As if by magic, this last weekend, the UK media woke up to the fact that Britain has no effective defence against ballistic missiles. The military and defence commentariat has known this for some time, so why the sudden interest?
The probable cause is the widespread use of such weapons in Ukraine and in the Middle East. The Russians have made much use of their ballistic missile arsenal – together with drones and cruise missiles – in their ongoing assault against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
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And in the Middle East, the Iranians have lobbed their ballistic missiles against Israel, as have the Houthis and other ne’er-do-wells in the region. The Houthi terrorists have also launched a number of anti-shipping adapted ones against commercial traffic in the Red Sea.
What has been the result of such attacks? Well, the Ukrainians have been hard pressed to counter Russia’s missiles with a lack of effective anti-ballistic missile defence (ABMD) and many have hit their intended targets.
Israel, on the other hand, boasts a sophisticated multi-layered defence against such threats. Popularly known as ‘Iron Dome,’ it actually consists of three different but coordinated systems; first, there are the long-range Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 interceptors, developed by Israel with an Iranian missile attack in mind, and designed to engage threats in and outside the atmosphere respectively.
This is backed up by the mid-range ‘David’s Sling’ system, designed to shoot down ballistic missiles fired from 100 to 200 kilometres away. And finally, there is the ‘Iron Dome’ proper, a short-range system built to intercept the kind of rockets fired by Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In addition to these, the Israelis are developing a laser-based system to neutralize enemy rockets and drones at an estimated cost of just $2 per interception, and the Americans sent the advanced antimissile system THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system, to Israel late last year. THAAD is a critical part of the U.S. military’s air defences and is designed to intercept and destroy short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats in their terminal phase of flight.
So Israel is pretty well provided for when it comes to ABMD. How does the UK currently stand in this area?
The answer is that Britain has nothing, zilch, nada, zero when it comes to ABMD.
Yes, I know that HMS Diamond managed to knock down a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile in the Red Sea recently, but that was operating at the very limit of its capabilities. It’s no surprise that the Royal Navy is now scrambling to update the rest of its T45 destroyers with a proper capability.
Now, I hear you say that the threat of a ballistic missile attack against the UK at the moment is minimal, and I would agree. But all defence planning is hypothetical until you’re actually involved in a war, so let’s just conduct a short review of where British national interests might be vulnerable.
Top of the list must come Cyprus, where Britain maintains two sovereign base areas at Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The former is the location of the RAF base critical for operations across the Middle East, while the latter has the joint GCHQ/NSA signals intelligence listening station at Ayios Nikolaos. Both are within range of Iran’s long-range ballistic missiles and also of those which might be launched by its proxies in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. They have no permanent ABMD provision.
Then there are various other strategic locations around the globe which are vital UK interests – Gibraltar, the Falklands, Diego Garcia, and Brunei to name but a few. All are vulnerable to submarine-launched or air-launched ballistic missile attack, and none have ABMD.
And what about the UK itself? Surely the capital, London, is appropriately defended, and also the independent nuclear deterrent submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde?
Sorry folks, the answer is no. At a pinch, you could argue that London might be defended by stationing a T45 destroyer on the Thames, and that Faslane could be protected by another stationed in the Firth of Clyde, but as only two out of Britain’s six T45 destroyers are available for operations at present – and they have many other tasks too – then the rest of the UK’s national interests are undefended.
This state of affairs is not very satisfactory, hence the cries recently from the usual suspects that “something must be done.” But what, and who’s going to pay for it? The UK defence budget cannot cope with present demands as it is.
Over to you, Sir Keir Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey. You’re the government and it’s your job to fix it. Until you do, Britain and its interests are wide open to ballistic missile attack.
Our enemies and potential enemies will not have failed to notice.
Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a political and defence commentator and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk.
UK uses Aster in the navy. It is Proven and effective. Why not participate in the evolution of the system, with the naval and land base version? MBDA is in UK, Aster makers are Italy and France. I have seen worst odds for a successfull story…
An obvious solution here is to integrate Aster 30NT onto Sky Sabre system and then build another half-dozen batteries.
