Hundreds of UK-built air defence missiles have been delivered to Ukraine five months ahead of schedule, according to the Ministry of Defence.
The news came as Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard led a major UK trade delegation to Kyiv aimed at strengthening industrial partnerships and support for Ukraine’s defence sector.
The missiles, produced by Thales in Belfast, form part of the UK’s gifting programme and are used by Ukrainian forces to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks.
Their early delivery is part of a wider £1.6 billion agreement between Thales and Ukrainian partners, which will see the Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) integrated more deeply into Ukraine’s air defence network. According to the company, ongoing manufacturing in Northern Ireland is directly creating 200 new jobs and sustaining a further 700 across the supply chain.
“The UK is stepping up our ironclad commitment to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s illegal invasion,” Pollard was quoted as saying in the release. “Driving industrial partnerships is essential so that we can learn from their expertise and together build the industrial base we need to defend the UK, deter our adversaries and support Ukraine.”
The minister’s visit coincided with Ukraine’s International Defence Industry Conference, which drew hundreds of businesses from NATO and allied nations. The event showcased expanding industrial cooperation, with over 30 joint ventures already established between UK and Ukrainian firms. Kevin Craven, CEO of ADS, said the trade mission underscored the need to “increase production capacity, develop innovative new capabilities, and build a resilient industrial ecosystem.”
The partnership has already prompted Ukraine’s largest drone producer, UKRSpec Systems, to announce a £200 million investment in new facilities in the UK, expected to create 500 high-skilled jobs. The collaboration builds on Programme LYRA, a technology-sharing initiative that includes the joint development of interceptor drones under Project OCTOPUS. These systems, according to the government, are designed to provide Ukraine with a low-cost counter to Russian one-way attack drones.
The trade mission forms part of the UK–Ukraine 100 Year Partnership, under which UK Defence Exports has launched a new guide for small and medium-sized firms on how to collaborate with Ukraine’s defence sector.
This is good news in terms of building up industrial capacity . The US DoD has recently announced a $35 billion multi year contract for advanced munitions with a request to industry for delivery before end 2027. Why such a close time frame? China. It is now though highly likely there will be a high intensity conflict begun by China against the US and it’s allies in the western Pacific region as a prelude to Taiwan invasion.
Pity our beloved government can’t seem to get it’s head around the concept of an urgent need to rearm.
Morning Mr Bell, good to see you again. Re your rearming comment, if they can be 5 months early on these for Ukraine why can’t they be 5 months early on some defence stuff for the UK? Where’s the LMM-Starstreak for Shorad/GBAD? Any ER versions? Maybe CA will get a gig with its Skyhammer/Starhammer. Where’s Ancilia, Dragonfire, more NSM, mk41s for T31s, even a few more T31s for more presence?
Indeed. It seems we are in a bizarre denial phase of our history. Blindly ignoring the deteriorating international security situation all the while politicians sprout a load of tripe about preparedness, investment etc whilst the reality remains a hollowed out and depleted military unable to maintain a high intensity war for more than a few weeks.
We are British, we have made a tradition of not doing anything until it is too late.
“China. It is now though highly likely there will be a high intensity conflict begun by China against the US” This is thought by the current US regime and its Department of War who might choose a conflict to detract from their own internal issues that will be in full effect by 2027. This should frighten anyone who thinks Hegseth and co are fit to lead even a Boy Scouts outfit.
No mate. My point is Pres Xi has already committed China to retaking Taiwan before the end of 2027. That is a fact.
China is also aware a preemptive strike against nation states in the Western Pacific to degrade the allied response is their best chance of not being repulsed in their invasion and their plans to push out beyond the first and second island chains and to break out into the wider Pacific and Indian Oceans.
What’s not so evident is the military hardware and power to stop them, especially if Russia undertakes a spoiling and distracting actions against European NATO.
Cut has committed China to being capable of taking Taiwan by 2027.
That’s not the same as committing to do it.
I wonder what the effect would be on world trade (particularly from China) if this happened. Does anyone think this could deter China from attacking Taiwan? Would the west fight against China as this would have massive implications for our economies if trade stopped.
If you are drinking from the the same bottle as Hegseth then apparently all is well.
