The UK has confirmed that it has delivered 13 Raven air defence systems and two prototype Gravehawk systems to Ukraine, with further Gravehawk units due to arrive shortly, according to a written parliamentary answer issued on 6 January 2026.
Responding to a question from Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, the Ministry of Defence said the Raven systems are already in Ukrainian service. Minister for Veterans Al Carns stated that “13 RAVEN air-defence systems have now been provided to Ukraine, giving Ukrainian units the ability to rapidly defend themselves against Russian aerial threats.”
The system is designed to provide short-range protection against drones, aircraft and helicopters operating close to the front line.
Raven is a bespoke air defence solution developed specifically for Ukraine and funded by the UK. It adapts the RAF’s AIM-132 ASRAAM air-to-air missile for ground launch, providing a rapidly deployable capability against Russian drones, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, with a limited ability to engage cruise missiles. The system has been highlighted by the UK as an example of accelerated innovation driven by battlefield requirements.
The Ministry of Defence also confirmed progress on the Gravehawk programme. “Two prototype GRAVEHAWK air-defence systems have been delivered to Ukraine so far,” Carns said, adding that “of the additional 15 GRAVEHAWK systems on contract, the first batch will be delivered shortly.” Gravehawk is intended to strengthen the protection of critical infrastructure against Russia’s long-range strike campaign.
Gravehawk is a joint UK-Danish funded system that uses Ukraine’s existing R-73 (AA-11 Archer) air-to-air missiles in a ground-based role. While primarily focused on countering drones, it also offers defensive capability against aircraft and helicopters, and potentially cruise missiles. The use of an in-service Ukrainian missile is intended to simplify logistics and accelerate fielding.
‘Provided’ or sold? If the former what is the UK getting out of this?
The production line itself I’d assume, as well as testing data etc. Plus protecting Ukranian infrastructire and generally being a good ally.
It’s defending civilians from drone attacks, that’s a good enough reason for me.
👍
Where you been ?
Just lurking, there haven’t been many articles recently that aren’t either slow news or doom and gloom, I prefer to talk about new designs or concepts than mope about things that happened before I was born.
Oh, sounds like a dose of SAD, It happens this time of the year, mabe the DIP announcement will cheer you up !
Not sad as such, there’s just been nothing that has particularly interested me comments-wise and I have a lot else going on at the moment. I have nothing to contribute to shouting matches.
As for DIP, it depends a lot on what’s inside, hopefully there’s some good info and the contractors then come up with some nice new designs and concepts.
Lots of Earthquakes going on today, Pacific Rim In particular, It’s quite an Interesting thing to look at If you are bored 🤔 USGS.
Keeping Ukraine in the fight is vital to Europe, including the UK, especially given Trump’s recent actions and threats against Greenland / Denmark. These actions will likely embolden dictators like Putin. Not good news for Europe, more so as the US may well dump NATO…
CR
Ironically in 1941 it was in our interest to keep Russia in the game!
No. It was in our interest to keep the Soviet Union in the game, which included Ukraine.
The Soviet Union was Russia plus the extras.
The “Plus Extras” did a lot of heavy lifting and included Ukraine.
I know.
But they were not essential.
From what I remember most of Ukraine was lost at one point. Other “extras” totally.
We needed to keep the center of decision in the fight.
… uhm. No.
The “extras” absolutely where essential. The Ukrainians alone represented about a quarter of the Red Army, which included a lot of the best units in the Red Army.
Huge amounts of Soviet resources came from the “extras” as well, in fact a big reason Russia isn’t as formidable as the Soviet Union is that it lost access to the resources it had from places like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Had it been Russia vs the Third Reich, instead of the Soviet Union vs the Third Reich it’s very likely history would have gone in a very different direction.
Any of those extras could be done away with, some where.
Not Russia, the loss of either Leningrad or Moscow (especially) would have ended the Eastern Front.
Wrong again. Loss of Leningrad or Moscow wouldn’t have ended the Eastern Front, the Soviets came very close to loosing both and showed no signs of giving up because of it.
Loosing a quarter of the Red Army on the other hand would have had a much bigger impact.
And it isn’t about individual parts, it’s the fact that the Soviet Union was a different beast than Russia.
