But first it’s going to use every political warfare domain available to win without a fight… china believes first and Foremost that kinetic war is simply an adjunct to all domains of political warfare and the greatest victory is that which requires no battle. That is why it’s achieved maritime dominance, why it’s building the largest navy in the world, why it’s essentially taken over production of all the worlds rare earth elements.. 30% of the worlds manufacturing.. why it’s explicitly telling the west unless it reunifies there will be war and in the last resort it will go to war.. it’s why it openly practices blowing the crap out of mock ups of US western pacific bases and why it’s giving us a timeframe… but at the same time being highly secretive over a lot of its capabilities… it’s essentially playing an anti deterrent game.. not “if there is a war this will happen”…but an “ if this does not happen there will be a war”…but for a number of core reasons around what Xia wants, communism party mythos and geostrategic power balance I think by 2035 china will unit or there will be a world war.

Now apart from the Chinese view that you alway use huge levels of political warfare before a kinetic campaign why I think the early 2030s is now probably more logical than 2027..

The US has an almost catastrophic failure in its major surface combatant building programmes and SSN building programmes.. which when linked to the LA SSN crisis and Ticonderoga crisis will mean a collapse in USN surface fleet numbers and SSN numbers around about 2030. At present build rates we are likely to see the USN SSN fleet drop to 43 at around 2030 and 60-70 major surface combatants ( excluding carriers).

although china is pretty confident it can gain sea control and beat the USN in the strait of Taiwan and to an extent in the china seas, it has little confidence that it can compete around the second island chain and to be completely sure beating Tawain into submission it really needs to be able to force the USN out to the second island chain and keep them there for a time… now it knows it has a huge ballistic and cruise missile Sunday punch that will undoubtedly knock the everliving out of the USN and force them day one back to the second island chain..but it wants to be able to take the fight out into the pacific and strangle the Indian Ocean to stop the USN concentrating.. because it will take every carrier group the USN has to fight the PLAN in the china seas around Taiwan.

Because of this china has essentially built 2 navies, region navy of around 50 4000-3000 ton frigates, 80 1500 ton corvettes and 60 electric boats. And then it’s blue water navy 12-16 14,000 heavy destroyers/cruisers, 50 ish 75000 ton AAW destroyers and a new set of 5500 ton ASW frigates, as well as 5 40,000-50,000 drone carriers and flat top amphibious vessels. But what it is yet to fully complete is the core of its blue water capability it’s CATOBAR super carriers and it’s peer SSNs.. and I don’t think China is going to war without these.. it will want to push as carrier battle group into the deep pacific and and one into the deep Indian Ocean… it will want a decent fleet of cruise missile carrying SSNs in the deep pacific and Indian Ocean..even the threat of them in the Atlantic and high north. It will want its amphibious and drone carriers threatening action against more exposed U.S. bases.. essentially it will want to make it impossible for the USN to concentrate its carrier forces to relieve Taiwan and once it’s got Tawain in a grip it’s essentially all over bare the years of suffering WW3 and who gives up first ( hint the Chinese CPP will only give up Taiwan when every cold dead hand of the PLA is pealed off it and its population eats its last cup of rice, don’t think the U.S. will have the same commitment ).

So Carriers:

Type 1-2 I suspect these will essentially be used as disposable chase me down CBGs to keep the USN CABGs engaged or to act as second carrier in the main PLAN carrier Battle groups.

type 3.. this has now fully tested its catapults and deck launched and recovered all elements of its airwing intial operational capability is probably the end of the year or beginning of 2026.. I would expect to see a full Chinese CATOBAR group in the Indian Ocean by 2027.

Type 4.. evidence is this is now being built.. probably elements have been seen in yards.. specifically the waist catapults have been spotted and it’s going to be 2 on the waist for a 4 catapult carrier ( the type 3 is a 3 catapult carrier ) estimates are it will be ready for early 2030s this will give china two peer carrier battle groups and 2 inferior carrier battle groups as well as 5-6 drone carrying amphibious flat tops.

That will be enough to keep the US CBGs in the high seas.

Re there SSN forces for decades Chinese SSNs were a complete joke. It was more of a national pride issue than a serious capability and at one point its thought they almost decided to get out the game.. but in the mid 2010s they pushed on and launched the Type 93A now you can’t really call this a cogent class as essentially each has differing technologies.. they trialled better tiles, better rafting, pump jet propulsion, towed arrays etc on these platforms as well as a trial platform for vertical silos…all the while the they were unable to get past power density issues with their reactors meaning all are noisy ( two reactors..double the noise)..they had 4 bays for building SSNS and SSBNs and essentially was able to produce one SSN or SSBN every 15 months or so ( supporting a fleet of 12 nuclear boats between 2002 and 2015 it launched 2 type 93, 4 type 93A and 4 type 94 SSBNs )…..

Now we get to the late 2010s and something changes.. suddenly they build a massive SSN SSBN mega factory.. with a 12 SSSN bays, 4 SSBN bays added to the 4..all connected by rails to a support factory complex in which they also have a tiling and painting bay an factory large module assembly area with five sections for large assemblies ( reactor sections etc) as its next to the 2 bay reactor fuelling facility and a five section small assembly area. This facility has slips to build 16 SSNs and 4 SSBNs concurrently.. and have one in the tiling yard and Modules being build in two seprate assembly halls.. estimated it can probably thrown out 4-6 a year at full rate production. Now china which once it gets going never does anything half arsed is halfway through building another final assemble hall so that’s probably another 12 SSN slips for possibly 32 slips.. once that is done the estimates move up to 8 nuclear submarine launches a year… with 28 SSNs laid down in one go…. You can see where this is going and why China is not going to war until this facility has done its job..