With china it’s interesting because it’s a communist country and how it works with its population.. no surprised mission based 5 plans.. you can set your watches to what they will do… China is going to invade Taiwan but it’s not going to do it a day before it’s planned for and told everyone. In the 14th 5 year plan Xia essentially told everyone to be ready for war by 2027.. so we know he’s not not kicking it off next year. The next five year plan is 2026-2030.. and the one after that will be 2031-35.. I personally think we will see one of these two five year plans give a good indication in which one it’s going to invade Taiwan.
Now you have to remember what chinas goal is.. it is no the defeat of the west and downfall of the U.S.. it actually has little interest in that, china likes order at its heart and these are not international communists committed to the spread of communism across the world.. they are nationalist communists, they don’t give two shits of the U.S. and Europe is capitalist or communism. Their only interest is china, the purity of Han china ( and Han is a culture not a race to the Chinese), but above everything the fundamental core of their beliefs system is the reunification of china and the final conclusion of its civil war.. this must happen. China must be whole and must be china no matter what, even if that is to the complete suffering and rebuilding of the world order.
But that is all china really wants, reunification and to be recognised as a peer power. If it takes a kinetic war with the west that lasts years in that last resort china will do that. But first it’s going to use every political warfare domain available to win without a fight… china believes first and Foremost that kinetic war is simply an adjunct to all domains of political warfare and the greatest victory is that which requires no battle. That is why it’s achieved maritime dominance, why it’s building the largest navy in the world, why it’s essentially taken over production of all the worlds rare earth elements.. 30% of the worlds manufacturing.. why it’s explicitly telling the west unless it reunifies there will be war and in the last resort it will go to war.. it’s why it openly practices blowing the crap out of mock ups of US western pacific bases and why it’s giving us a timeframe… but at the same time being highly secretive over a lot of its capabilities… it’s essentially playing an anti deterrent game.. not “if there is a war this will happen”…but an “ if this does not happen there will be a war”…but for a number of core reasons around what Xia wants, communism party mythos and geostrategic power balance I think by 2035 china will unit or there will be a world war.
Now apart from the Chinese view that you alway use huge levels of political warfare before a kinetic campaign why I think the early 2030s is now probably more logical than 2027..
The US has an almost catastrophic failure in its major surface combatant building programmes and SSN building programmes.. which when linked to the LA SSN crisis and Ticonderoga crisis will mean a collapse in USN surface fleet numbers and SSN numbers around about 2030. At present build rates we are likely to see the USN SSN fleet drop to 43 at around 2030 and 60-70 major surface combatants ( excluding carriers).
although china is pretty confident it can gain sea control and beat the USN in the strait of Taiwan and to an extent in the china seas, it has little confidence that it can compete around the second island chain and to be completely sure beating Tawain into submission it really needs to be able to force the USN out to the second island chain and keep them there for a time… now it knows it has a huge ballistic and cruise missile Sunday punch that will undoubtedly knock the everliving out of the USN and force them day one back to the second island chain..but it wants to be able to take the fight out into the pacific and strangle the Indian Ocean to stop the USN concentrating.. because it will take every carrier group the USN has to fight the PLAN in the china seas around Taiwan.
Because of this china has essentially built 2 navies, region navy of around 50 4000-3000 ton frigates, 80 1500 ton corvettes and 60 electric boats. And then it’s blue water navy 12-16 14,000 heavy destroyers/cruisers, 50 ish 75000 ton AAW destroyers and a new set of 5500 ton ASW frigates, as well as 5 40,000-50,000 drone carriers and flat top amphibious vessels. But what it is yet to fully complete is the core of its blue water capability it’s CATOBAR super carriers and it’s peer SSNs.. and I don’t think China is going to war without these.. it will want to push as carrier battle group into the deep pacific and and one into the deep Indian Ocean… it will want a decent fleet of cruise missile carrying SSNs in the deep pacific and Indian Ocean..even the threat of them in the Atlantic and high north. It will want its amphibious and drone carriers threatening action against more exposed U.S. bases.. essentially it will want to make it impossible for the USN to concentrate its carrier forces to relieve Taiwan and once it’s got Tawain in a grip it’s essentially all over bare the years of suffering WW3 and who gives up first ( hint the Chinese CPP will only give up Taiwan when every cold dead hand of the PLA is pealed off it and its population eats its last cup of rice, don’t think the U.S. will have the same commitment ).