Sky Sabre doesn’t have the right radar for Aster 30 and certainly not for ABMD capability. We would have to buy full SAMP/T capability and SAMP/T even with block 1 NT which is years away can only shoot down shorter range ballistic missiles. Only the Blokc 2 NT will approach the capability of systems like SM3 and Arrow 3 and blk 2 is nothing more than a wish at the moment.
That isn’t really true.
These are software defined systems that require formatted data inputs that can come from anywhere.
The days of vertically integrated weapons systems [with dedicated bus comms] are, thankfully, long past.
The issue with the Giraffe Radar that Land Ceptor /Sky Sabre uses is that it is the wrong type of radar for that range envelope. It is absolutely fine for the Ceptor missile as that system is supposed to put a 50km bubble over an area. IRL it will protect a bigger area than that I’m sure.
Before we start overcooking the pudding are we assuming we need to intercept competent missiles and therefore going full Gucci on the solution? IRL most Russian missiles have been eminently shoot down able using most Hendy missile systems.
So in order to do something that actually works and is going to get deployed what push is go Aster-1NT but with a radar architecture that supports upgrade to 2NT?
Is Aster proven against ballistic missiles?
Base Aster 30 is what Diamond used in the gulf, but against a pretty basic ballistic missile in the grand scheme of things.
We have no idea whether the SAMP/T system/s in Ukraine (utilising the Block 1 missile) have been used against ballistic (or hypersonic for that matter) targets, but I’d be surprised if not. There hasn’t been very much publicity about the SAMP/T in Ukraine, but they’re apparently pretty happy with it.
In theory, the Block 1/ Block 1NT updates that the RN are currently involved with should improve on what has now been proven in the current Block 0. But, for the really big ICBMs and suchlike, I think it’s the Block 2 missile that will be needed for that. As far as I’m aware, that’s still a drawing board design.
Compared to the Standard missile system, or even the Israeli system of systems, there is a much smaller record of engagements- although I think that’s as much to do with relative opportunity/necessity of use, and proliferation of the systems as much as anything else.
However, Mad Vlad is providing free test targets and we are happy to let the nice Mr Zelenski test 1NT and give us the data to improve the software.
So you have a very rapid spiral against more sophisticated missiles than are fired at the Israeli systems. It is worth bearing in mind that the missiles that Iron Dome deals with aren’t that special and are a generation behind the ‘best’ Russian ones….
The raw A30 is a pretty formidable missile and has superb terminal manoeuvring with puff-paff quite a lot can be done with it as it is software defined.
No communication on Aster perf in Ukraine is due to a request from Italy. But Kiev still ask for moré batteries.
I’d prefer we didn’t get a running commentary TBH.
We just need to do the spiral stuff.
My parents woke up to the fact that Britain has no defence against ballistic missiles in September 1944 when the first V-2 landed on London.
To be fair back then, no one did.
We had an excuse in 1944. No excuse now.
And that’s the problem an air defence\ABM system that is worth anything is going to cost a good 3-5 billion.
The real problem is the same for most of the UKs strategic infrastructure, it’s been capital starved for at least 15 years arguably 25.
Essentially HMG needs capital expenditure to recapitalise the
1) MBT force
2) self propelled artillery force
3) IFV force
4)Frigate force
5) amphibious force
6) mine warfare force
7) fleet replenishment force
8) destroyer force ( medium term)
9) Ballistic missile submarine force
10) SSN force ( medium term)
11) tactical airlift ( rotor)
12) fast jet force
13) AEW force
14) ground based air defence
15) basing and maintaining facilities
Each of these capital programs are many billions each.. essentially the UK mortgaged its defences and now needs to accept its got to pay the mortgage off and that’s essentially 110 billion give or take.
Thats before you get to a massive investment in human resources and recuitment as well as uplifts in ongoing spending.
Simply put the taxpayer are not willing to foot a 110 billion capital bill and probably a further 10billion a year in ongoing costs. They need to told why it’s important by brave politicians who are willing to stand up and say we are heading for a world war that we have a possibility of losing and even if we win will destroy our nations economy for a generation… unless we can deter the enemy with massive investment in defence. This needs to be cross party no… playing the “well you will have to put up tax’s games” just all major parties coming out any saying what must be done and supporting the party in power to do it.
