A cross-party debate in Parliament today highlighted critical vulnerabilities in the UK’s air and missile defence systems.
The Westminster Hall session, led by Luke Akehurst MP (Labour, North Durham), follows recent global developments, including Russia’s deployment of an intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile in Ukraine.
Addressing the chamber, Mr Akehurst underscored the UK’s inadequate ground-based air defences against ballistic missile attacks, stating:
“This lack of active homeland defence is fundamentally a strategic failure… Addressing this capability gap needs to be an urgent political, funding and industrial priority for Government.”
He spoke of the need for comprehensive action, noting that without significant upgrades, defending London from such attacks would require permanently mooring a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer in the Thames Estuary. The debate also examined emerging threats from drones operated by hostile state and non-state actors, referencing recent incidents where unidentified UAVs targeted three RAF bases.
The session follows a House of Lords committee report in September, which concluded that under-investment had created “substantial vulnerabilities” in UK air defences.
Responding to concerns, Maria Eagle MP, Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, recognised the urgency of the issue, stating:
“The global air and missile threat is advancing; it is proliferating and converging. So given this increasingly volatile and contested threat environment, we have to ensure that we have the capability and capacity to counter threats in the most appropriate way.”
She affirmed that the forthcoming Strategic Defence Review would address these threats, adding:
“We have got to consider properly the range of threats – from the low-cost drones we see affecting the UK today to the strategic long-range weapons that Russia threatens to use.”
The debate marks a call for immediate political and industrial prioritisation to secure the UK against a rapidly evolving range of aerial threats.
Oh good. More taking. That will solve the problems.
Would you prefer MPs to be silen
I’d rather they acted for a change!
There must be talking first and this is the first time in several decades that this has even been raised properly at this level.
I think you’ll find that it is raised about every six months but the politicians don’t do anything. The Tories gave the go ahead for Sky Sabre but numbers are limited and they also decided on ABM using Aster block1, now operational. All we have to do now is get the latest set of politicians to combine the two ideas and put ABM on land. Easy?…we’ll wait and see.
Why put a T45 in the Thames estuary? We would be much better off with all those muppets gone!
The MP was making the point that we do not have any land-based systems that can provide the missile defence capability that the T45 was designed for.
Neither can the T45 without a missile upgrade.
Yes I noted that it’s prospective at best as things stand though it could probably give a 20 second warning if everyone is on the ball.
It’s not only MPs who live in London, you know!!! But yeah, T45 is totally the wrong solution.
That was exactly his point
There’s plenty on here keep saying we have air defences in the type 45 as well… What a novel idea, putting ground defences on a ship. Surprised it’s never caught on anywhere else in the world.
Maybe we could build pontoon versions of the T45 and tow them around as needed!
Didn’t that already exist?
The Longbow test barge?
Could do like the Americans and their aegis ashore system
What Air Defence ? 3 batteries of Sky Sabre do not count as they are for army formations and the T-45’s are at sea protecting QE/PoW as designed (when they work). Uk has not had Land based air defence since Bloodhound.
ThE TyPe 45S dOnT WoRk aNd We HaVe No AiRcRaFt FoR oUr CaRrIeRs!
🙄
Agreed, the height of MoD/HMG stupidity to redraw the Bloodhound batteries without replacement, another brainiac Peace Dividend decision.
Wonders (rhetorically) what the air defence plan is for the SSBN base, the nuclear storage and the nuclear weapon certified airbases, let alone London
Does the Type 45 even have a ballistic missile defence?
Yes and a proven one as well as it shot down a ballistic missile this year.
Technically true as some of the targets it can handle are indeed ‘Ballistic’ but we know its present limitations, in the future much more capable at least for medium range more sophisticated targets than present.
all ABM systems are limited
Not all ABM’s are limited equally.
An Aster is not proper to hit a BM fired from Kaliningrad. It would be a too big,too fast missile. Instead if it was a Scud type fired from France it would b ok.
