The UK lacks adequate defences against advanced missile threats and is exposed to attack as a result, according to comments made in the House of Commons during Defence questions.
Conservative MP Mark Pritchard warned that the UK currently has no comprehensive anti-ballistic or anti-hypersonic missile defence system in place, despite what he described as growing threats from Russia and other actors. He said this left the country vulnerable regardless of which party is in power.
“Given the threats from Russia and elsewhere and their capabilities, it does mean the UK right now, whether we vote Labour or Conservative, all of our constituents are defenceless and this country, quite frankly, is a sitting duck,” Pritchard told the House.
Responding, Defence Secretary John Healey acknowledged gaps in the UK’s homeland defence posture but pointed to ongoing work under the Strategic Defence Review. He said the review had made clear that the UK must place greater emphasis on protecting the homeland. “It pointed out that we must do more to take seriously our homeland defence. And we are,” Healey said.
Healey added that the review also identified the need for stronger air and missile defences. “It pointed out that we needed to do more in our integrated air and missile defence for the UK,” he told MPs, though he did not set out specific timelines or capabilities during the exchange.
You don’t say?
Not surprising considering the total lack of GBAD and insufficient RAF typhoon interceptors.
Oh well I’m sure the defence investment report coming before parliamentary recess on 19th December will fully resolve all the issues. We have one of the largest defence budgets in the world but can’t even intercept missiles inbound to the UK.
Seems our money is being spaffed away to me.
It goes to the MIC. That’s the point.
Although he was talking about ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons and because of distance that and the systems Russia has that means attack from IRBM ( Russian does not have a medium range system) and their is almost nothing on the planet that can protect a whole country from IRBM attack.. infact that only partially reliable way is the US ground based interceptors as part of the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system.. and the US has so far spent about 70 billion dollars and for that I same amount of money the US has 44 interceptors.. each has a just over 50% chance ish of working at best.l so that is 20 warheads.. one Russian IRBM has 8 warheads.. so 70 billion dollars will allow you that ability to intercept 2.5 Russian IRBMs..
That is why it’s for UK defence simply better to cover the bases on cruise missile attacks which GBAD and fixed wing fighters can intercept.then cover a very few key areas with essential an anti ballistic missile point defensive system over strategic installations.. for that THAAD would be the idea option a battery for London, a battery for Portsmouth, one for Portland, and one for the Clyde.. that would set you back 4 billion dollars. But each battery has 48 missiles.. so could manage say 3 IRBMs each.
Other Ballistic missile defences should be deployable to defend Britain deployed forces against tactical and short range ballistic missile attacks..
Plymouth not Portland..
Intercept or deter? As you say, ABM defences are at best only a very partial solution. Far better to deploy long range conventional missiles for effective deterrence.
If Ukraine could hit Russian cities with levels of damage equalling those inflicted by Russia, Russia might just step back.
Yep in the end you don’t deter or win wars through defence.. you deter or win wars by first communication of your capabilities and willingness to really hurt anyone that goes to war with you.. and then you end the war by causing that pain over and over.. the sad brutal truth of war.
We’re a relatively small island nation, should be fairly easy to defend if funded properly.
Even if the politicians do get their act together it will takes years to impliment though, so stop with these bloody reviews and just get on with it. I’m sure the generals, admirals, air marshals have a nice shopping list of stuff we need.
Would be unrelastically expensive.
The UK is 600miles long and 300miles wide. Range of patriot is adound 100miles, so would need around 12 batteries to cover with no overlaps, so let’s call it 18 to ensure all have an overlap.
You would then need a large number of individual launchers at each location to avoid saturation attacks. Russia is using 100 plus missiles at a time, so a lot of launchers per site to protect each point.
Ok that is over simplictic but guessing insane levels of money required.
A lot of the country is green fields or mountains. So no need to protect that. Just key points.
Surprisingly little is as a percentage of the land mass and most of that is in the centre, so doesn’t really reduce the problem a whole lot.
