Air defences on the Falkland Islands would be strengthened in parallel with any new system built for the United Kingdom, under a commitment made by the Shadow Defence Secretary in his conference speech, according to the Conservative Party.
James Cartlidge said the party’s Britannia Shield programme, a £10 billion integrated air and missile defence system announced on Tuesday, would cover the overseas territories as well as the home islands.
He said: “With our base on Cyprus attacked, and Argentina sabre rattling over the Falklands, I make this promise: when we procure these air defence systems for our nation, we will always, in parallel, reinforce our sovereign bases and overseas territories.
“Just as Britannia Shield means new and improved radars for the UK, we would also boost this capability on the Falkland Islands. Just as our plan would mean stronger stockpiles and air defence systems at home, we would strengthen our air defences on the Falklands.
“So let me be clear, we will take whatever steps are necessary to stop anyone from even thinking about an invasion. Because the Falklands are British and will always be British.”
The commitment is one of the more concrete things any party has said about the islands in some time. British air defence in the South Atlantic currently rests on the Sky Sabre system at Mount Pleasant, which replaced Rapier in 2021, together with the Typhoon detachment of 1435 Flight and the ground-based radars that go with them. Improving the radar picture and deepening the missile stockpile are the two things a serious reinforcement would involve.
Tom Tugendhat, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, made the same connection earlier in the afternoon, linking the government’s handling of the Chagos Islands to Argentine rhetoric. He said: “Weakness is provocative. It’s corrosive. Within days of capitulating on Chagos, Argentina’s president vowed to win back the Falkland Islands.”
The Chagos agreement has been a standing Conservative attack line since it was concluded, and Mr Tugendhat went considerably further on the legal question, describing the international court’s involvement as “courtroom colonialism, an expanding mandate over people who never consented to the jurisdiction of the body that is claiming it”, and arguing that it is “ridiculous to allow Chinese and Russian officials to determine our sovereignty”.
The little boy who cried wolf.
They no longer have any credibility regards Defence. They’ve just seized on a clear weakness and are exploiting it for political ends.
10 billion is better than the chicken feed that Labour have in the DIP for GBAD, so poor that there’s no money to even fully replace Stormer HVM Starstreak on time, and a handful of extra Sky Sabre, no meaningful expansion whatsoever.
But it’s the same old story, “Vote for us and get X and we’ll do this and this.”
Just as Sunak said.
Just as Labour did.
Just as the Tories themselves did in 2010 after years of Labour’s dismantling of the military, only to accelerate the process.
All words.
The usual, no change.
And this “version of Iron Dome” I don’t think 10 billion would provide what Israel have, but it would provide an awful lot more than what exists at the moment.
Put it all in law in Parliament, with all parties agreeing on a % and more importantly a minimum force structure, and I’ll believe.
Till then, charlatans the lot of you.
Meanwhile reports suggest Burnham wants to delay defence spending!
They’ve delayed the Dip years, are doing everything possible to kick 3% then 3.5% down the road to another’s problem, so it’s not really a surprise.
He’s only interested in benefits, as are Labour, to secure their voting base and try to stem the Green party.
Mcfadden said as much already.
Uni party, dead to me and increasingly millions of others.
Spot on 👍
Yep..14-years of Tory betrayal completely ripped apart our Armed Forces. Ill equipped, the onward march of civilnising key components of our Forces, cuts in kit and cutting teeth-arm fighting personnel..on and on and on the Tories continued in their savage pursuit in undermining the Defences of the UK and oot overseas territorial intrests. Labour, are just picking up where the last oitfit left off…Our Navy, Army and Air Force have become an international joke.
The Falklands already had a top class air defence system. If the UK had the same air defence capability as the Falklands with ground based radar stations plugged into CAMM batteries then we would be in a very strong position against any low flying threats from cruise missiles and large drones.
We would need a LOT of iLaunchers to give the UK anything more than local CAMM coverage. A national system needs a longer ranged effector.
The longer range will be A30 probably with CAMM-MR and CAMM (around CNI and bases) with some nice cheap Baguettes for the low end threat drones.
My thoughts exactly. A full IAMD system covering the entire UK for £10bn? They really must think we’re mugs; the requirements capture alone would likely cost half that.
I think that sort of money would at least enable the purchase of Batteries which could then be located to where the threat is thought to be at that moment.
Like everything Defence, a question of balance and priorities, and allocating assets accordingly.
The Security Service as an example has thousands on it’s lists for watching but lacks enough surveillance assets so has to choose what to cover and what to miss.
They then get pillorised when an atrocity happens. Their fault? Not for me, the system that put them in that position to make those choices is the guilty party.
Likewise GBAD. We’ve seen for years how missiles Drones, Cyber, EW, Grey Zone stuff is dominating Russian thinking.
If we fail, and the UKIC doesn’t succeeed, and 9 P8s lined up like skittles at Lossiemouth go up in smoke because someone didn’t buy a cost effective number of cannons, jammers, Rapid Sentry, and other affordable kit, just wait for the politicians passing the blame.