So Carriers:
Type 1-2 I suspect these will essentially be used as disposable chase me down CBGs to keep the USN CABGs engaged or to act as second carrier in the main PLAN carrier Battle groups.
type 3.. this has now fully tested its catapults and deck launched and recovered all elements of its airwing intial operational capability is probably the end of the year or beginning of 2026.. I would expect to see a full Chinese CATOBAR group in the Indian Ocean by 2027.
Type 4.. evidence is this is now being built.. probably elements have been seen in yards.. specifically the waist catapults have been spotted and it’s going to be 2 on the waist for a 4 catapult carrier ( the type 3 is a 3 catapult carrier ) estimates are it will be ready for early 2030s this will give china two peer carrier battle groups and 2 inferior carrier battle groups as well as 5-6 drone carrying amphibious flat tops.
That will be enough to keep the US CBGs in the high seas.
Re there SSN forces for decades Chinese SSNs were a complete joke. It was more of a national pride issue than a serious capability and at one point its thought they almost decided to get out the game.. but in the mid 2010s they pushed on and launched the Type 93A now you can’t really call this a cogent class as essentially each has differing technologies.. they trialled better tiles, better rafting, pump jet propulsion, towed arrays etc on these platforms as well as a trial platform for vertical silos…all the while the they were unable to get past power density issues with their reactors meaning all are noisy ( two reactors..double the noise)..they had 4 bays for building SSNS and SSBNs and essentially was able to produce one SSN or SSBN every 15 months or so ( supporting a fleet of 12 nuclear boats between 2002 and 2015 it launched 2 type 93, 4 type 93A and 4 type 94 SSBNs )…..
Now we get to the late 2010s and something changes.. suddenly they build a massive SSN SSBN mega factory.. with a 12 SSSN bays, 4 SSBN bays added to the 4..all connected by rails to a support factory complex in which they also have a tiling and painting bay an factory large module assembly area with five sections for large assemblies ( reactor sections etc) as its next to the 2 bay reactor fuelling facility and a five section small assembly area. This facility has slips to build 16 SSNs and 4 SSBNs concurrently.. and have one in the tiling yard and Modules being build in two seprate assembly halls.. estimated it can probably thrown out 4-6 a year at full rate production. Now china which once it gets going never does anything half arsed is halfway through building another final assemble hall so that’s probably another 12 SSN slips for possibly 32 slips.. once that is done the estimates move up to 8 nuclear submarine launches a year… with 28 SSNs laid down in one go…. You can see where this is going and why China is not going to war until this facility has done its job..
So that’s production what about the product.. since 2022-23 china has launched probably 6-8 Type 93Bs with an estimated 12-16 laid down ( as they had 16 SSN slips free). The type 93B is the culmination of of all the effort over a decade to develop pump jet propulsion, good tiles and rafting.. silos for long range cruise missiles.. the DOD assessed the type 93B as “The improved Type 093B, in contrast, used advances in Chinese metallurgy and reactor design to make a quieter submarine. US assessments place its stealthiness between that of the USN Los Angeles Flight I and the Flight III SSNs.” So the PLAN are going to have in the next few years probably up to 12 of these LA equivalent SSNs.. that means the 30 odd USN SSNs will need to hunt and kill these as they are a direct risk beyond the 2nd island chain..
But we know china has now likely or in the near future up to 28 SSN slips and the T93B production was a one off run it is believed.. and that is because it was still a dual reactor design.. now to get a duel reactor SSN that is as good as an LA is scary when you consider the leap the other quiteing tec must have taken.. so unfortunately for world peace Russia at the end of the last decade gave china 2 designs for maritime nuclear reactors with the power density to drive an SSN with one reactor (150mw ).. so it’s consider very likely that as it launched off its first type 93B is started laying down the type 95 a single reactor SSN.. most view this SSN as likely to be the equivalent or close peer to current generation western SSNs (astute or Virginia) so at some point close to before and after 2030 it’s likely china will not only have 12 LA equivalent SSNs but at a rate of 6ish a year dump out up to 28 western peer T95 SSNs..
