Two Iranian missiles were fired in the direction of Cyprus but were intercepted, Defence Secretary John Healey has confirmed.
Healey said it was not yet clear whether the missiles were deliberately targeting UK facilities on the island, which hosts two British sovereign base areas, including RAF Akrotiri.
“We are not sure if they were intentionally aimed at our bases,” he said, adding that British officials are still assessing the circumstances of the incident.
He also revealed that around 300 British personnel in Bahrain had been stationed near locations considered potential targets, underlining concerns about wider regional fallout.
RAF jets have been operating from British installations in Cyprus and Qatar as part of ongoing defensive efforts to protect UK forces and allied interests in the region.
Speaking to Sky News, Healey described the situation as serious and deteriorating, warning of the risk of further retaliatory action. He reiterated that the UK had not taken part in the strikes on Iran, but maintained that Tehran represents a significant and growing threat.
Do what you did before, and send a destroyer. Park Duncan off the coast of Cyprus, and have provide terminal phase defence.
Dauntless is currently operating on exercises in the English channel, she should be immediately re tasked to go to Cyprus. I don’t think Israel is going to give up this time so hopefully in the medium term the ballistic missile threat in the Middle East is going to disappear meaning Cyprus won’t need longer term permanent ABM capability.
Actually getting rid of Iran solves many military headaches. With them gone do you even need any forces in the ME anymore. Especially once EV’s and heat pumps take over.
Reported on this site on 27 Feb, Dauntless has entered a 3 month support period. One of the few threads that you haven’t commented on!
“getting rid of Iran”???
You think the USA is going to scorch the entire country with nukes or successfully parachute a liberal western democratic government in to run it (like it did so successfully in Afghanistan and Iraq?).
If neither of these two, then the ME had just become a far more dangerous and unstable region. Best case scenario is that Iran fractures and collapses into a failed state.
Worst case, you have Iranian terrorists detonating conventional bombs across the west, but with their an additional seasoning of enriched uranium. No nuclear cloud, but potentially contaminating places so badly that deaths will continue for decades…
I disagree. We have unfortunately become so militarily run down that all of our Naval assets should remain for the defence of the British isles for the foreseeable future, with the exception of Anson which is critical to AUKUS and is not a significant combat risk to the sub.
We simply do not have enough ships to send anywhere without leaving more gaps at home let alone the prospect of losing a hull.
It’s a disgraceful state to be in but some acceptance of how bad it is needs to come before and illusions that we can afford to partake in such actions.
Frankly I think the Americans probably wouldn’t want us there either as our I’ll equipped ships would likely create a livability for them to defend.
There isn’t really a threat to the UK at the moment that any of the destroyers are equipped to halt. The frigates and MROSS are better suited to UK operations at the moment. The Type 45s are redundant in reality, for UK operations at this time. Sending one to Cyprus would be a smart move.
This morning, there is not a threat. If you send a T45 to Cyprus it means you have one available to respond if there is a threat to the UK.
We’re escourting Russian warships though the channel with oilers, we are quite simply thread bare and sending a T45 to a war zone without the ability to defend itself against surface threats is a risk we should not be taking.
We should also be avoiding firing £100m of guided missiles that we cannot afford to replace.
I’m of the opinion that in a different world we should be supporting the USA in this, should be doing everything to be preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and should be giving the Iranian people a chance of a better life without persecution from their government, but we simply cannot afford to get involved in this militarily with the financial cost, risk of loss of a ship and gap it leaves in homeland defence in the meantime.
I think it also highlights the issue of having such a small number of hulls and splitting them into specific roles. You send a Burke to a war zone alone and it has a broad spectrum defence cabability. You send either a T45 or T23 alone to a war zone and your asking Americans to cover its deficiencies. T45’s arent even formally capable of ballistic missile defence presently.
I think we now should do something more kinetic.. Iran has with no direct provocation launched a missile attack on UK sovereign territory.. with the world it is the way it is at the moment we cannot let that go… it’s also a direct article 5 trigger and European NATO needs to consider if it can afford to let it go as well.. Russia is watching and if we want to fail in communication of credibility we had better do more than a defensive posture.