You are winging it buddy , stop lying
Not an IRBM, only the SM3 and GBI can do that.
That is incorrect. Technically even CAMM/Sky Sabre can intercept a ballistic missile or re-entry vehicle. The issue is the height and distance away from the firing unit where it can achieve it. If the missile threat is heading directly towards the firing unit, the maths becomes simpler. If the missile is towards the edge of the missile interceptor’s envelop the maths becomes more complicated. But basically, you can use Aster 30 to intercept IRBM or its re-entry vehicle, so long as the descending missile/re-entry vehicle is within the missile interceptor’s engagement envelop (height and range limitations). The descent speed is… Read more »
No it’s the terminal phase speed which is the issue, the tracker and warhead need to be specifically designed and there is nothing that can intercept an ICBM or IRBM MIRVs in its terminal dive. Its terminal phase staring at around 100km up will be at 13,000- 18000 mph and last less than a minute, that is an impossible intercept for any of the present missiles designed for terminal phase intercept of ballistic missiles, that being SM6, SM2 block 4, patriot PAC3, THAAD, aster 30 block 1…these missiles are designed to intercept short and medium range ballistic missiles only as… Read more »
“CAMM/Sky Sabre can intercept a ballistic missile or re-entry vehicle. ”
Fuze and commands are not designed for that speed and the radar sensors and FCS are usually not designed for that kind of speed either for these class of SAM’s.
The most probable result is that the system don’t considers it inside threat parameters and don’t makes calculations.
Type 45 does not do ABM
Aster does. Block1 NT is getting ready soon.
Type 45 does not do ABM at all
Type 45 does have limited ABM, it can intercept a Scud class BM. But for longer range and faster BM’s with cluster/reentry warheads will not be as capable. Against the IRBM fired by Russia will probably be ineffective with low kill probability.
Ballistic missiles are not all equal.
Currently Aster 30 which is limited, but will be upgrading to Aster 30 block 1.
…better start dusting off some of those old bunkers and command centres. I wonder if there are any “Thor” holes still in the ground to stick some TAAADS in …if we had ’em? Better quickly start thinking of an alternate to submarine delivery of nukes to help with deterrent. Start gluing some Vulcans back together or something. On a more serious note: UK politicians need to smell the coffee and forget 2.5% and put the UK on a war footing. I sense we are back in 1938, but even buy then we had started re-arming and putting in serious air… Read more »
A War footing? Really?
We should at least be prepared for war against a peer or near-peer opponent.
Problem is back then it could be done with a degree of stealth and it was with the support of the printed media, the public knew little of the attempted upgrading of the RAF at the time because powers that be were deeply concerned about the pacifist lobby and the public’s determination to avoid another war at all costs. Cant do that today in the same way though it would be nice to see some evidence of stealth tactics to hide the true move to re arm. Would love for the recent scrappings were that, but have grave doubts that… Read more »
…back in the day Maggie Thatch managed to squirrel billions on Corsham underground facility, I just hope that the UK is doing the same again with directed energy and anti-drone stuff.
At lest Dowding AND Chamberlain were doing their best to get the RAF up to speed back then, with an integrated air defence system and great aircraft. I suspect Chamberlain was trying to buy time for this and other re-armaments, but sacrificed his reputation.
Chamberlain had been beavering away at rearming the country since about 1934 and wanted to make it a front-and-centre platform of the 1935 election campaign. Can’t see Rachel Reeves doing that. I’m not sure the SDR will have a similar position to the 1933 Defence Requirements Committee who came up with requirement to fight in Europe against Germany (Air Power) and in the Pacific against Japan (the fleet). Fight against both! That went down like a 20 ton anvil on the feet of the Disarmament Committee, chaired by the PM, who received it in Spring 1934. They responded that they… Read more »
We didn’t rearm fast enough in the 1930s to deter Hitler and we aren’t rearming fast enough now to deter Putin We stated the second world war with an almost obsolete navy and we are not in a much better position now. The Washington navel treaty was the cause of the issues in the 1930s. Today it’s chronic inertia. We sent Nlaw missiles to Ukraine and hadn’t: put in an order for replacements the same day. We know we need to restock.155mm shells and built another production line when we should have built 8. Ukraine still doesn’t have as many… Read more »
I think you mean Rearmament committee, rather than Disarmament committee.
