The Ministry of Defence will spend £790 million over the next four years strengthening the United Kingdom’s defences against air, drone and missile attack at home and at its overseas bases, buying new radars and sensors and overhauling the way those threats are tracked and engaged, the government said as it set out the Defence Investment Plan.
The package, set out in the plan published on Tuesday, is meant to revolutionise the command and control of homeland air defence, which is the business of spotting an incoming threat, deciding how to deal with it and directing a weapon against it, and alongside the new radars and sensors the government said it would expand its counter-drone systems and build a new Integrated Air, Space and Missile Defence Operations Centre to pull the whole picture together in a single place.
Among the specific measures is an upgrade to Sea Viper, the air-defence missile system carried by the Royal Navy’s six Type 45 destroyers, which keeps the fleet’s high-end air defence current even as the department plans not to extend the destroyers themselves beyond the middle of the next decade, and the plan also funds Directed Energy Weapons, the high-power lasers being developed as a cheap means of shooting down drones, as part of the same effort. The thread running through all of it is the need to defend fixed sites and bases against the kind of mass drone and missile attack that has become a defining feature of the war in Ukraine.
The investment, say the Government, reflects a growing recognition that the United Kingdom can no longer treat its home bases as a sanctuary, with the Prime Minister having warned that foreign states were already targeting the nation, from sabotage on its streets to Russian vessels loitering near the undersea cables that carry the data on which modern life depends, and the layering of radars, sensors, counter-drone systems and an operations centre is intended to close gaps that have opened as the threat has grown more varied. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton, said the plan set out how the country would “build the integrated force the nation needs.”
If the T45’s are not extended I’ll eat my hat.
Totally agree. Barely used and heavily upgraded, they’ll be extended at least 5yrs if not more
Again a no brainer, these new style planned ships won’t be around certainly in any number, by then and even if the concept works it will need years of development in physical use, thinking, planning and maturing it to become useful, so back up and numbers will be needed. These destroyers will be vital during that transition and perhaps longer if the concept itself or inevitably making it work effectively takes time or god forbid fails to deliver.
The reality of the DIP means 3 billion in cuts. They have already cut the next fleet AAW destroyer don’t be surprised if they sell them off to Brazil or Chile.
Don’t be ridiclous
Yep considering they have pretty much already stated that from 2032 they will start updating it to NT…
The thing about extending is you don’t have to announce it.. it just ends up happening. The T45s are essentially the guarantee and risk management around getting the new FADs up and running as in reality they can scrap another 20 years out of them.
That’s Lossie, Brize and Faslane safe then
£790 million?
What a joke Labour and Starmer are 😂😂😂😂
It’s just so pathetic 🤦♂️
No mention of any new surface to air land-based systems. Not even more Rapid Sentry.
🤡
They will be on an autonomous barge up a creek.
MoD to spend £790m on new radars and sensors and an Ops Room. The only mention as to land-based effectors ie weapons to shoot down ‘incoming’ is the reference to DEW. If DEW is the means by which we shoot down air, drone and missiles attacking us at home and at our overseas bases, we will need to spend a few £billions on a few hundred of these.
Its already been announced. It’s not new radars, its just a cloud based integration of the existing radar systems. It’s something that should have been done 30 years ago but its not going be anything real
It will be just like the Recce concept. Lots of folks to see them coming but no kit to do anything about it.
Just reannouncing existing programs. The drone threat is massively overstated due to the UK’s geographical position so they make announcement that appears to mean something but is just noise.
This is a joke the same £790 million was pledged in 2021. No ABM capability for the UK beyond T45 and radars is a massive mistake.
Thank god we are keeping all those helicopters and expeditionary warfare capabilities, love to know how they plan to use any of them with no ABM capabilities.
What a load of crap
I watched the announcement and he never mentioned Burnham once not even when asked, he just referred to “my successor”. I have read through the MOD blurb and TBH it reads like a guide to how to hand the next guy a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. IMHO this is a Political announcement by 3 bods who know they can’t fix it and the next fools will suffer greatly trying to.
No actual mention of GBAD weapons for the UK.
No mention of extra AEW aircraft.
No mention of extra Typhoons or upgrading more of the F2/F3 radars.
No confirmation of the SSN(A) numbers.
No orders for any extra Aircraft or Helicopters for the RAF or FAA other than those already announced.
No mention of what they are going to do about MROS or MCMV replacements.
No replacement for the Hawk Trainer.
No mention of an armoured troop transport to replace the 60 year old FV432 (Mr DM wants his Patrias 😠).
In fact other than drones and some infrastructure SFA really!
And is it just me or did the Amphibious Ships being built with the Dutch just vanish overnight ?
Sorry Mr Starmer but like the Emperor before you, you aren’t wearing any clothes.
Mr Burnham (if you read UKDJ, you may want to pop to all the BAe sites in Lancashire and let them know that the PM didn’t order anything for them to make for the UK for about the next decade.
