An additional £470 million is being spent on improving the security of critical military sites across Britain, alongside £240 million for an enhanced counter-drone system called Project PRESAGIUM, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Stuart Anderson, the Conservative member for South Shropshire, asked what progress had been made on building resilience to attacks and shocks since the Strategic Defence Review was published.
Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, said: “Defence is strengthening the UK’s resilience to attacks and shocks through a range of measures, including an additional £470 million investment to improve the security of critical military sites across the UK. This is supportive of broader home defence planning to ensure the resilience of the UK’s most important CNI in the event of a crisis or conflict. We are working across Government in support of the Cabinet Office-led Home Defence Programme, to take a data-driven approach to identifying the CNI most essential to the UK’s ability to sustain and respond to conflict. By contributing Defence data to the Cabinet Office’s CNI Knowledge Base, we are fulfilling the commitments set out in the Resilience Action Plan and improving our understanding of the infrastructure, dependencies and vulnerabilities that would be most critical in a conflict scenario.
“This analysis is informing our Home Defence planning by ensuring that we align Defence resources and capabilities to the protection of the most important infrastructure against a broad spectrum of threats, from hybrid activity through to conventional conflict. It will also help to identify what Defence could contribute to support the protection of other priority CNI that is essential to the functioning of the country.
“Through the Defence Investment Plan and the wider Home Defence Programme, we are also investing in capabilities including Integrated Air and Missile Defence. Defence is investing £240m in Project PRESAGIUM, an enhanced counter-drone system, providing effective detection and defeat of emerging drone threats. We are growing and equipping the Reserves to support Homeland Defence tasks and enhancing capabilities to protect critical underwater infrastructure. Our Integrated Air and Missile Defence capabilities will be prioritised against the assessed threat as part of the future Integrated Force.”
Good news, however: this is only the beginning; the costs will not stop rising, as drone and missile countermeasures are developed in weeks, not years.