Also care to take a moment to explain why you are lying about the British Army not having Medics?
A battle proven system that could be quickly supplied to us ?
Quickly supplied to us, now there’s an optimist!!
I try😂
We are not the USA, we do not require a materiel return from this sort of work.
That said, the learning and skills developed in making this happen are priceless.
The obvious of course.
Well considering Ukraine probably has the most experienced and effective defence forces in Europe certainly in. Umbers I guess in this worrying insecure World where Europe is potentially under threat from all directions I would rather have them as a bulwark on our side than exploited to fill Russian ranks and a border in Central Europe especially once Moldova falls thereafter. Presently Britain would be in no state to be in their position while trying to defend Norway or Sweden or the Baltics even as bad as the Russians are. And you only need a smidgeon of geographical knowledge to understand the consequences if Norway was lost. Far too easy to be complacent.
Absolutely – no more free Christmas trees for Trafalgar square 😟
And no more from the Norway/UK Langeled pipeline which accounts for around a fifth of Britain’s peak gas demand.
One wonders if there is merit in the UK procuring an ASRAAM based surface to air capability. CAMMS amazing but a radar based missile must cost significantly more than one with an IR seeker
Having common stockpile with the Army and Airforce could also give large savings.
Hopefully this is being seriously considered in a somewhat upgraded form in terms of launcher capacity. We need as wide a range of options as possible, missile, gun, laser and RF based.
Yes I agree however it would also be great to see a single weapon that could be procured in vast numbers that can do everything from air to air to missile defence on warships and drone and cruise missile defence on land.
CAMM is almost that weapon but an active radar seeker is always going to be expensive.
Perhaps we should have a CAMM IR for ground launch then work on getting CAMM and CAMM MR integrated onto Typhoon as a cheaper alternative to Meteor, not as a replacement to meteor just something that could provide a bulked up magazine depth in the event of a major war.
Could I point you in the direction of Cambridge Aerospace? Their Starhammer is pitched as exactly what you are looking for, and with a radar seeker too.
CAMM is the missile we need, but we need to buy enough of them that the price comes down. IR seeker isn’t bad depending on the detection performance, but cold launch is extremely useful and SL-ASRAAM is a lot less convenient because of that.
I like the idea of air-launched equivalents of CAMM-ER and -MR. -ER is actually longer than Meteor, though it weighs less. CAMM-MR would be significantly larger, probably ~220kg and 4.5m which is bigger than the PL-15, it would be a very chonky AAM. Could be a very interesting weapon for Typhoon as a long range (140km?) BVR spam or Tempest making use of folding fins for a LOT of packing. MBDA would have to actually build one, though.
Thanks for the tip of Starhammer sounds like just what we are looking for but I suppose the question is can a small company really scale this type of project.
CAMM ER could very much become a cheaper alternative to meteor and I do also like the CAMM MR option, a bit like how the US are using SM6.
Starhammer and Skyhammer are Indeed Ideal answers to currently lacking capabilities yet this trend of conceptual optimization without firm orders Is reflective of current dithering from various Government departments.
But It’s certainly good to see we still have forward thinking people with critcal awareness, capable of forward vision.
They have a decent level of production, CA have a vast amount of private investment relative to their size (Grant Shapps is on the board) and so they can afford to build prototypes weekly for testing purposes alone. Their concept would be pretty useless without large scale production, too.
Neither of the CAMM derivatives would fit on the semi-recessed hardpoints unfortunately due to the strakes, so EF would lose that low-drag option of carriage. MR could still be a cheaper anti-HVAA option than Stratus RS though, and -ER would be a good short-BVR missile like the ‘halfRAAM’ concepts.
Shiny penny syndrome
How so?
It’s obvious that CAMM and other current interceptors are too complex and expensive to defend against cheap drones.
I think the DIP will commit to build a UK GBAD for selective sites based on Sky Sabre – sone of Chain Home.
Main issue is it’s extreme short range. The missile wasn’t designed to be launched from the ground. There are probably better options that can be purchased. For Ukraine it’s ideal as it’s missiles the west has in stock and that are reaching their shield life and they need things quickly. We can be more patient, just need to actually order something obviously.