Methinks 2 things can be forecasted :-
1. We get the pleasure of watching Starmer getting eviscerated at the NATO conference next week by just about everyone. Just watch France Lord it over us.
2. The next PM has no choice what so ever of not having to find enough money to get the UK out of the Doghouse and restore any faith Europe has in us. So an extra £10 Billion that has to come from one of Labours pet budgets, which isn’t going to go down well with the back bench MPs.
Agree
This is a total farce and fudged politically spun BS announcement- defence investment plan- now not delivered, SDSR 2025- not implemented
Ben Wallace is right- there is absolutely no way the UK will reach the NATO target of 3% defence to GDP spend by 2030 now- absolute joke.
The ONLY way to find this money is 3 fold
1) immediately stop all benefits and costs related to housing and processing illegal economic migrants- you come to the UK illegally you get precisely nothing but imprisonment until deported. (saving £7-8 billion)
2) cut ballooning welfare bill- might involve restoring the two child benefits cap (saving £5 billion)
3) stop the pensions triple lock- (saving per annum £4.5-5 billion)
4) cut tax avoidance loopholes and simplify the UK taxation system- saving £12-15 billion/ annum
just realised- that’s 4 fold not 3 fold-DOH
I have just seen on BBC we plan to spend £26bn on 3 naval bases over 4 years – surely that is just nonsense, how can we spend that much on 3 bases, this is crazy.
The NAO needs to be all over this and get detailed cost breakdowns – I genuinely cant see how 3 bases will take up this much of the budget over the next 4 yrs
The recent US/israel vs Iran war should be a lesson learned.
The best ground-based air defences THAAD, Patriot, and Arrow 3, David’s sling stopped 90% of missiles getting through.
and then there was the drones to supplement the Ballistic missile attacks.
Since June 2025, Iran has fired an estimated 3,000 to 4,000+ ballistic missiles and several thousand suicide drones across multiple escalations and conflicts in the Middle East
Iran’s most advanced missile has a range of 4000km their next generation will reach further.
We need to be prepared for that type of scenario.
Hi mate, I think you’ll find that on the initial day 1 attack, it was closer to 97%, then slowly dropped as the days went, the following attacks were lower, with the last one hovering around 80%. Why the drop? From what I understand it is purely a logistics problem, The Israelis couldn’t replace their ready stocks quickly enough and by the final attack, didn’t have enough to fully replenish their stocks. Which puts another spin on things if you consider Iran was flinging over 3000 ballistic missiles at Israel.
I think there are at least five lessons to be learned:
1. The first is that you will need a huge stock of effectors to not only counter a day 1 threat, but have sufficient ready stock to counter day 2, 3, 4, etc.
2. The second is that you will need a sovereign capability to continuously either manufacture or at least assembly a very large number of effectors quickly, with the aim to replenish stock ASAP.
3. The third is that you will need to disperse you manufacturing capability, if your main site gets knocked out on day 1, you’ve effectively lost
4. The fourth is that you need a means of doing a counter-strike, to either knock out the launchers and/or their manufacturing capability.
5. The fifth and perhaps most pertinent lesson, is that a few threats will always get through. So your infrastructure must be able to cope with losses.
There’s definitely more….
what actual hardware is being delivered with this seemingly paultry sum of money?
how many land ceptor missile batteries, radar guided 40mm or 56mm guns? how many dragonfire direct energy weapon systems?
It would seem this is just rephrasing of programmes already committed too- eg the type 45 destroyer upgrade and the fitting out of dragon fire onto the type 45s.
Loving the new integrates air and space centre. We’ve had one for years.NADOC, which was renamed NASOC.
🙄
It’s all new you know…..
Will they dig a bloody big hole for it like they did in 1985 at Naphill?
The whole thing is at best madness, at worst treasonous.
Mr Putin and Russia see the UK as Public enemy No.1, and if he gets an opportunity will try and make an example of the UK. So, at the very least the UK needs a fully integrated air defence system for both short-range and long range exo-atmosphere threats. Isn’t it an irony that Dowding set up the world’s first fully integrated air defence system in 1939 with a network of distributed control sites and sensors that won the Battle of Britain. Having a single control centre is only going to end badly.
A wise person would not put all our AAW eggs in one basket. I would continue to fund development of the T83 so that is the drone plan does not work. We have a fall backwards position.
More chuff previously announced now wrapped up on a Starmer/Reeves packet! Fucking clowns! The easiest way to achieve a basic kinetic effect is to re-role 1 x Flight per RAF Reg Sqn to the Rapid Sentry system, say x 6 launchers per Sqn and still maintain x 2 flights on Jackal (even some Foxhound) for ground defence. The 6 Sqns would provide a relatively quick and cheap effect as most of our eggs are mostly in a few undefended baskets!
Then the priority must be more GBAD for the Army, more anti-UAV and more depth fire with corresponding recce/attack drones. Some of this kit is already in service, others, plenty of off the shelf solutions out there, just depends on how serious our future ideology led clowns in charge want to be.