Simply put the UK and European NATO needs to sink some Iranian things… eye for eye tooth for tooth…communication of your credibility.
We don’t know that yet. All we know is that some missile were launched from Iran in the general direction of Cyprus, before being swatted down by either Israeli or American ABMs.
It’s not like there’s anything just in front of Cyprus that might be of interest to the Iranians, either, is there…
The SBAs are not covered under Article 5.
– in essence, the SBAs are military establishments under UK sovereign control. They are not part of the United Kingdom, nor are they states in their own right and thus do not fall under the NATO treaty.
– Also Gibraltar, whilst being a state, is not a NATO signatory thus also not covered despite being a British Overseas territory and hosting a large military base
I’d be curious to know what downed them. I’m guessing a US warship?
Do the UK’s Cyprus bases have Sky Sabre or Shorad? Might need it asap if not.
I’d be surprised if Sky Sabre wasn’t deployed to Cyprus but it isn’t really an ABM system of any kind.
More likely that Typhoon, known to be stationed there was cued by F35B or a fixed radar head.
Reports that Pakistan used cueing by ground radars to enable J17s to outwit Indian Rafales. Fair chance that Meteor from a wisely positioned Typhoon could intercept a ballistic missile in terminal descent?
Typhoon has also got a spectacular rate of climb.
It might well launch the Meteor and hand it off to something else to provide mid course correction and maybe terminal guidance.
lol that is just fake news and pakistanu propaganda without a shred of proof to this day
You shouldn’t be surprised at how cheap the treasury can be. The MOD’s principle function is currently not defence of the realm it’s Financial Control. MOD hasn’t got the money to do basic things at the moment nevermind deploy a scarce resource to an area it was never intended for.
I’m sadly not surprised.
This is UOR stuff as there is a real threat to life.
It is impossible to run MoD on the tiny real budget they actually have and make capital investments at the same time.
The cuts, dressed up as new money, with intelligence budgets were really the last nail in the groaning coffin. A real fast one was pulled there and folding the UKR spending into MoD’s core budget.
It really screams of the fiscal inexperience of the MoD political team to fall for the old Treasury jam tomorrow ploy.
Not usually.
No fixed bases do.
Mount Pleasant has them….
Cyprus would be a sensible place to deploy on of the sets that exist – it would be a great training run apart from anything else.
True, I’d overlooked the FI deployment.
Arguably one of the least endangered areas of responsibility. That deployment baffles me.
FI is treated as an active integrated 24/7/365 exercise. Sadly less so than it used to be.
It is also about power vacuum – we have to maintain an overwhelming balance of power so nothing stupid happens.
Be pretty embarrassing if it was a US ship that shot them down, considering our shoddy behaviour as an ally to the USA by not letting them use Diego Garcia
And the UK’s refusal to allow the US to use Cyprus. Like it or not, the best friend the UK has in the US is Donald Trump with his morbid obsession with the decrepit British monarchy. One of the fallouts from the UK’s refusal to aid the US in this Iranian endeavor will be a deepening of the growing skepticism in the US of the value of its alliance with the UK, especially given the UK’s deterioration into a third world nation with a government run by leftist authoritarians allied with Islamic fanatics.
Eh?
Trump asked to use Diego Garcia for attack.
Cyprus has a totally different mission profile for USAF shaped around surveillance.
Cyprus isn’t very good for a surprise attack as there a so many civilian spotters on the island that it would be impossible to keep secret.
Couldn’t disagree with you more on the monarchy. I’ll take them over an american style republic any day
But I agree on the leftist politicians under islamist influence
“ given the UK’s deterioration into a third world nation”
Forgotten to take your meds again 🤷🏻♂️😂
“Not aiding and abetting an ally in the committing of a war crime. Specifically Trump’s ‘Special Military Operation’ against Iran.”
There, fixed your comment, you’re welcome.
