Craig Langford
Heckler & Koch set to supply UK machine guns for a decade
The Ministry of Defence intends to award Heckler & Koch a ten-year contract worth around GBP 70 million to supply L7A2 general-purpose machine guns and associated equipment to the British armed forces.
Autonomous weapons an ‘Oppenheimer moment’, peer warns
A Conservative peer has told the House of Lords that autonomous weapons may represent a threshold as significant as the arrival of nuclear arms, warning that, unlike nuclear weapons, they are cheap, scalable and hard to contain.
UK had Gulf bases but no ships to use them, peer says
The UK had military bases across the Gulf but largely no vessels stationed in them when conflict with Iran erupted earlier this year, a peer has told the House of Lords.
British aircraft carrier to set sail from Norway
HMS Prince of Wales has completed a port visit to Stavanger and is prepared to continue Operation Firecrest, the ship announced on Saturday, with the carrier having addressed a minor technical issue during its time alongside.
Britain explores ground-based air defence radar testing
The Ministry of Defence is sounding out industry on developing a ground-based system to test the accuracy of air defence radars, a method intended to replicate the flight checks currently flown to verify them.
First prototypes of troop-protection jammer due in 2027
Project Crenic, the British programme developing electronic countermeasures to protect troops, vehicles and bases, passed its critical design review last summer, with the first prototype systems expected in early 2027 for testing.
British guns on US ships but few British ones, MPs told
A British firm's naval guns are fitted to almost all US Navy and Coast Guard ships but hardly any Royal Navy vessels, the Treasury Committee has heard, in an example of domestic capability the UK is said to be overlooking.
UK buying Chinese steel also made in Britain, MPs told
The Ministry of Defence has been criticised for buying standard steel from China that British mills produce, with the head of Make UK Defence calling the practice unacceptable as a new 50 per cent steel tariff approaches.
Claim on defence spending with UK firms questioned
The Ministry of Defence's headline claim that the bulk of its contracts are placed with UK-based businesses has been questioned by industry, which says the figure depends on what counts as a British company.
UK training for Ukraine shifts to specialist skills
Operation Interflex, the UK-led programme that has trained more than 63,000 Ukrainians since 2022, is entering a new phase moving away from mass infantry training towards specialist areas including aviation, medical, engineering and logistics.