I guess it depends what you mean by important bits, if just talking the top 5 major cities than could do it with a few hundred launchers, as still have to deal with saturation attacks.
Yes I mean after all so long as only people in Bath or Buxton are killed who cares, sod them for living in small cities and towns eh????
An idea of costs. Latest Spec. THAAD $2.5 billion a battery. Patriot $1.1 billion. NASAMS $220 million. A Patriot battery for London + another for Faslane (also protects Glasgow). Then NASAMS for the 3 RAF fighter bases Lossiemouth, Conningsby, Marham. Total cost $2.860 billion. Should not scare the Treasury too much. Would it protect everything? Obviously not, but it means enough survives to strike back. Full protection for the UK, probably at least $20-25 billion. A non starter in the current economic Rachel induced catastrophe.
Does it have to be do highend focused. What about the latest SAMP/T system, wouldn’t that be readily available and capable enough and share stocks with the Navy? Isn’t this what Italy and France use?
Where’s CAMM-MR and the additional SkySabre at? Can the later take the former ?
Might need to build a couple of extra AAW Destroyer/Frigates as picket ships for the UK a bit like the new Japanese AEGIS Destroyers.
SAMP-T has been quoted as 500m euro a battery for over a decade. I suspect its true 2025 price is close to Patriot $1.1 billion. I do not have a price for CAMM, but Iris-T is similar & that costs 140m euro per battery.
To be brutally pragmatic only the major military, power and military industrial hubs really matter when you’re reducing a nation’s ability to fight.
Your point is well made. We have existing systems. Vital parts of the national infrastructure should be defended. Additionally, it might help to warn anyone who feels lucky what we could do in return. I definitely believe we should issue a general warning (‘here’s looking at you, Vlad’) that any surreptitious approach to vital underwater infrastructure will be met with force without further warning.
A fleet of T91 drone ships or barges could potentially be plugged in to a land based GBAD network and be positioned around the country’s coastal network. Would protect the ports nicely.
We are a huge island not a small island .
9th largest island in the world in fact.
The nerve of all MPs past and present. UK defences against missiles is virtually non existents because all governments over the past 30+ yrs have never voted for and authorised a defence system.
SDR98, one of the senior bods wanted a THAAD buy, but the Treasury vetoed. Ever since then, whenever there is a scare, there is much talk, but no action. I have long said, the UK should get off Zero high level SAM. Even one battery of something credible would be a good training event & prepare us better for a major purchase in the future.
I have recently been (re-)reading a book called Treasury Rules, By Adrian Ham (whom I used to work with), published in 1981. It shows that in the late-thirties Britain’s re-armament programme was bitterly opposed by the Treasury. The Treasury view then was that sound public finance was the key, and if Germany really was re-arming at the rate reported (actually, the rate reported was far too low), then the German economy would surely collapse very soon. So nothing to worry about.
Some things just don’t change. It’s very depressing.
If we were to get anything THAAD as a point defence is probably the best for key military industrial hubs and central London.. if THAAD is parked near the target it can manage an IRBM warhead..
Yeah, THAAD is the only currently available, ground-based system that could reliably tackle ballistic missiles being launched from Russia itself. Unless the UK wants to buy from the Israelis, yet I don’t see that happening, not for such a high-profile and therefore politically-controversial sale.
In 2023, each THAAD missile was quoted as costing 19.7m. Patriot between $5m to $9.5m depending on source. Amraam, just over $ 1m
Talking of Israeli systems Germany has just recently gone operational with the Golden Arrow (Janes 5 Dec).
THAAD is probably the most cost effective as well with 2 battery of 6 launchers and senor/control systems coming in at about 800 million dollars.. that gives you 48 missiles.
If we had not screwed the number of destroyers we could have looked at a destroyer based system.. but that would be American as well as an IRBM aster solution is not in view.