At lower altitudes the weather really precludes IR most of the time.
Is preclude the right word?
Yes
In other news the press conference from the Paris meeting of the coalition of the willing – a US commitment to support for UK and French troops in Ukraine following a cease fire.
I can’t see Putin accepting a ceasefire until Ukraine, with allied help, defeats Russian forces ocupying the Donbass. So whatever is decided & agreed is just a waste until then. Wish it were otherwise. Donald is wasting huge amounts of UKR & NATO leaders time & effort chasing a peace deal when it would be more productive to be standing fully behind UKR demonstrating that we will never allow Putin to win. Neither Putin nor Trump/MAGA can ever be trusted to keep any ceasefire/treaty agreement.
Fair points. I’m hoping that what looks like increasing european resistance and solidarity will have its effect on both Trump and Putin. This meeting puts the ball back in their court. I read that Russian losses are now greater than recruitment. Also interesting that Trump is switching his focus to Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba – throwing out Russian and Chinese influence. I think we have changed his view on Putin.
I don’t think so. I think Trump is just seeing Putin in a Molotov Ribbentrop lens. Mentally drawing lines on the map and going “South America is my playground, Russia gets Europe, China gets Africa.”
Starmer Grandstanding again acting the major power with France over troops in Ukraine.
Normally, I’d agree, the UK is somebody and should play a major role in world affairs.
But the Army are probably doing their usual “can do” act and Starmer himself is no doubt clueless about the state of the military, yet happy to make grand statements.
Agreed. I rolled my eyes so hard I could see out the back of my head reading that headline on BBC
The Russians are now using horses in Ukraine.
We are a major power and we need to start a acting like won because we have a man who is sending soldiers into battle on horses acting like he is a superpower and people in the USA and other parts of the world are buying it.
The days of being understated are over. We need to act accordingly.
We also need to stop making s**t up about how be our forces are and whinging about every little thing because it all plays into Putin, Xi and MAGA’s narrative.
Beware the 4 horsemen ! 👀👀👀👀
Be the Britain that russian state media thinks you are?
Unfortunately Jim we are still not only understated but also now grossly underarmed. We are, however, afflicted by a political class who despite this current predicament still talk as if we have a credible conventional military deterrent, which we don’t. Despite the warning signs of US disengagement from Europe for a number of years and active Russian aggression we and and our European allies have now been found out.
The U.K. has allowed its military capability and supporting industrial capacity to shrink to such an extent in the last 25 years that we are now faced with rebuilding our military infrastructure and industrial base before we can realistically consider increasing the size of the armed forces ie. The sharp end.
The degradation of our training bases, accommodation, maintenance facilities, airfields and dockyard infrastructure is largely hidden from view but when you take a 25 year holiday from investing in these things then I can tell you that it is noticeable and has a huge impact on our ability to regenerate and maintain our forces because it takes very significant sums to address these issues, which would otherwise be spent on actual war fighting equipment and the personnel to use it.
We have started to address these issues but it is going to take another 5 to 10 years before we really start to see the results. Going forward I don’t see the urgency from the current Government in the funding uplift that is required to allow us to rebuild our conventional deterrent that combined with our eNATO and Canadian allies would break the over dependence on the US that has in part created the current crisis we face.
As for Russian cavalry I don’t think anyone is particularly worried about them but sadly the same lunatic who puts men on horseback in the 21st century also has his fingers on the worlds largest nuclear arsenal.
Strange and dangerous times.
We do not have proper field medics.
It would be interesting to see how many NHS staff volunteer for this.
Well that’s just an outright lie.
Yes, I’m scratching my head at that one.
RAMS even introduced a new trade of late, forget it’s title.
What is a proper field medic, and how do they differ to those in 1,2,4,and 16 Regiments RAMS?
Listening to Starmer at press conference was interesting. Basically he said the military plans were already done and today’s meeting was about political agreement – getting the US on board. Fair dos, he’s done a good job. UK and French ‘hubs’. Logistics perhaps.
Ukraine with their current capability is broadly holding off Russia. Add a reasonable deployment from UK and France and Russia would be on the retreat. It’s not like any peace force would be acting in isolation from Ukraine. For sure Russia will rebuild but so will Ukraine.
