The conflict in Iran has changed the delivery schedules of some American-made munitions destined for the British armed forces, with officials declining to name the specific weapons affected on security grounds, the Ministry of Defence has told Parliament.
The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, set out the position on Monday in a written answer to the Labour MP for North Durham, Luke Akehurst, who had asked whether any Ministry of Defence procurement had been adversely impacted by delays in the delivery of US-manufactured weapons as a result of the conflict in Iran.
Pollard told MPs that “the conflict in Iran has resulted in changes to delivery schedules of some munitions”, that “Ministry of Defence teams work continuously with US partners” to assess and adapt procurement programmes and ensure support to operations, but that his department could not comment further on specific munitions or stockpile questions “for security reasons”.
The conflict in Iran has stretched the production and delivery capacity of the United States’ munitions industry over the past year, with American stockpiles drawn down to support Israeli operations and US strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, and a parallel set of demands from US Indo-Pacific Command and from US contributions to the war in Ukraine competing for the same lines of production. Several categories of weapon, including air-defence interceptors, precision-guided air-to-ground munitions and standoff missiles, have been the subject of public discussion in defence circles for their tight availability.
The British armed forces are dependent on a number of American weapons systems, including the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile fired from Royal Navy submarines, the AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles used by RAF Typhoons and F-35B Lightnings, and the AGM-114 Hellfire carried by Apache attack helicopters and other platforms, alongside a wider set of components and consumables that pass through US-led supply chains.
Any nations is always going to prioritise its own security needs with munition production. This is the downside of relying on US missiles but America and Israel have a far greater need than the UK does at present.
Out of interest what munitions are we actively receiving from the US? IIRC we don’t have any fresh AMRAAMs coming which is the most obvious high profile US weapon to many that we use.
APKWS kits? SBD if it has been ordered yet? GBU kits? GMLRS? Hellfires?
The great USA unrealiable as ever,