So it’s my belief in a worst realistic case by say 2034 that will be when it’s dumped out it’s 12 type 93Bs and up to 28 type 95s it will have a peer force of SSNs to match the US. It will have 2 full super carriers with fifth generation air wings, two more limited carriers, probably around 6-8 40-60 ton amphibious flat tops as drone carriers , it will also have completed its production of 16 055 ( 14,000 ton cruisers) 60 odd high end modern 7500 ton AAW destroyers, about 20 new 6000 ton frigates.. backed up by 60 modern 3000-4000 ton frigates and 80 corvettes.. with a maritime construction industry 260times the size of the US..it’s complete domination of worldwide rare earth supply and its twice as large as the US general manufacturing base and at that point it will simply look the US in the face and say we are taking Taiwan, make a move and see where it gets you…and i believe at that point the US will know it has little options left and will either go have your stupid island and see if we care.. or fight a war that it’s got a fair chance of losing and even if it wins would leave it in the Same place as the British empire in 1945.. victorious but utterly an completely broken..pray to exploitation by the next power along ( EU, India etc)….
Interesting analysis Mr. Jonathan. Well reasoned
someone drank too much of the kool-aid
Oohhh that’s very good well reasoned response… when you know nothing say nothing..
Quite.
Your posts are often long. This one is maybe the biggest yet!
A lot of effort went into that, thank you.
I’ll need to read it in stages!
A a sino US war is one of my favourite risk analysis subjects..sometimes you can never put a good risk manger down😂😂😂 even when they have retired.. I think one of the most telling risk red flags is the SSN/SSBN mega factory at Bohai Shipyard, it’s an insane level of investment.. essentially in 20 years china will have gone from essentially almost giving up on SSNs to having a facility that will be able probably lay down and build 32 peer nuclear submarines at the Same time… outbuilding the entire western world by a significant margin… estimated up to 8 a year vs about 3 a year for the whole west even after all the wests new shipyard investment…. There can be only one explanation for that and only one target.
Maybe time for Tellers Sundial ?
I’m digging my hole in the ground ready…
Talking of buckets of sunshine.. there is speculation the China has built 8 SSBN slips not 4 and nothing has yet come out of these ( the present Jin class were all laid down and built in the older bays and are as noisy as a1980s Russian SSBN).. I would therefore lay money they will be building type 96 SSBNs.. quiet single reactor SSBNs.. the DOD thinks they will have two of these operational by 2030 with the rest probably coming on line at 1-2 a year.. for me the final pieces on the board will be 8 type 96 SSBNs as China will have its minimum 2 boat CASD untouchable second strike capability.. at which point even the nuttiest potential president could not think the US could somehow succeed in a snap counter force strike..
Dig deep J, very deep and grab all the tins of Spam you can, looks like we are heading back to the Cold War but this time, “On a Hand Cart”.
Do you know about Teller’s Project ? It’s a very Interesting subject (I’m sure you do though).
I only know it was a true doomsday bomb, a mega nuclear weapon in the giganton range.. designed to kill a county in one blast and then end the rest of humanity by starvation…. Even the people who believed in the need to build the hydrogen bomb thought teller had a crew lose…. It shows humanity has at least an ounce of self preservation left…😬
Didn’t the Vikings buy up all the wondeful spam?
The SNN build rate is extraordinary, and we take a decade with 1.
No wonder HMG don’t give a job, we cannot match that and it looks like the west is beaten already by it’s end of history capitalist nonsense.
The problem really is people simply don’t what to see what china is…I’m a student of history, politics, human beings and risk in complex systems, so I look at other things than many people. Most people focus on things like operational experience or their view of what china was in the past. I focus on what won wars historically and chinas systems ( political, economic and industrial) its behaviours and likely future risks of it fulfilling the requirements that win wars.
I honestly think the west has completely lost perspective and forgotten how to win in the conflict of nations… for some reason we become obsessed with the idea that a campaign wins a war..the idea of the first day of the war…when history time and time again tells us the only day that matters is the last day of the war..and that is almost inevitably years after the first day. History also tells us a few other truths,
1) political will is the single most important factor..if the leaders are not resolved and the people don’t back the leaders 100% the nation losses.( Afghanistan is the most obvious modern example)
2) Naval power can only be maintained by maritime power..no matter the size of a naval power it will loss to the greater maritime power ( ww1 Germany tried to become and sustain naval power without maritime power).