We don’t seem to have the depth of repllies-to-replies at the moment that we used to, so for Graham: I believe the committee that the government referred the rearmaments suggestion to in 1934 was the Disarmament Conference Ministerial Committee DC(M), which I loosly referred to as the Disarmament Committee. IN 1933 disarmament was still a far bigger thing than rearmament, with the World Disarmament Conference taking place in Geneva between Feb 1932 and Nov 1934 (aka Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments), coming out of the League of Nations. I don’t know very much about the DC(M) but… Read more »
Thanks for the reply. The switch from disarmamant to rearmament happened in Oct/Nov 1933. Wiki is informative. In October 1933, when the failure of the Disarmament Conference was evident, a Defence Requirements Sub-Committee (DRC) of the Committee of Imperial Defence was appointed to examine the worst deficiencies of the armed forces. The group first considered the Far East, but soon looked at dangers nearer home. The DRC was created on 14 November 1933, as “the arena in which British strategic foreign policy was thrashed out among competing interests with competing views”. Between November 1933 and July 1934 it set the… Read more »
…and yes, the odd missile lobbed this way, is my real concern too. All-out nuclear was is impossible to defend, but the odd missile just fired by Putin or a rogue general is the biggest risk. Sort of embarrassing if we can’t even defend against that.
TLAM launched from SSN and storm shadow from typhoon. Both more than capable of striking western Russia.
Failing that we keep tactical yield war heads on our Tridents armed with a single dial-able yield warhead.
The UK would be the worst country in Europe for Putin to attack, much more likely he would attack Poland or Germany.
You are clueless , Tlam is ok for hitting men in sandals buddy but to get a kill on Russia with tlam you would need to launch a big volley at once for some to get threw , Tlam is easy meat for an s400 . The U.K. can’t launch tlam in volleys as it comes from a torpedo launch 🤣
Not even Russia can defend their entire country with S400.
Their bases are simply too far apart to cover all of them.
Yeah Tom, those S400 were doing a great job right until storm shadow smacked into them.
Offcourse Russia is very large and has very few s400 left.
And as you wisely point out our SSN’s only have a single torpedo Tube and TLAM a block IV can’t be directed to circle anlunch platform or take indirect routes.
Well done comrade for pointing out the errors of our capitalist ways 😀
do your kremlin handlers pay you in rubles? kinda sucks for you if they do lol
S-400 is not to be used against cruise missiles.
S300 & 400 are very good at shooting down straight flying civilian airliners at 40k feet but that’s about it. Just another Russian super weapon; too much vanity and not enough ability.
Perhaps an even bigger concern, is that what industrial capabilities we have today, will struggle to ramp up to even a pre-war footing let alone a full on war footing. If its not seen a value or making a profit it gets cut, BAe are a prime example of our military industrial base, where they stopped and sold off industrial infrastructure when there was no longer a sufficient demand.
Yep. The UK needs to nurture and develop sovereign strategic industrial capabilities and just accept that the defence of the Nation transcends short-term commercial profits and reliance on other Nations.
“THAAD”
I agree, but they cost $2.5 billion a battery.
SAMPT block 1 NT
Roughly the same capability/cost as Patriot. Patriot are roughly $800m a battery.
Good Day,
One does have to ask what on earth has been going on over many years! Conservatives, Labour as well as Parliment in general and indeed some Defence Chiefs should have done something years ago before we landed in this mess.
Having said that it’s essential to start putting the wrongs right! Increase defence spending as required and place orders immediately. To much talk s as ND5 not enough action!
Looking forward to some good news!