But if I was HMG I would interim a couple of THAAD systems. One for the Clyde region and one for the southern RN ports. Then I would throw in behind aster NT block 2.. order 2-3 more AAW ships configured for ABM defence for delivery in the mid 2035s and equipment them with aster NT block 2.
And finally I would build my own IRBM as both a possible second tier strategic Nuclear weapon and so I had a load with big conventional warheads and make it clear any conventional IRBM strike on the UK gets an answer right back.
$800m? are you sure? I think it is more like $2 to 2.5 billion a battery for 2025 THAAD.
Someone did look at for the UK and the BBC did a breakdown of the estimated cost of the UK and it was 766 million pounds.. that was 2024.. there are a lot of different price estimates..
We will defend the UK providing there is no timescale involved…
Thaad or Aegis ashore and lower tier Caam Caam ER and eventually MR with shorad filling gaps.
The Govt spunked £8b on “GB energy
So, it’s 2000km from London to Minsk – extreme range for a land attack cruise missile. I would hope we would take out closer ship or sub launched cruise missiles at source and protect strategic targets by CAMM. Israeli Iron Dome experience against even simple intermediate range ballistic missiles suggests that some would get through even a sophisticated shield if there were sufficient numbers of rockets – warheads. If Russia is firing IRBMs at us we are close to armageddon. We need a credible deterrent short of SSBN; the proposed new UK-German 2000km ballistic missile based in Germany perhaps?
The standard Russian naval cruise missile has a 2500km range, so they can sit in the bastion and pop shots at the UK.. it’s why we will need the carrier battle group to take sea control and for the SSNs and carrier air power to hammer that bastion. The thinking is that is what the Russian navy will do.. keep its eggs in the basket and throw cruise missile the way or nato strategic bases,
If there is a nato war there is a very good chance as you say Russia may throw IRBMs at the UK.. the best way to prevent that is have a very significant conventional deterrent that can hit back into Russia.
Kaliningrad to London by the crow flies is 900 miles (1450km). The non stealthy air launched Kh101 has a range of around 3000km, whilst a ground launched Kalibr has a range of about 1500km. Additionally the Kalibr can be launched remotely from the Club-K ISO container. Meaning a truck can drop off the container pretty much any where, plus the container can be carried by merchant ships. Kalibr can also be submarine launched by all their attack subs as well as the modernised Oscar 2 class, which can carry 72 of them. Similarly most of Russia’s newer corvettes and frigates can fire Kalibr. additionally the transporter erector launcher (TEL) used to launch the Iskander-M ballistic missile, is used to launch the Iskander-K, which can also launch Kalibr cruise missiles.
Russian launched cruise missiles are a key threat to the UK, mre so than an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) such as Orishnik. As they are much harder to detect due to their low flight altitude. The best way of defeating an attack from them is by coordinated detection and direction from airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft. But it will mean that the few QRA aircraft we have, need to be backed up by a lot more aircraft on standby. Or there are long range surface to air missiles readily available, that can be directed by the AEW aircraft. The problem is the three E7s we will have won’t be able to cover the whole of the UK. For example an Oscar 2 can launch in the North Atlantic, where they fly over the Republic of Ireland and probably won’t be detected until they reach the west coast of the mainland Britain. If there’s more than one sub launching Kalibrs, the QRA aircraft will very quickly be overwhelmed. If two Oscars or more are launching at the UK, even when backed up by the current T45s, a significant number will get through.
Thx for fleshing out my skeletal summary with the technical threat detail, which I read as, we could defend against the Kalibrs given an increase in the right assets but that our ‘defence’ against IRBMs is a deterrent. Wasn’t there a rumour that we might increase our buy of E7s from 3 to 5?
Will the new Anglo-German Nightfall fit into a mk41? And does the UK need to at now order more TLAM stocks as a priority as other countries have recently done? If there are any mk41s actually available…LOL
At present the UK can only launch the sub launched version of tomahawk.. it should get more of those..
Personally I think they should be getting some tomakhawks for the type 26 and type 31 as stratus lo is probably not going to in operation until the early 2030s and its range is apparently 1000km vs the 2500km of tomahawks.