3) land powers inevitably get strangled and loss to maritime powers as their industry and economy get destroyed so impacting on political will and production. ( Napoleonic wars, WW1, WW2, Cold War)
4) production.. the nation that out produces wins ( WW2).
5) tyranny of distance.. you need a close friendly population that will support you with will.
Now these 5 interplay in complex ways.. maritime power lessens the tyranny of distance.. it can destroy or support production.. production can and does impact on political will ( if you have no food you have no will).
Now how good your military is, how experienced, your technology edge etc are all irrelevant against those five factors especially against when you measure against history and who wins in the end.. the better military can chase its enemy across half a continent, dominate every campaign, crush armies, but in the end if it the four factors above come into play it still losses..Napoleon lost to maritime power, the German empire lost to maritime power and production, the Japanese empire lost to maritime power, the third Reich lost to maritime power and production, Russia in Afghanistan lost to will, the U.S. in Vietnam lost to political will, Argentina lost to maritime power in 82, the US lost in Afghanistan to political will…. Most also had an element of the tyranny of distant
When you set the risks to the west in a future war with china in those terms.. you start to see why a risk manager who studies politics and history would come to the conclusion the U.S. is in big trouble.
Your item 1 resonates with me concerning the immigration battles we have here and my own view there.
So many people physically living in this nation have no loyalty to it. Only themselves and their own “community”
Not the community of the nation as a whole, the cultural nationalism that I support.
And we import more every year.
They’ll support the “leaders” in a future war? Right…..
Some will, of course, those who adopt and integrate.
By the looks of things we’ve already lost. “We” as in western hegemony.
Quite depressing.
Yes more than anything else I think people underestimate the “political will” element of warfare.. and the Chinese are utterly dominated by it, it guides their every thought on warfare. Xi has two guiding principles on warfare that he has taken to heart
1 )the Maoist concept of the protracted war. In this war is not a swift campaign to be won or lost by a couple of carrier battle groups or divisions of marines.. it’s a profound struggle of cultures in which a nation uses every resource..political, economic, industrial and finally military.. the attacks being years before before any army is mobilised, you attack a nations very foundations.. it belief in the fight, it’s belief in itself..you spilt it into factions that hate each other and cannot agree to even disagree…( 20 years ago 80% of US voters would support the decision of their president on principle no matter who they voted for.. now no Republican or democratic voter would support any decision of a president they did not vote for on principle)..you create the political war organisations to attack it constantly ( China has two political warfare services that have 3 million personnel..every military officer is taught political warfare) at the same time you strengthen your own nation, creating a singular story a singular belief ( china has a communist party of 100million people, every child is conditioned to believe in the destiny of china and the CCP) .you create the international security to manage any strain during the war.. ( china has 5 million internal security troops and 1 cctv for every 2-3 people..700million cameras all connected in one network)…you train your population to suffer and make sure they understand the implications, china managed to kill 20 million of its population by starvation in a social experiment and the population went “ fair enough try harder next time”, they regularly have whole province exercises in which a population has a wartime mobilisation, their government has informed them to be ready for war and prepare for suffering..its pointed out the level of suffering in the past and told the population that’s the baseline.. anyone that makes a peep gets “re-educated”.. for context Xi himself as a young man suffered as his parents were arrested, his sister topped herself due to the stress of being on the streets, he was turned into a serf, ran away and was re-educated the hard way…. What broken western democratic system is going to out “Will” that.