Do we even need an Iron Dome for all the UK, the headline grabber with Britannia spin added for good measure, or just pony up and buy cost effective kit available now which is constantly ignored.
Plenty of it from UK sources as well.
Yes, more batteries, but they’ll need integrating to a wider surveillance system. Look at the mess that is Guardian, and don’t get me started on the Land GBAD programme…
They don’t consider those details! This is political, when do military realities ever resonate there.
Around 6 tethered aerostats can give the necessary radar coverage, Poland has something similar and it will integrate with CAMM MR.
Blame, that’s easy brexit, Tories, Farage, Thatcher. Sociopaths never accept responsibility and what they think is true despite any evidence to the contary
The comes a point where investing in defence is cheaper than…..
It’s not really worth debating, it’s an unbudgeted plan made by the guy behind the truss mini budget. The torries are copying reform in making stuff up in regards to savings so they can triple use them.
All the parties need to be a bit more honest about spending and cuts. Realistically 16 years of conservatives everything that can be cut has been cut, that is their founding view of small government / low taxes. Agree with the view or not doesn’t matter, many do. Now there isn’t anything left to cut without hitting the poorest of the country and so grand expenditure plans need proper funding analysis.
Sir I could save 100 billion ( nett 50 billion ) ) by12 months, if I fail you could put before a firing squad. You clearly have no idea of the colossal waste in Whitehall
Good luck with that. If there were them savings they would have been made years ago. Welcome to DOGE. Ended up screwing up services and increasing costs.
Nobody has the balls to force the anxieties and the bad backs into the workforce, that is the problem.
The question that never gets answered is just what percentage of the welfare bill actually goes to people that could return. Massive figures get linked to the cuts, often larger than the entire welfare bill, but I’ve never need any proper data to analyse the topic, I suspect the answer is not a whole lot of money could really be saved.
The problem is not lack of money. There is plenty of it sloshing around.
There are also cwts of waste which could easily be cut, from the Speaker’s £300,000+ travel expenses (which he has now stopped details of which being published because it was getting too embarrassing) to various departments spending money having branded t-shirts printed for , to the London Mayor, despite being fully on board with the climate change agenda and insisting that the capital city is 100% safe, never travelling anywhere except in a convoy of at least 3 armoured diesel range rovers.
Individually, these things might not be much in the grand scheme of things. Add all these little piss takes together though and you’re soon talking real money.
There has been no “austerity” at all. Just look at the ONS figures, which show an only ever upwards trajectory on public spending. The NHS to give but one example was specifically ring-fenced after the crash, including under those supposed “tax slashing Tories” and has never had a cut to its budget, ever, “real terms” or otherwise.
The evidence of my own payslip, where the lines for the taxes deducted only ever go up, bears this out, as does the balance left in my current account at the end of each month, which shows that the cost of everything I like to buy (toys, treats), have to buy (food, heating, petrol) or am required to buy (motor insurance) has only increased in price due to VAT/fuel duty/VAT on fuel duty(!!)/insurance premium tax, and on and on and on.
Add on tax bells and whistles if you live in Scotland, like me.
There has been *no* austerity in Government. The size of government, and those employed by the state, are at all time highs. As are our taxes – even more than during WW2 where we were literally in an existential fight for survival.
If you want to see what real austerity looked like, look at what Iceland and Ireland did post-crash – slashed public sector headcount by 25% and then forced mandatory 25% pay cuts on the remaining ones.
What there has been in the UK is *different political spending priorities*.
Best exemplified by Mr. McFadden letting the cat out of the bag recently (or simply indulging in a rare bit of honesty for a politician, depending on how generous you’re feeling) when he said all the Labour party meetings he attends are “Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?”
“Call me Dave” let public spending rip because he was (when not hugging hoodies) trying to “detoxify” the Conservative party and make people like them (and therefore vote for them).
Newsflash Dave – if people are inclined leftwards in their voting patterns, they are never going to vote Conservative, no matter how nice you are to them.
You then up alienating all the people who would otherwise have voted for you, because you’ve just become another big state, high tax, restrict voter freedoms party. And we’re spoilt for choice for those already.
Ironically, people still seem to think that the Conservatives are some sort of slash’n’burn, low tax, red in tooth and claw party of small state hyper-capitalists, when the evidence from 2010-2024 was very much to the contrary.
This is what the Conservative still don’t get – they’re bleeding support from the left of their base to the Liberal Democrats (those who are “a bit lefty”, but can’t quite bring themselves to vote Labour), and from the centre/right of their base to Reform (who are simply advocating what were bread & butter centre right Conservative party policies 30 years ago).
As GR says above, the problem is finding someone with the balls to force the anxieties and bad backs into the workforce, and cut off their PIP’s (there’s even Youtube channels showing you how to scam those for crying out loud!). And that’s just for starters.