I don’t agree tax payers aren’t willing to foot the bill. Tax payers are just fed up with government’s squandering what they already give. I would bet if every Tax payer could elect what % of their tax was spent where, defence would be higher up the list than many government departments.
Our glorious leaders aren’t listening. None of the three forces Navy, Army or Air Force will necessarily want to accept responsibility or cost. It should be the RAF in the lead. I hope they have the energy and will work to make a success of it borrowing the support and integrating with the other two.
I’m not sure on that one. I would happily see an extra 1% on my income tax if it went to defence. I’m sure you would as well.. but I think most people would not. Infact there is only 40% support for increasing any defence spending and moving to 2.5% GDP, before you mention a tax rises.
The British public in general have little concept of the theory and requirements around effective deterrence or any notion of the destruction on our nation a world war would cause.
Yup my 0.5% of GDP over 20 year defence capital investment holiday estimation!
Divide by two as some of the investment would now be obsolete!
Look at how much the US has spent on GBAD against ICBMs to achieve at best a 50% success rate in scripted tests. The systems, deployed in Alaska and California are designed to counter an attack by a rogue actor, not a full scale missile attack. For that, the US relies on its deterrent triad of land, air and submarine launched nuclear weapons. In addition, it has anti missile capabilities that operate in the terminal phase of a ballistic missile – ground based Patriot, THAAD and ship based Standard.
The whole point of the vast cost of nuclear weapons is MAD. It works because no defensive system is effective enough to neutralize a major attack – even if half of the incoming missiles are intercepted, the rest will destroy you.
There is a case for the UK to improve its defences against lower level threats to critical infrastructure using existing systems. They might just about be affordable – a comprehensive GBAD system wouldn’t.
Very sensible and measured response – the good colonel is right to point out gaps but a tad alarmist about London & Faslane.
MAD theoretically protects you from a nuclear attack. It does not deter an attack with non-nuclear ballistic missiles. As the ballistic missile attack on Israel surely proves.
There’s also an element of us not knowing what type of missile has been fired at us. If somebody won’t fire a missile because they know we can’t tell the difference and we’d go nuclear if in doubt, I would argue that fits within MAD. However, it is stretching it a bit.
Fair point but that get’s into areas such as “launch on warning” and I don’t believe the UK has that policy. I think it’s fair to say that everyone knows that the UK or any major nuclear power will not respond to a conventional attack with a nuclear weapon and that leaves this giant loophole to be exploited but conventionally armed missiles.
Agreed, I think we need to consider what we are trying to defend against.
I’ve visited some of the Cold War nuclear bunkers that were supposed to provide a secure point of control for various irradiated parts of the country in the event of a full-on nuclear war with the USSR that shattered/melted London. Or at least they would have provided control until the food and suchlike ran out, then all bets were off. Fundamentally, we are too small a nation to survive a full-on nuclear war strike; The USA relied on their size to absorb a lot of the strikes and still survive intact. Why are we trying to defend the undefendable?
Focus on achievably defending against a credible attack- like you say non-nuclear strikes against infrastructure for example.
Hybrid war is already in progress in multiple domains so that MAD is not the main UK threat. Continuous Presence At Sea has that covered.
Damage to critical infrastructure seems to be a big part of hybrid war both physical and electronic. Misinformation built on that being business as usual for GCHQ and Intelligence services.
It’s clear that the aggressors will share their pain by hybrid warfare so defence of critical infrastructure is already in place and needs to improve as the pressure gets higher. Quite modest investment compared to ABM GBAD…
Leading the watch keeping efforts in North and Baltic Seas seems like a good start.
The UK’s relatively small size in some ways is an advantage against a rogue aggressor because we have less area to defend. Against a mass attack we are pretty much toast. A system based in South of Ireland would help defend against a seaborne launched from the Atlantic.
‘South of Ireland’ – careful, there !