2) maritime power.Xi is a very very clever man, he looked at what was the key characteristics of the powers that won history.. ( the British empire and the U.S.) and it’s easy really Maritime power.. if you control the ships that carry the good and the harbours those good are moved to you naturally take control of all the raw materials, you can then use this to power your industrial might.. which you focus on your maritime power..which brings you greater and greater control of markets and raw materials.. all the while your maritime power also powers your naval power.. essentially meaning as long as your will does not break you will essentially alway win…and maritime power is a numbers game.. it’s number of ports your control, number of merchants ships you operate, number of ships you can build, the raw materials and goods you can exploit via the maritime environment.. the number of warships this then empowers you to build… and technology edge and expertise then all come out of this.. there was a meta analysis of the major 27 naval wars across history and the key factor in 25 of those was numbers.. they pointed out the RN specifically.. it actually had generally poorer ships.. but it has the numbers.. those numbers allowed it to control the wider picture and also practice its doctrine.. Nelson and his navy excelled in strategic, doctrine and expertise because it was big… it won because it was big and everywhere. China is now without question the dominant maritime power, it has over 50% of the worlds ship building capacity, its ports land and move ha huge percentage of the worlds goods, a vast amount of the worlds raw materials are carried on Chinese ships into Chinese ports, it has an interest on over 100 major international ports including ports in Europe, America and the UK, it makes 97-98% of all shipping containers, has the biggest merchant marine..it has in numbers the largest navy and will soon have the largest navy in tonnage.. it launches the equivalent tonnage of the RN every 18 months to 2 year…. many people in the west no longer even understand the difference between naval power and maritime power and why naval power will fade if you don’t maintain maritime power and how naval power will grow if you develop maritime power..
Unless the west suddenly wakes up and smells the coffee, develops a full on maritime and mercantile programme as well as secures itself against political warfare..it’s screwed and had better come to terms with china being the dominant power or being willing to suffer profoundly.
And divest ourselves of massive over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing.
They still need more. Hearing on the news that the Kyiv energy infrastructure has been heavily targeted. Really disgusting behaviour. Keep on sending 🇬🇧 and less publicising of it all. 🇺🇦 needs every single missile! Hope Ukraine is able to withstand further Russian gains in its territory and can somehow push them all back onto their side of the fence and lock the gate!
We’ve ordered a total of 5,650 for Ukraine as far I know from public announcements. The “hundreds” mentioned above I suspect is just one of the initial batches.
The UK has ordered at least one batch of 1,000 missiles for UK forces. Not sure if any follow on orders have been placed.
The £350m deal with India will be for thousands of missiles (no specific number was given as far as I could tell). One of the recent deals implied a cost per missile of £250k, but that sounds high as the total likely includes integration and training costs. Unit cost is surely significantly lower for this short-range low-tech missile.
Hopefully the UK places a significant order soon before the queue/backlog gets too long.
The latest estimate of orc gains in the last 1000 days is approx 1%of Ukrainian land with horrendous casualties and Ukraine is pushing back in the North,they have also started to target orc power stations as well although technically this is a war crime but it doesn’t seem to bother pootin so what’s good for one etc!
Ukraine has also targeted Russian energy infrastructure. In January 2025, there was a Ukrainian drone strike against a Russian nuclear power station in Smolensk. Similar attacks are ongoing against Russia oil refineries and plants, leading to massive shortages of fuel across eastern Russia and Crimea.
I’d be careful about calling Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian infrastructure ‘disgusting’ whilst simultaneously advocating for more weapons for Ukraine.
I’ll add (just in case) that I do of course support Ukraine’s defence efforts against the expansionist Russians. But that’s not an excuse for hypocrisy.
We need to produce (flood the market with) Vodka, launch millions of “Shots” at the front lines and Job’s a goodun.
Hic.
If we bottle up 100% volume surgical spirits as vodka then provide it free to the Russian armed forces they will all be dead, blind or in hospital by next spring.. jobs a good one.. the first ever example of war by alcohol.. ironically appropriate when your talking about Britain and Russia.
I’d seen a documentary concerning this issue in Russia.
It is massive, many drink themselves to death using what’s available, even if not real Vodka.
I believe Field Marshal Von Kleist commented that the USSR could only be defeated from within, and that the Nazi brutality and racial theories were only aligning the peasants with Stalin and the motherland, himself as bad as Hitler.
So, grey zone retaliation?
Well nothing wrong with grey zone and political warfare.. we were actually very good at it once, but come the end of history decided it was a dirty word.
I’d say behind the lines mate. Undermine from within.
Well done to everyone at Thales in Belfast.
Slava Ukraini
Yet anything we need for our own forces runs well behind schedule! It’s a conspiracy! A conspiracy I tell you 🤣
LMM seems to have hit a sweet spot in the defence against Shahed drones.
Agreed, seems to have a really wide target set- which is great. Cheap enough to engage even smaller drones than Shaheds (not quite down to FPVs, but still), and performance enough to hit all the way up to helicopters, plus surface targets.