So that’s production what about the product.. since 2022-23 china has launched probably 6-8 Type 93Bs with an estimated 12-16 laid down ( as they had 16 SSN slips free). The type 93B is the culmination of of all the effort over a decade to develop pump jet propulsion, good tiles and rafting.. silos for long range cruise missiles.. the DOD assessed the type 93B as “The improved Type 093B, in contrast, used advances in Chinese metallurgy and reactor design to make a quieter submarine. US assessments place its stealthiness between that of the USN Los Angeles Flight I and the Flight III SSNs.” So the PLAN are going to have in the next few years probably up to 12 of these LA equivalent SSNs.. that means the 30 odd USN SSNs will need to hunt and kill these as they are a direct risk beyond the 2nd island chain..

But we know china has now likely or in the near future up to 28 SSN slips and the T93B production was a one off run it is believed.. and that is because it was still a dual reactor design.. now to get a duel reactor SSN that is as good as an LA is scary when you consider the leap the other quiteing tec must have taken.. so unfortunately for world peace Russia at the end of the last decade gave china 2 designs for maritime nuclear reactors with the power density to drive an SSN with one reactor (150mw ).. so it’s consider very likely that as it launched off its first type 93B is started laying down the type 95 a single reactor SSN.. most view this SSN as likely to be the equivalent or close peer to current generation western SSNs (astute or Virginia) so at some point close to before and after 2030 it’s likely china will not only have 12 LA equivalent SSNs but at a rate of 6ish a year dump out up to 28 western peer T95 SSNs..

So it’s my belief in a worst realistic case by say 2034 that will be when it’s dumped out it’s 12 type 93Bs and up to 28 type 95s it will have a peer force of SSNs to match the US. It will have 2 full super carriers with fifth generation air wings, two more limited carriers, probably around 6-8 40-60 ton amphibious flat tops as drone carriers , it will also have completed its production of 16 055 ( 14,000 ton cruisers) 60 odd high end modern 7500 ton AAW destroyers, about 20 new 6000 ton frigates.. backed up by 60 modern 3000-4000 ton frigates and 80 corvettes.. with a maritime construction industry 260times the size of the US..it’s complete domination of worldwide rare earth supply and its twice as large as the US general manufacturing base and at that point it will simply look the US in the face and say we are taking Taiwan, make a move and see where it gets you…and i believe at that point the US will know it has little options left and will either go have your stupid island and see if we care.. or fight a war that it’s got a fair chance of losing and even if it wins would leave it in the Same place as the British empire in 1945.. victorious but utterly an completely broken..pray to exploitation by the next power along ( EU, India etc)….

We’ve ordered a total of 5,650 for Ukraine as far I know from public announcements. The “hundreds” mentioned above I suspect is just one of the initial batches.

The UK has ordered at least one batch of 1,000 missiles for UK forces. Not sure if any follow on orders have been placed.

The £350m deal with India will be for thousands of missiles (no specific number was given as far as I could tell). One of the recent deals implied a cost per missile of £250k, but that sounds high as the total likely includes integration and training costs. Unit cost is surely significantly lower for this short-range low-tech missile.

Hopefully the UK places a significant order soon before the queue/backlog gets too long.

The latest estimate of orc gains in the last 1000 days is approx 1%of Ukrainian land with horrendous casualties and Ukraine is pushing back in the North,they have also started to target orc power stations as well although technically this is a war crime but it doesn’t seem to bother pootin so what’s good for one etc!

Ukraine has also targeted Russian energy infrastructure. In January 2025, there was a Ukrainian drone strike against a Russian nuclear power station in Smolensk. Similar attacks are ongoing against Russia oil refineries and plants, leading to massive shortages of fuel across eastern Russia and Crimea.

I’d be careful about calling Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian infrastructure ‘disgusting’ whilst simultaneously advocating for more weapons for Ukraine.

I’ll add (just in case) that I do of course support Ukraine’s defence efforts against the expansionist Russians. But that’s not an excuse for hypocrisy.

If we bottle up 100% volume surgical spirits as vodka then provide it free to the Russian armed forces they will all be dead, blind or in hospital by next spring.. jobs a good one.. the first ever example of war by alcohol.. ironically appropriate when your talking about Britain and Russia.

Agreed, seems to have a really wide target set- which is great. Cheap enough to engage even smaller drones than Shaheds (not quite down to FPVs, but still), and performance enough to hit all the way up to helicopters, plus surface targets.
We’ll be doing ourselves a disservice if we’re not sorting out RWS mounts for these that can go on anything from Mastiff, to Patria, to Boxer, to (dare I say it) and Ajax variant, to our RN surface combatants.

agreed. guided rockets have been given a new lease on life as drone counters (ie fixed wing propeller powered category), because using missiles in this role is a short lived exercise (cost and production rate)

The LMM seems to be a pretty significant capability.. surface and air targets.. up to 20 on a wild cat sized rotor..

I honestly dont know why the army does not kit out it’s wildcat force to take the missile as well.

The stronger Ukraine is, the bigger the advantage NATO has is. Every Russian aircraft, drone or tank destroyed by Ukraine is one that can’t attack NATO. Short range air defence systems aren’t that important to UK security, being an island.

In reality Putin will only go after NATO when he’s finished with Ukraine and regenerated his forces.. so the fact we have massively upped our production of this missile means we can suddenly give our forces a tone as soon as the. uKriane war ends.

🥱

Totally agree ,why tell the world everything? It should be commonsense to do these things under the table.

What? Can you say that in a way that I can understand it!