Or perhaps wait until the US perfects GBAD for ICBMs, then apply for a FMS? Undoubtedly, many commentators would complain re cost and MIC implications, but occasionally MOTS are justified. 🤔
Hi Peter, agree in regards to Nuclear weapons. The cost effective method is deterred as it’s effectively 8 times cheaper to lob ICBMs with multiple reentry vehicles than it is to intercept the individual reentry vehicles.. essentially you need around 2 ground based interceptors per Reentry vehicle so to interception the payload of 1 ICBM your looking at 10 multi stage orbital/sub orbital boosters… by the time it’s finished the US will probably have spent north of 100 billion dollars to be able to intercept a handfull of ICBMs if they are lucky.. the Russian and Chinese strategic arsenals would punch through it without it touching the sides…
But there is a new threat in town and that is medium to intermediate range conventional armed Ballistic missiles and the problem is the strategic deterrent is essentially useless at preventing the use of these. So the UK does need an expeditionary and home based defence to manage these. By there nature these will be less numerous and for medium range only have a single warhead so it’s both a needed and slightly more cost effective capability to defend against these.. but even these need to be very focused on assets that must be protected.
I dont recall agreeing with Mr Crawford’s articles.
But I do with this one.
Very well, and simply, put, for any layman in defence matters to understand.
He is right about this one, he took a good lesson from the Iranian missile barrages and how Israel was prepared enough to minimise the impact of these saturation attacks.
Again he reminds us that we have bases within easy reach of Iranian missiles.
Iran still has around 2500 of various BM types should they decide to attack again.
Until relatively recently the technology required to have any confidence of being able to shoot down ballistic missiles did not exist. The rationale behind CASD is that- since we cannot hope to prevent ballistic missiles from raining down on us- we ensure that we have the capability to retaliate in kind, thus deterring such an attack in the first place. That is also why CASD is CAS, rather than moored up at Faslane. Since ABM is now technically possible, it would be wise to invest in it as an additional layer of defence, but to imply that we are currently ‘defenceless’ in the face of such threats is ridiculous. I hope that Colonels in general do have a grasp of how ‘defence’ actually works as a concept, which leads me to suspect that Crawford is deliberately stirring the pot.
The really big difference is that once medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles were essentially nuclear tipped weapons that’s use was deterred by our own nuclear deterrent.. but now they are conventional weapons as well, the nuclear deterrent does not work.. any enemy would know that the UK would not invite MAD for anything less than a nuclear strike or other mass casualty WMD strike. So hitting key bases with conventionally tipped intermediate ballistic missiles is now a possibility.. as we don’t have our own Conventional IRBM to respond back.. a defence has become necessary.
What a mess we are in.
As much as I like reading UKDJ articles, I find the truth of these matters very depressing
My opinion: Procure land-based Arrow 2/3 now ….. In the long term open up manufacturing plants and build under licence.
I would not get too depressed. There is no BMD capability that exist with current technology that could reliably intercept the ballistic missile that could reach the UK today.
Yeah Jim but as we saw in the Iranian missile attacks on Israel, some missiles got through, if all 200 had got through the defences then Israel would have lost a serious amount of aircraft and functional airbases.
The lesson is: It is better to have some ABM defences as opposed to none.
Not to let the last government off the hook because they have not done nearly enough and they have dragged their feet but it’s inaccurate to say the UK has no defence against ballistic missiles. We do it’s just run by NATO in Poland and Romania via AEGIS ashore and SM3 we are currently buying an additional BMD radar from Lockheed Martin to enhance the system as well.
The best place to guard the UK from ballistic missiles is Poland and Romania not Dunbartonshire or Kent.
Cyprus is a clear issue that needs plugging but as the threat to the UK mainland is only from ICBM’s or Medium range weapons like Oreshnik there is no missile defence system available. America has spent tens of billions on GBI and its doesn’t work very well against single warheads. It’s has zero chance against something like Oreshnik with MIRV’s.
Why do you persist in posting complete crap like this, as if you know what your talking about? What are you trying to prove? Every paragraph that you post is full of bullshit, with people constantly having to fact check everything you say.