We’ll be doing ourselves a disservice if we’re not sorting out RWS mounts for these that can go on anything from Mastiff, to Patria, to Boxer, to (dare I say it) and Ajax variant, to our RN surface combatants.
What launcher are the Ukrainians using? I read the army have tested Javelin on the RS4 for Boxer. Agree LMM looks a great asset for light infantry, patrol vehicles and APCs. The RN seem to be on the case. Their Wildcat helo can carry up to 20 Martlet.
Honestly, I’m not sure. I know they got some Stormer, but no idea how many are left. I also know they got the man portable ones, that I think can also be fixed to open vehicles like LR and pickups.
But I don’t know what RWS they use, probably all sorts depending on what’s been donated.
Yes, I think RS4 is what we’re getting on Boxer, and presumably will be standardised across our fleet on any of the new Patria and suchlike. It can mount javelin, and I’ve read some sites say it can even take 30 mm cannon- probably the same one as Apache which has a shorter case length (less power, probably less armour penetration on their AP round). Only issue I can see with it for LMM is that it may not be able to point the tube up high enough for a decent launch against aerial targets, if that makes sense?
agreed. guided rockets have been given a new lease on life as drone counters (ie fixed wing propeller powered category), because using missiles in this role is a short lived exercise (cost and production rate)
The LMM seems to be a pretty significant capability.. surface and air targets.. up to 20 on a wild cat sized rotor..
I honestly dont know why the army does not kit out it’s wildcat force to take the missile as well.
Same mindset which we discussed on another thread.
“World leading” and no money given to do it anyway by HMG are examples.
All well and good, but UK priorities seem to be arming others and not ourselves. I know our stocks of everything are low. Lets hope Vlad is just teasing Nato.
The stronger Ukraine is, the bigger the advantage NATO has is. Every Russian aircraft, drone or tank destroyed by Ukraine is one that can’t attack NATO. Short range air defence systems aren’t that important to UK security, being an island.
“During the war Rodney”
Well in the Second world war, the Soviets moved production far to the East (as in East of Russia) and started to build masses of equipment to replace all the losses and then some.
I see reports that Russia Is doing the same now.
yes Russia has already done that, which is why Ukraine developped the Flamingo drone that can deliver 1 ton warhead at up to 3,000km. (it looks similar to a WW2 V1 flying bomb)
A mere drop in the Ocean though.
In reality Putin will only go after NATO when he’s finished with Ukraine and regenerated his forces.. so the fact we have massively upped our production of this missile means we can suddenly give our forces a tone as soon as the. uKriane war ends.
This kind of virtue signalling swaggering would have sent Churchill into a rage in WW2. Why gift the Slavs free intelligence? Let them work for the intell like the Chinese, even if the latter do seem to have been given immunity by Comrade Starmer and his legal chums.
🥱
Totally agree ,why tell the world everything? It should be commonsense to do these things under the table.
What? Can you say that in a way that I can understand it!
Everyone has a valid point in their respective views & I agree for the most part, but I don’t think a few hundred jobs are driving our economy!
If you are drinking from the the same bottle as Hegseth then apparently all is well.
I think China’s achilles heel is its poor asw capabilities. If the USN is smart, it will sortie large numbers of SSNs to the western Pacific and Indian Ocean if conflict breaks out. 20 attack subs (probably the maximum number that could be sent out at once) could really put a dent in the Chinese surface fleet and could shut down the tanker traffic sailing to China through its key strategic lines of communication in the Indian Ocean. This tactic would keep the US surface fleet safe from the long-range carrier-killing missiles China possesses. The Chinese fleet would have nothing to shoot at, and would quickly be degraded in capabilities.
Of course, the weakness of my plan is that it would not prevent Taiwan from being captured. That’s why all efforts should be made to equip Taiwan with shore-based anti-ship missiles in large enough numbers to saturate Chinese air defences. My plan preserves the bulk of US surface assets for counter-strike missions. The fleet can also be deployed to defend Guam, Australia, and contribute to the interdiction of maritime traffic in the Indian Ocean.
I think the best chance of avoiding a long and bloody war is to adopt a plan like this which would degrade China’s assets far more rapidly than those of the US and its allies.