Army brass is obsessed with saving as many infantry battalions as possible and says air defence should be paid form by RAF. RAF doesn’t want to pay for air defence says it’s an American thing.
Very little to do with parliament or politicians.
Very much to do with an incompetent officer class recruited from the wrong end of society.
I mean we’re going to need as many infantry battalions as possible if anything kicks off, so maybe strategic air defence going under the RAF (as per the Bloodhound days) is a sensible idea.
Where in the UK do you think the Russian’s will be landing soldiers for our light infantry battalions to counter?
If they’re not landing in the UK but Eastern Europe there are a shit tonne of light infantry battalions between us and them. Better we bring air power and missiles.
The idea for UK GBAD is to defend critical installation from long range missile attack. An integrated air defence consisting of radar, missiles, aircraft and command centres would fall better under the remit and control of the RAF. If UK based they could even partly man with reservists.
What do you mean ‘wrong end of society’ Jim? Is there a wrong end? Do you want well educated, competitive and determined officers? Or do you just want a class war? Do you want senior officers with an international network through their university, and military education or do you want senior officers who are well networked in their local gang? This kind of chip on the shoulder attitude doesn’t drive performance, it just drives resentment. You know what? Want to be an officer? Should have tried harder at school. I worked with plenty of very good, very effective officers. I… Read more »
I want well educated capable individuals. Sandhurst entrance qualifications are below most UK polytechnic universities.
Army officer corps tends to attract people long on bravery short on other skills.
I spent four years in OTC, I seen it for myself. Our best sofficers all started as enlisted. No one ever went from enlisted to general.
Jim, Infantry is at the core of the army. Just about every military operation requires Infantry and generally not in small numbers. It would be foolish for senior officers not to try to oppose politicians intent on cutting their numbers further. I cannot agree with your comments about the officer corps. You criticise all officers or rather the Direct Entry (DE) ie ‘Sandhurst officers’ judging them to be incompetent, recruited from ‘the wrong end of society’ and suggest they are under-educated. From your background as an OTC ‘officer cadet’ and then a TA officer (that terminology suggests you served over… Read more »
What happened in many cases is that some defence chiefs got seduced by the prospect of a lifetime, handsomely rewarded sinecure in the House of Lords and acted accordingly in agreeing to anything that advanced that prospect. So they became some of the most enthusiastic agents of Treasury mandated cuts.
Some of us have been pointing this out for decades!
Unfortunately it got put in the leave it to the Americans category so we can save cap badges because what Washington really wants is more infantry battalions in the Middle East.
Unfortunately our army leadership is s**t and the RAF don’t want GBAD.
Thank god the RN had enough sense to invest in something useful.
See my reply above – you have a tremendous chip on the shoulder over this…. The Army don’t want air defence beyond tactical air defence BECAUSE IT ISN’T THEIR JOB. It is not in the mission set given to the Army. It’s the RAF’s job.
Have you ever been an officer in the British Army? I have and I speak from experience.
As you make disparaging remarks about Sandhurst, it sounds as if you were an ex-ranker officer. Am I right?
no Just OTC and TA, Did the short course at Sandhurst, seen enough left not too long after that.
This seems like a pretty easy gap to fill especially given the MOD just found £500 million in annual savings and its budget is being increased, sky Sabre is already best in class and we already participate in Europes premiere missile defence systems via EuroSam. An off the shelf purchase of 6 SAMP/T batteries using the Leonardo Kronos radar and a doubling of sky Sabre batteries is all that’s needed. Medium to longer term just add in participation in Aster 30 NT blk 2 and job done.
Is there much information on how capable Sky Sabre is? As far as I know CAMM has only shot down a couple of Houthi drones so far, not exactly mind blowing stuff.
It has shot down a ballistic missile as Jim stated but the issue is it’s defended area against ballistic missiles is very small. The plan upgrades should bring it to a level similar to that of the Patriot system.
Where has Sky Sabre (CAMM) shot down a Ballistic missile? I think you are confused.