The other problem is that the more the state grows in size, the more people’s meal tickets depend on the state. So reducing headcount becomes something which becomes politically ever harder.
At least, until you’re forced into it by a bond crisis / Sterling crisis / taxpayers revolt. And the first two look like they’re getting ever closer…
Which is a long way of saying – there is plenty of money available for defence. It’s just that the political parties all have *different spending priorities* (i.e. different voters / lobbyists / charities / activist groups etc they need to bribe with other people’s money for votes).
how does uk iron dome work when we have very congested airspace and any mistakes will be costly in human life? agree with local defence of key military sites
Israel is the only country that manufactures high altitude intercepters other that US I doubt Israel would sell to us given our governments apparent love of Hama’s. The US has just embarked on a several years restocking of PAC 3 for themselves and Ukraine. Maybe 10 years on the Tories will be popular again and can sell us another load of unfilled promises. No doubt this will be one.
Well Greece just recently signed an agreement with Israel on the ‘Achilles Shield’ GBAD program that basically covers everything including the islands all integrated for about 3 billion euros with 25% local manufacturing, this includes the batteries, interceptors, radars and central command and all this should be ready in 3 years, I don’t know from where the 10bn number came and others even say 90bn in the next 10 years…
Ahh but it’s not made in the UK is it?😉costs £Ms more and nothing to do with those nasty Israelis!
I have no delusions the current government will sign any such deal with Israel, perhaps they factored into the costs estimates the “Ajax project management strategy” so it will end up over engineered, over budget, years late, outdated etc.
Given our current governments relations with Israel i doubt they would sell us a pen knife , i agree possibly cheaper route. But you have to account for inflation, maintaince cost and the cost of training, and defending the asset. Unlike the Americans we could not waste 4. 8 million dollars per missile on shooting down low value assets. It would have for us one use only.
The UK is broke and unwilling to stop borrowing to pay for it’s over lifestyle.
The Tories look less electable with all these spending promises.
It’s a multiple of cost for us to shoot down long range drones and high end missiles. Hit a bullet with a bullet as in house of dynamite. Why would we not just attack launch sites or countries. We are NOT going to just passively defend, we cannot endure attacks for much length of time.
Bring back bloodhound
What Cartlifge is proposing looks pretty similar to what a couple of RUSI papers call for, including the £10 bn figure. (1). Except that he goes over the top in calling it ‘a multi-layered missile defence system capable of defending the UK from drone and missile attack.’ We won’t get a layered air defence system, generally meaning three tiers of effectors, fron Patriot-type at the high end, Sky Sabre for local area defence and a LLAD/C-UAV gun or laser system to swat drones at the low end, for that kind of money.
The RUSI papers argue that, in the event of hostilities with Russia, they would aim to knock-out as much of ENATO’s offensive air capability as possible on day one. That means cruise missles and attack aircraft, and logically also AEW Wedgetails, Fylingdale, etc. They posit that, for the next 5 years, the main threat will come from Russian cruise missiles, due to Russia’s very limited production rate as yet of Oreshnik IRBMs and hypersonic glide missiles. The immediate necessities are therefore advanced radar syatems, in the shape of elevated L-band sensors and long-range SAM. Cartlidge mentioned Aster in one TV interview and that would be good enough for now.
Looking at Aster’s range, we could put up a SAM picket line from the north of Scotland down the east coast with probably 5 Aster batteries, so say 30 launchers in the front line. That would not be an infallible defence but still a heck of a lot better than nothing, which is what we currently have.
However, £10bn wouldn’t scratch the.surface of a ‘multi-layered system’. We have about 20 main military bases which would all need some Sky Sabre-type and C-UAV defence. Then there are the aircraft-building factories, shipyards and other defence suppliers, then key civil infracture, marshalling yards etc, etc. Any kind of of robust air defence network would cost many times Cartlidge’s budget.
I welcome his input here. Putting party politics aside, we need cross-party consensus in Parliament on the need to strengthen defence and get to 3.5%. Labour is unlucky that the music stopped and they got the parcel, but that’s political life.
One question to Cartlidge though: is his £1bn a year meant to be additional defence money, or is it just reshuffling what’s already on the table and what is promised by 2035? If it’s just a fudge, he would need to spell out precisely which equipment purchases he proposes to axe to pay for it.
(1) Royal United Services Institute (RUSI):
– ‘Requirements for the Command and Control of the UK’s Ground-based Air Defence’, and
– ‘An integrated Air and Missile Defence Architecture for the UK’
Excellent. That same party that was cutting the navy so far that the Argentine Junta thought they could get away with invading the Falklands, costing both sides many casualties, trauma & a massive investment to prevent it happening again. Then They carried on cutting away ever since at UK forces until we end up today with dire force levels & long delayed replacement of assets long gone or worn out beyond repair. They also chase after Chinese & Russian funding & think Trump is their sort of guy.