Politicians are to blame. End of. All talk whilst throwing money at the MIC for nothing in return. I sort of worked out a target list, and reckon to UK would be put out of action by a few dozen well aimed missiles. Bacton, Walpole, the few refining plants and a few nuclear power plants. Then the politicians can explain to the population why they are all yap and no action.
Now you see I have a different view on that.. who holds the political class to account ? We live in a democracy and our politicians still try to give their voters what they want.. so if the British public had demanded anti ballistic missile defences it would have been in someone’s manifest.. the British public instead swallowed the end of history and last man hook line and sinker and utterly destroyed any politicians at the ballot box who Tried to spend 5 billion or taxpayers money on missile defence.. and the thing is 15 years ago they would have been correct. 5 years ago they would have been wrong… but we got the political leaders we deserved and 5 years ago instead of missile defences it was all about Brexit at the ballot box.
So kind of the MP to let us know about a capability we don’t have ,give the Gentman a round of applause 👏 🙄
so good of the Defence Minister to acknowledge this and continue to do sweet FA about it
I’m against the idea of spending limited resources on a anti-ballistic shield for the UK, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don’t think there’s a currently suitable ground-based system that could actually deliver the capability in a politically and industrially reliable way. There are two nations from which the UK could procure such a system – the USA and Israel. Of the two, handing a contract for what would be an incredibly expensive system to such a controversial nation like Israel would be politically untenable. According to YouGov polling, more than half of the sample believed that Israeli actions in Gaza were not justified. Germany is paying around £3.3 billion for their Arrow III systems overall – such a public handover of money to a state that is perceived negatively by much of the UK population would be in my opinion highly unlikely.
The USA has historically been fairly reliable to the UK in terms of its arm supplies. Outside of the ban on the export of the F-22 Raptor, there have been few technologies or exports that the USA has prevented the UK from accessing (for a price, of course). More importantly in terms of comparison to the Israelis, unenthusiasm towards purchases from the USA, whilst not having been specifically polled about, is in my opinion less likely to cause significant political anger (interestingly, much of the disquiet around procurements from the USA are concentrated in my experience in those specifically active within the amateur defence-industrial observing community – for example, on sites like this one). The American product, then, the THAAD, is in this regard a better choice for the MoD. However, there are critical issues that remain.
As is common among other American anti-ballistic systems (Patriot, SM-6 and SM-3), production of the THAAD missile is low, and the American market takes the lion’s share. American stockpiles of the missile are small – during the 12 day war between Iran and Israel, approximately 150 missiles were launched, spending around 25% of the current American stockpile. I doubt that a significant stockpile of the missiles could be procured by the UK within a reasonable timeframe, nor that American production could be readily ramped up in the event of conflict. All the while, the price would remain very high, the area covered quite small, and the success of the system, as shown by its failure to intercept single-missile salvoes in from Houthi-controlled Yemen during deployments in the Middle East, or by its spotty record during development and testing (this later improved significantly before activation).
Essentially, my point comes to that the there is no currently available system that would provide a ground-based capability to intercept intermediate-range ballistic missiles, for a price tenable for the UK budget, from a nation politically acceptable to the UK public.
My other reason is that I think deterrence is the better strategy here. I’ll keep this brief, but in my mind, a more effective way of preventing long-range missile attack upon the UK from Russia would be to stockpile cruise and ballistic missiles of our own. This is generally cheaper and more accessible than defence. Purchase more homeland defence fighters, airborne radars and missiles for defence against cruise missile or drone attack, whilst using Sky Sabre systems around critical points. Those are in my mind all expansions that should be funded before attention turns to dedicated high-altitude ballistic missile defence systems.