Defence Analysis did a piece on Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) recently, it suggested that many billions were required, it will not happen.
As stated by others IAMD has been absent for decades the view being no threat exited, or it could not be defended against other than via manned aircraft.
HMS Diamond shot down a short range ballistic missile over the Red Sea earlier this year. But that was with an Aster, not a CAMM.
Sky Sabre does not utilise the ASTER missile. Hence my original question.
From my rough calculations each battery can cover about 3000 square miles (about 32 mile range for the missile), so given the UK is about 94,000 square miles we would need about 30 batteries to cover the UK. In reality you mainly want to cover the coastline and major population centres so could be less. If we had a much longer range missile, closer to the radar range, then we would need less. Ultimately it comes down to a government spending the money on the infrastructure and the batteries to accomplish this. Either way a fixed installation is cheaper but… Read more »
There are 4 Batteries. Each of 2 Fire Groups.
Each FG reportedly has 3 Launchers.
GBAD needs to be in place for at least two dozen critical sites in the UK, and a handful abroad, the loss of which would paralyse UK defence.
And to add, these assets, in 16RA, are for the Field Army. They are NOT for the home defence of the UK.
Give more money to the RAF for expansion of the CRF to create GBAD Sqns.
If they can get away with half a Sky Sabre battery each that’s still over £1bn just for the hardware. If we add SAMP/T for wider coverage of cities and even SM-3s for long distance ballistic missiles, it would need some really political heavyweight lobbying to get the budget. £5bn I would think, if the current radars are sufficient and we don’t need to weave in more Wedgetails. None of the three services want to be cut to pay for GBAD.
Unfortunately the land area that an air defence missile system can defend against ballistic threats is substantially smaller than you obtain by drawing a circle of the nominal missile range (which is more applicable to slower air-breathing threats). Due to the very high reentry speed of ballistic missiles, engagement geometries etc
At least it’s been debated in Parliament. These lot are new, so let’s judge them on their actions. They deserve a chance.
We don’t need vitally important T45s, that we have far too few of, for this, we need land based missile sytems covering the whole UK. That is a GBAD, glaringly lacking for decades while HMG crossed fingers hoping nobody targets us.
We should be thinking of constructing air/missile raid shelters. But leave the T45s to escort task gropus & escort merchants, which is what they’re meant for. CIWS too for vital infrastructure.
Israel has Iron dome, we have open skies, absolutely nothing.
“gropus” should be groups. No edit any more?
Hate the new icons & format on comments.
An effective GBAD system for the UK was estimated earlier this year to cost £10Bn – do we see Reeves and HMT shelling out for that?? Not a chance!
Remember the black hole guys!!!!
Apparently we were bystanders in the latest onslaught by Iran against Israel as we were unable to engage the missiles they used. I am sure the Russian and Chinese versions will be a little more upmarket, so floating around anywhere, let alone the Thames isn’t going to be of much assistance.
Because it was ballistic missiles this time.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-confirms-typhoon-jets-didnt-intercept-iranian-missiles/
We’re more gap than not these days!
This MP clearly has doctorate in stating the bleeding obvious. There cannot be anyone in Government or the military that does not know that the UK is wide open to attack from the air. They live in a parallel universe where any European conflict would rage in Eastern Europe and we would just carry on as if nothing were happening. We have no civil defence structures, no homeland defence forces or technology and we just hope its Poland’s cities that get bombed and Lithuanias fields that get ploughed up and it will all stop and go away before it gets… Read more »
Sort of related, there is no article as yet where we can discuss the ongoing UAV violations over successive nights at RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Feltwell, and Fairford. It’s reported that the RAF Reg with its C UAS capability has been deployed.
George is busy getting wet on the south coast, so probably not had the time.
It’s interesting that they’ve all been USAF operated bases so far, considering the proximity of Marham to both Lakenheath and Mildenhall, could it potentially be more targeted towards the Americans?
Don’t forget a drone was also spotted sniffing around HMS Queen Elizabeth whilst in Germany.