An IRBM is not an ICBM, it’s got a far lower apogee, is far slower and has less warheads.. it is possible to intercept it with a number of available systems.. ICBMs I agree with you, but there are no conventionally tipped ICBMs so the nuclear deterrent works for them.. it does not work for conventional IRBMs.. that means Thaad, SM3 or Arrow3 is a needed.
“ Yes, I know that HMS Diamond managed to knock down a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile in the Red Sea recently, but that was operating at the very limit of its capabilities. It’s no surprise that the Royal Navy is now scrambling to update the rest of its T45 destroyers with a proper capability.”
Was it really at its very limits – I doubt that very much.
I would have been nowhere near the limits if the radar system or the tracking that was upgraded for the ABM detection tests in the US.
A30 hasn’t been fired against ballistics, as far as I know, so that would have been reaching into spiral development territory….which is essential….nice if the Houthis to wake us up and provide some free targets…..
Yes they where fired by a Fremm against 3 balistic missiles. 3 missiles, 3 shots, 3 interceptions. The catch is the area covered by a system. In the case of a ship, the target and the battery are the same. If you take a vast area, then it goes to the speed of the incoming missile, the speed of your own interceptor and the trajectory of both (tangential or inbound). The hypersonic missiles are harder to intercept. The balistic missiles with high altitude are uneasy. The mirv are tricky. For those, you need in the case of UK, good coordination with allies for early warning and long range interceptors. So do we in France, for obvious reasons: The présence of HVT on home soil.
“Was it really at its very limits – I doubt that very much.”
Hard to say but reading people who have a background in this and can speak freely to some degree in an open forum, they all seem to agree that the issue with A30 against ballistic missile is the defended area is shockingly small. The missile almost has to be travelling directly in the path of the ship launching it for to have a relatively good shot at interception. On balance I think is actually a good sign that there is some latent ABM capability already there which should make the upgrade process I suspect a lot easier.
Yes, the operative bubble is very very small which is why a long range radar network or radar heads is essential to guide the missile in.
The problem isn’t so much the missile or the radar it is the ‘incoming threat’ warning so that everything is T’d up ready to fire at the perfect moment.
As I’ve said a few times before – I’d spend the money on the radar network as the tech is there for that. Then develop the control software for distributed batteries which won’t have their own radars. And then worry about the missiles.
The fundamentals of Sea Viper are very, very good and can be leveraged.
Get on with the bits you can get on with.
Would you upgrade the S1850M to the SMART-L MM front end standard? That has to be the easiest path for the T45s, right? Another option is to integrate a new upward-facing panel. I’ve no idea how easy that would be.
I don’t think the upwards facing panel is needed.
BTW I changed my mind on that.
The 1850 can be upgraded – as you say and Thales do too!
The problem isn’t so much the radars as the range of the missiles and having ‘something else’ to cue up the systems before the missile enters the bubble. If you like the overwatch function.
It’s worth remembering that these are really only tactical ballistic missiles without independent warheads.. essentially slightly faster than your cruise missile and slightly higher.. it’s not inconceivable that Aster can knock down a missile with an apogee of 200km, travelling at 4000mph if it’s in the right place.. it’s got not chance against something plunging from an apogee of in low earth orbit and travelling at 15,000 to 20,000 mph. Thats essentially a whole different missile.
The key issue with that is the effect of ships motion on track accuracy even with digital correction.
I have a funny feeling that the quantum cats-cradle is related to correcting those errors.
SAMs have always been the poor relation, no pilots required!
Given that ballistic missiles (not mentioning drones) are becoming a commodity for none state proxy actors and looking at the available options I agree that only feasible solution is going for Arrow 3 (exo-atmosphere, 2400 KM range) in conjunction with some Terminal phase interceptor, cloud be Arrow 2 or THAAD, in case the Arrow 3 interception fails, for lower layers there are more options
Other than this can join the MDBA AQUILA project for hypersonic interceptor
Put some interceptor prices in $ here I got from Google
Arrow 3 – 2M
Arrow 2 – 1.5M
THAAD – ?
Aster 30 – 2M
David Sling – 700K
Patriot PAC3 – 3.8M
SM-6 – 3.9M
SM-3 – 9.6 – 27.9