Sources:
Costs of the German Arrow III contract:
wwweuronewscom/2025/12/03/germany-activates-first-elements-of-arrow-3-missile-defence-system-bought-from-israel
YouGov polling around Israel:
yougovcouk/international/articles/52694-british-attitudes-to-the-israel-gaza-conflict-july-2025-update
Usage of THAAD in the Middle East:
wwwwsjcom/world/israel-iran-us-missile-stockpile-08a65396
wwwbbccouk/news/articles/cyvqr00278no
wwwtimesofisraelcom/liveblog_entry/source-houthi-missile-shot-down-by-arrow-after-us-thaad-missed-for-2nd-time-this-week/
THAAD Testing:
wwwglobalsecurityorg/space/systems/thaad-test-demval.htm
What about the Aster SAMP/T? If France and Italy are already deploying this why isn’t the UK? Okay it’s not THAAD but if the system on the T45 can intercept a wide range of missile threats then can’t a land based equivalent do the same?
Can the UK develop a containerised/palletised CAMM system which can then go on rail, road, ship, barges and be rapidly dispersed to wherever its needed as part of it PODs program?
The SAMP/T (if you mean the original version), doesn’t have a radar with the capability to engage ballistic missiles with any great efficacy. That’s been confirmed in Ukraine, for example. The Arabel radar and the associated software isn’t configured for the job.
The SAMP/T-NG is a more capable system, but doesn’t cross the threshold into defence against IRBMs like those Russia can leverage against the UK. MBDA have marketed the system as a Patriot PAC-3MSE analogue, roughly slotting into that 1500km/medium-range and below band for ballistic targets. That would cover missiles launched from Kaliningrad, and perhaps also from the very westernmost Russian units, but not from missiles being capable of launch from the Russian interior. For that, you’d need something a little more capable.
It’s the same with the Type 45 – you mention that the destroyer can intercept a wide range of targets, but it’s in fact also very much limited in the range-brackets of BMs that it can actually intercept. The Type 45s were able to detect IRBMs in trials, interestingly, but the missiles carried aren’t capable of interception, nor has it been confirmed that solutions were achieved on those surrogate IRBMs.
The Aster-30 is a great missile, but it’ll always be limited by the fact that it is multi-role. The sacrifices it makes to go after air-breathing threats make it less of a ballistic interceptor, compared to something like the THAAD, or even to the PAC-3MSE. Therefore, the actual defended area of the SAMP/T against BMs is likely quite low, perhaps as small as 30km (a guess based on similar systems).
That said, I do think the SAMP/T NG (or something in its bracket) should be considered, mostly because of the arrival of the Zircon. Independent analysts currently think that Zircon is still only deployed on a few Yasen-class submarines and surface ships, despite Russian claims, but it is a missile more within the parameters of the SAMP/T NG to combat. That said, I wouldn’t be confident entirely, given MBDA quite pointedly remarked that the Block 1NT version of the Aster used by the SAMP/T NG (and planned for the RN, MN and MM) could combat first-generation hypersonics, which does not include the Zircon.
So, in short, SAMP/T doesn’t quite have the performance to take over the niche of the THAAD, or to be particularly useful in the high-altitude ballistic missile defence role against missiles launched from the Russian mainland.
Containerised CAMM is an interesting idea. The other major component of missile defence is intercepting the cruise missiles, a task for which CAMM and its siblings are adept. Being able to move CAMM systems around the country would be helpful. Ideally the RAF responds and deals with the majority of the cruise missile threat, before CAMM systems around critical infrastructure cleans up the remainders.
But enough has to survive a surprise attack in order to retaliate. That means having at least a bare minimum SAM system to protect key points.
I’m not against the system in principle, more against spending the military’s limited budget on such a system when there are better uses for the funds.
Ideally, yes, you’d have a decent self-defence capability, but I wouldn’t prioritise that over a retaliatory capability. Defence is always less successful, more expensive and ultimately more politically painful in wartime. The current mixture of missile and drone threats around today are a modern version in some ways of the old idea that the bomber will always get through.
What SDR Mr. Healey? . At the moment 0 orders in aircraft, escorts or tanks and only cuts.