That should have been shot down! Why let it get away?! Where’s the ECM to bring it down?
Evening Daniele, this all seems really slack letting any drones even anywhere close. No countermeasures or GBAD to prevent it and all at a top airbase! You’ve got to wonder where the intelligence gathered has gone too. Hope they can catch the culprits and seriously upgrade their security and everywhere else that’s important. It’s kind of funny but it really isn’t.
Talk talk talk no action ,the uk is wide open to missile attack ,no airborne early warning, scrapped before we have cover ,
this needs to be emergency funded by the government before it’s too late , we can’t let other countries protect us all the time…….
Well we have seen Rocks deployed this week to counter drones of unknown origin. Think, a simple drone could disable an F35 or anything. A lot of drones could wipe out a lot of aircraft in a very short time. Simple solution? Ban all civilian drones. As for missile defence? We have none of worth. So sites of importance, refineries, power facilities, gas terminals? All kaput within hours. Fact, politicians and most of Joe Public are ignorant. Until the lights go off and they here a few big bangs. Some of us have been stating the obvious for decades. We… Read more »
In 1994, Russia joined NATOs partnership for peace. In 1998. the SDR prioritized expeditionary capability so we committed to new carriers and F35. As recently as 2021, the Integrated Review mentioned Russia as the most significant threat to the UK but this was almost a throw away comment, lost in the waffle about global Britain and a tilt to the Pacific. There has to date been no serious consideration given to the weaknesses of Britain’s self defence capabilities. This is an abject failure on the part of useless politicians and their apparently equally useless senior military advisors. The result is… Read more »
“In 1998. the SDR prioritized expeditionary capability so we committed to new carriers and F35.”
Some nonsense still! You do say in your comment, that there are still threats further East and East of Suez, so expeditionary capability will probably be needed, certainly in the North Atlantic.
Really – who would guessed that our defences are poor. MOD/governments for the past 30yrs have been too focused on over seas operations. No consideration of home defence
See they are only concerned about defending London. What about the rest of us peasants in the grim north of the UK?
We need greater clarity on what is happening with ESSI particularly with respect to the U.K.
Germany the lead nation has placed orders for Arrow 3 for exoatmospheric interception, and NATO has placed an order for up to 1,000 Patriots (PAC-2) for long-range interception with European production being ramped up.
But otherwise there seems to be scant information available.
Where of/in the UK should we defend?
Just the important bit(s)?
The grand metropolis?
Deterrence works, if the threat is not nuclear, does the deterrence have to be?
Faslane
Lossimouth
London
Liverpool Leeds Manchester Sheffield conurbation.
Scottish central belt
Midlands
Portsmouth
Tyne and Tees valley
If you defended each of those 8 mega city regions and military installations then you blunt any offensive missile capability. In missile defence terms being small and dense like the UK is a bonus.
About 8 batteries would do it.
BMD technology is not quite there now but it will be soon.
You’ve missed quite a few MoD installations there that if negated cripple UK defence. I’d defend them before the suburban areas.
Well HMGs over years have took capability gaps , and fitted for but not with and now look were we are . All to save money ,regardless what was happening on the home front we always had very proud Armed forces which could hold there own and to be fair probably the best in Europe and now look were we are old kit ,not enough no GBAD what so ever and no manpower ,all about saving money and politicians not having eyes 👀 open honestly 🙄
I got a new MP at the last election and haven’t lobbied him yet. Time for a few emails. Ask him to at least turn up at the MPs Defence briefings.