At the Paris meeting Starmer was talking about a network of UK and French hubs; training and logistics? Also said the UK will take part in US cease fire monitoring; intel collection? The US will provide air defence – Patriots I guess. I don’t see UK or French troops in front line combat roles. These hubs sound like a good idea – would help with reassurance – sort of sanctuaries.
I agree, no matter who else is in this the Ukraine army will be providing the bulk of the man power just like South Korea.
Given how effective Ukraines army is it won’t take much weather support to be decisive. As soon s the war ends Russias “army” will instantaneously begin to atrophy. Its economy will continue to crumble and it won’t be able to procure equipment to replace losses. Just like in kore the west will win the peace.
Ukraine may end up with the biggest and best arms industry in the world
Main risk that crosses my mind is that once peace is achieved, the west loses interest in helping Ukraine after a period of time, leaving Russia rearming faster. If the west keeps up it’s support it can achieve a lasting peace.
You can’t blame Stamer for the current state of the army Danielle that is down to 14yrs of Tory Rule Cameron should be in prison for cuts to the military he made , but I will say Stamer has done Fk all in expanding the army ranks which needs to happen quickly.
I did not say I “blame” Starmer for the state of the Army. I blame him for HMGs NEVER ENDING need to Grandstand with forces that are so small, are close to breaking point, and probably never say “no” to ignorant politicians who don’t know any better.
We want to be someone on the world stage, as befits our G7, P5, UNSC, 6th biggest economy status? Good, so do I.
That means spending more money and starting to expand the military, not just talking. As you say, very little is happening.
I find HMGs never ending need to grandstand without backing it up utterly nauseating.
Yes I agree with that our politicians do not seem to grab the urgency we need 30.000 troop increase now and its not hard as loads of commonwealth nations want to join UKDJ had a article a couple months back that there were 250.000 applications wanting to join.
No.
Blair and Brown.
The blame for the Tories is that they did not fix it.
But the Tories kept on cutting.
!!!!!!
That is what I said.
DM,
Precisely on point. Sir Keith, et al., may not properly comprehend the full dimensions of an open-ended security guarantee commitment to UKR. Gradual growth of MoD budget to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, for direct military related investment, may prove sufficient for UK rearmament process. Additionaliy, simultaneously underwriting UKR defence, even w/ ENATO participation? Open question of perhaps existential importance. Assessment to achieve a political consensus should include participation by all viable UK political parties, because this may metaphorically rise to the level of betting the farm on the outcome. 🤔🤞
Now if we could only buy our Army some GBAD!
Huh, we have an Army ? 🤔👀
Allegedly, although apparently 1/3 of it is on light duties or so I read.
Well if the shit hit the fan being on ‘light duties’ will hold no sway whatsoever!
The Army has GBAD to be fair, just not much.
Ironically, it is an area where things are happening, albeit slowly.
Can not equip our own army but fund Ukraines hopefully its a test bed for future ideas that we can use, i am not against arming Ukraine to defend its self just our Army is a mess
Hi Martin , your spot on I think most people support Ukraine but not at the expense of our own Army . Does Starmer know what state our Armed forces are in ?
The alternative to funding Ukraine’s army is to fight the Russians ourselves.
no its not, what utter rubbish,
He could not care and only see’s what he wants, there is no problem because those around him tell him its all fine. And if he did now its real state he would simply say not my fault blame the last lot. The Army is in shambles and it would take 5/10 years to fix it even if we had the money. We gave too much to Ukraine and likely can not afford to replace it
Its all about looking big on the world stage and thats it, ruin our army for head lines and sound bites, who ever in military agreed to it was showing piss poor leadership and likely will end up in house of lords.
Can they Raven system be upgraded to 3-4 missiles if not on a Supacat another vehicle like Boxer or on any MANN trucks?
Can the GraveHawk system also handle the ASRAAM or CAMM and even be upgraded to handle 4 or 6+ missiles within its 20′ or 40′ container? As its containerised its got a possibility for being put on ships, rail cars, back of a truck and part of GBAD setup
Are you thinking along the lines of Himars or Patriot container type reloads.