Did you cry when the great paedophile’s representative on earth, the Ayatollah died? Come on be honest
I can confirm that the people of Iran didn’t, either in Iran or on the streets of my town waving that glorious lion flag instead that repulsive islamist one
TDS makes people like you take some stupid stances I guess
There’s quite a few Iranians attending his funeral, and/or various mourning activities at the moment. Almost as though deciding to bomb a nation, murder a bunch of schoolgirls and annihilate their government doesn’t really endear you in particular with the actual populace of the nation.
If you wanted to get rid of the Ayatollah, there were better ways of doing it.
Yeah I am sure the constant appeasement of Biden and Obama was really teaching those darn Islamists a lesson…..
They were going to give up their nuclear ambitions and terrorist funding activities any day now before this current action, pinkie promise
As Israel proved with Hamas, force is all these animals understand. I look forward to more funerals in the future
A rare voice of reason on here…
Pretty sure the great pedophile is the current incumbent of the White House, given the DoJ is withholding the Epstein files containing allegations against him plus the fact that Trump is named more than any other person in the files that were released. Plus Trump’s own confessions of bursting into the changing rooms of teenage girls, not to mention his rape conviction. But Trump Derangement Syndrome makes you think that a pedophile is worthy of the presidency 🤷🏻♂️
The Ayatollah was a despicable tyrant, and advocate of a fake religion, but there’s no record of him being a pedophile. Just like there’s no record of you being a pedophile either, but maybe I wrong about you both.
Anyway, as you don’t believe in the rule of law I’ll leave you to toddle off to get some shoplifting done before the shops close early.
I am hoping the campaign will go on until Iran’s Ballistic Missile capability is eliminated.
If not the MOD should seriously be looking at investing in long range GBAD.
Well if it’s proven that Iran shot at UK sovereign territory in Europe that actually changes the whole strategic landscape..
1) the UK was not involved in the attack on Iran so Iran has without provocation attacked the UK.. that means we can legally and morally strike Iran back.
2) Iran attacked a NATO member in the geographical area covered by the NATO treaty so it’s an article 5
I wonder what will happen now.. because for wider geostrategic reasons the UK and NATO need to respond to someone firing missiles at a NATO member in Europe…
I did not think Iran would be so foolish to attack European NATO.. now we need to see if European NATO has learnt anything about deterrence and the need to communicate capability and credibility to aggressors..
Im giving this a low likelihood probability of being the first match that strikes WW3… ( 0.1% to 10%) but it’s still a risk assessment on WW3 starting now.. so prepers make sure your baked been supplies are up..
USA uses Cyprus bases, I would say thats a legit target in self defence given the USA has initiated military action on Iran.
In any case, we’re not talking a serious threat to Cyrpus, the UK or Europe from Iran in terms of a full scale war and so the response should not be in line with that.
See it for what it is, a militarily weak country currently being overwhealmed by the USA and behaving like its existence is being threatened (which it is).
I support the US action, its shameful that our government denied the USA access to UK bases abroad which is the one resource we do have that could help the USA here.
We’re best off giving Diego Garcia to the USA at this point and letting them sort out the ongoing status of it, ludicrous situation to pay to rent a military base that the USA uses and then tell them they arent allowed to use it.
Trump will certainly not forget easily the denial of use.
If the USA does succeed in its actions, it will no doubt get zero thanks for preventing nuclear proliferation, taking out a disgusting regime and giving the free world increased energy security but instead be met with accusations of the legality of military action against a country intent on getting nuclear weapons in an alliance with Russia and China. Crazy world we’re living in.
The last time the USA succeeded with any military intervention in the Middle-East was the 1991 Gulf War; which tens of thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and three decades ago.
The SBAs are not covered under Article 5.
– in essence, the SBAs are military establishments under UK sovereign control. They are not part of the United Kingdom, nor are they states in their own right and thus do not fall under the NATO treaty.
– Also Gibraltar, whilst being a state, is not a NATO signatory thus also not covered despite being a British Overseas territory and hosting a large military base
This government has a chronic aversion to truth. “Aircraft in the air”, “missiles launched in the direction of Cyprus”. All suggest action and being dynamically involved. The truth is probably less exciting which also nicely aptly sums up our Prime Minister. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Human Rights Lawyer successfully evolving into a man of action. If theres a reason for not doing something he’ll find it.