Well to be fair when it comes to the IRBM with 4 MIRVs that Russia fired at Ukraine, there is very little able that could intercept it..you have SM3 or a GBI or Arrow 3 that’s it, Germany and a number of European allies are going for Arrow 3 and making a 3.5 billion dollar purchase of Arrow 3 from Israel for sky shield ..the UK is still sitting on the fence and are in discussions…but unless we are happy to leave our key infrastructure open to attack by conventional IRBMs..we don’t have many options… 1) GBIs are part of… Read more »
Three Flight IIA Burkes, one per two T45s I’d go for that. Even if it was a lend lease agreement. There would be several issues with going down the Burke route though, manpower is the first, then maintance. These are issues that can be overcome. One of the reasons for my thinking of the Royal Navy future AAW destroyer program. As much as I would like to see 9-12 T83s it will never happen due to cost. What I think is possible is 3-4 T83s with 96-112 Mk41 cells and 6-8 T46s an AAW T26 (remove CAAM cells replace with… Read more »
What a pickle we are in. Money for everything and everybody else besides the UK and its people. Wake up before its too late and it probably already is.
If they read ukdj more often they’ll definitely get a good idea of what should be done…..LOL! Why is it so difficult? Supposedly so expensive, well find cheaper options! Fresh air is no defence! Dont wait to be hit otherwise you’ll have less to hit back with! Shared Aster, CAMM, Starstreak, Martlet, even the 30mm, they’re all there already! Just need a bit more inventory of each and commitment to a GBAD strucure and more mobile Shorad. Truck, rail, barge, container based sysyems can all be explored. Hopefully the experts think the same and act on it, soon.
The only now missing piece is defence against IRBMs…aster cannot do that, for that we either buy US or Israeli.
There is no truly reliable system to intercept ICBM/IRBMs. The US has spent @$100b on GBAD. It is at best 50% effective in highly artificial tests. Until now, such missiles would have had nuclear warheads and the best counter to their use has been CASD. Non nuclear ballistic missiles may be more likely to be used but Russia has stated that any such attack on its territory would be assumed to be nuclear, and therefore lead to nuclear retaliation. One of the arguments used to justify Trident was that a ground based deterrent would have to fire on warning. So… Read more »
Cheap is in the eye of the beholder. Thruppence farthing is expensive to the Treasury. £10bn for a “one-off” GBAD procurement programme might be seen as cheap to defend an annual economy approaching £3 trillion.
When looking at the Air Defence UK issue I mentioned in a previous post that the UK needs in the region of 6-8 fire batteries, 4-6 launchers per battery of Aster 30 1NT and 10-12 fire battieries of CAAM-CAAM/ER-CAAM/MR mix. Each of the 4-6 launchers spread out over a five mile radius. This should give the UK a good all round ground based air defence out to 50-75 miles from the UK. The locations for the Aster Batteries would be Lossie, Faslane, Cornwall, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, Cumbria and Essex with two mobile Batteries based on the SAMP-T. Aster is an… Read more »
If you can’t figure which service, dump it on Stratcom. 😉 They’ll probably insist on a battery for Wyton, but it’ll stop infighting between the other services (to avoid the responsibility) and would be worth it.
Considering the money spent on infrastructure and whats there, Wyton would be on my list.
If the RAF Reg could not be expanded, then a tri ST Com org might be an idea.
Looks like you have spent the annual Defence Budget all in one go there.
Even were the monies (lots) and people (lots) available it would take a decades to do what is implied. Some of what is mentioned does not exist at present, beyond concept.
Aster NT are not adequate for BM’s missiles fired from Russia. You need bigger stuff. US or Israel
Yep for an IRBM you need either Arrow3 ( which the Germans are purchasing for the European shield), GBI which the us would never sell and nobody else could afford anyway or SM3 with an aegis system….that’s it no other options are out there..as GBIs are out it’s SM3 or arrow 3. Personally as we have a real problem with escort numbers and it’s better to have a mobile system we can deploy anyway, I would ask the US if we can order 3 burkes with SM3. It would cover the entire ballistic missile issue, move the escorts numbers up… Read more »
Not a bad idea i think.
Maybe we will see anti torpedo nets in ports again…
That was a lonnnng but good read Ron. GBAD systems being mobile should be deployable to wherever needed on a when needed basis. It’s just the sheer lack of equipment, msubeveven planning too, that considering the times wevin and potential risks of something coming over the proverbial fence or out of the proverbial pond are mind boggling stupid. Too much bloody talking, stating the obvious, why don’t those responsible get on and do something about it and pronto! It’s not a joke! Ukraine is not a joke! Modern warfare is not a joke! You want to get hit first? Are… Read more »
*maybe even lack of planning…
* maybe even lack of planning…
* times we’re in
Japan is building 2 20000 tn super Aegis ABM destroyers to deal with the ICBM from China and North Korea. Something the UK could do or have 4 at 10000 tn or larger. No one knows when the T83 is getting off the drawing board and the T45s are yet together their Aster upgrades. The T31 radars could get upgraded to maximise use of the MK41 loadout, something that could potentially get done sooner.
RAF needs to buy into the UK GBAD role. They need to integrate it with Radar and Command and Control. Their first priority should be to construct an environment that defends and makes resilient the air defence infrastructure itself and after that they should build out to protect targets of strategic value. The good news is that the UK isn’t a large country and coverage should overlap multiple potential targets. The fact that this is a fixed UK role means you could partially man it with reservists and save costs. I would leave running the missile defence systems to the… Read more »
How would you make ASCS more resilient?
Parts of it already are as legacy from the Cold War, so comms, some hardening, alternates, and so on.
But you’d not be able to make it fully resilient there will always be vulnerable points.
It was downgraded around 2005.
I worry we will end up like Finland, all spent on hime defence and no money for the teeth to take the fight elsewhere.
We must remain expeditionary through any home defence expansion.
Yes it’s better that as much of the air defence capability as possible is mobile…but.. In reality the missiles are always going to get through and you’re going to take a pounding, my worry is the UK is at preset far too fragile. We have little to no emergency surge capacity especially in medical care roles..our big problem is the NHS and military medical services effectively suck from the same breast, which is fine when your fighting a war half a world away but not fine your fighting a peer war on your doorstep with air attacks on your own… Read more »
On the AD side, it’s static, as you no doubt know. The RRH are fixed, moving them takes time. Only one radar unit is mobile. The C3 is fixed, at least hardened in areas. The dispersal of jets is basic and only seems to be practised in small scale to existing airfields, which we at least have quite a few of. My concern is a mass drone attack with our entire transport, ISTAR, MPA forces sat at 3 locations in neat rows in one corner of the airfield. The fast jets at least have HAS but even here I believe… Read more »
Yes the problem is when a new threat appears they don’t do the normal approach and go..well we need to add 4 billion to counter that threat, they simply go…we know we allocate xxx to manage this threat or risk but we now have to take xxx from that to manage the new threat, even though the old threat is still in existence…that’s one of the key drivers we see around cut capability…the accountants love it but it does not work in real life..if you have an extra child you don’t just buy the same amount of food and spread… Read more »
I agree if we go hot with Russia they would never hold back on mass infrastructure attacks and yes Russia would target hospitals , it’s done it in every conflict it’s been in since Putin took over.
In reality Russian doctrine on conflict is not far off china’s doctrine and that is one of political warfare having primacy and the core of successful political warfare is to make the enemy population suffer in every possible way you can.
Air and missile defence seems simple to me:
– Build a dozen extra batteries of Sky Sabre (at least 60 launch vehicles), and equip half of these with ABM-missiles.
– Build 60-80 additional Typhoons to stand up a total of 12 frontline squadrons
– Get the bloody skates on with designing and developing the Type 83 destroyers to replace the T45s, and order at least 10 of them!
Even half of all that and sooner than later would be great!
Not simple. You need missiles that only US and Israel have. See Jonathan posts above for a detailed explanation.
Front line troops still need shorad currently we have stormers although a great weapon system, the vehicle is terrible.
With warriors due to phase out for boxer and in the spirit of saving money we should keep them for air defence a prototype was made using hvm and a cannon link below, with a little investment to modernise the systems it would be a great solution
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DumHa2e3S/