The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the United Kingdom continues to lead work on NATO’s Delivering Integrated Air and Missile Operational Networked Defences (DIAMOND) initiative, aimed at strengthening allied coordination in surface-based air and missile defence.
In a written response to Ben Obese-Jecty MP, Defence Minister Luke Pollard stated that since the signing of the DIAMOND Letter of Intent in autumn 2024, “the UK has led work with the participating nations to agree the focus of the initiative.”
He added that “to complement related NATO-led activity, such as the Modular Ground Based Air Defence High Visibility Project, DIAMOND will consider procedural solutions to enable Day ‘Zero’ air defence integration and interoperability amongst NATO Allied forces.”
Pollard said the initiative seeks to “draw on and deepen our long existing partnerships with allies and industry to improve the Surface Based Integrated Air and Missile Defence of Europe.”
He confirmed that at the beginning of October, the UK met with participating nations and “agreed plans to explore the development of joint synthetic exercise opportunities and a shared understanding of command and control links.” The workshops are scheduled to take place before the end of 2025.
Responding to a related question about the UK’s capability contribution, Pollard repeated that the country has taken a leading role in shaping the programme’s priorities and in coordinating planning among participating nations. He said that the DIAMOND framework will ensure that “NATO Allies can achieve procedural and operational integration on Day Zero, drawing on our existing industrial partnerships and shared defence architecture.”
The DIAMOND initiative was launched following the 2024 Letter of Intent signed by participating NATO members. It is intended to strengthen cooperation across Europe’s air and missile defence systems by developing interoperable standards, shared data networks, and common operational procedures.
U.K. leads the way on yet another project !
Yes, if you want someone to set parameters and protocols then we are the right nation.
If you want an actual missile to shoot some thing down then not so much 😀
As always seems to be the case Jim.
Does this mean our committees are better than everyone else’s? Fantastic news that we lead the World in something, hopefully it’s exportable.
Oh wow another fancy prodject but no orders. World leader in talking, holding meetings and using lots of words while doing NOTHING. The MOD has not ordered any thing major new for the Army in 15 months apart from spares and paper clips, had a lot of focus groups though. So a defence review and incress in spending is for what? me thinks window dressing, and sound bites. As aways smoke and mirrors and defelection. A sad sad, state of affears where half and truth and deception are all there is to show.
It’s the only form of Govt that seems to be operating effectively let’s be honest, how to spend an awful lot of time achieving nothing.
Very good at making nothing look like they are doing something, our Army is shambles and all we get is words.
The increase in UK defence spending will not be on assets above and beyond what is planned, but mostly on facilities and housing. There have been numerous announcements about improvements for the RN and RAF bases, plus the establishment of new committees and organisations, but nothing about strengthening the British Army with new equipment. Sadly, apart from 12 F-35As, nothing else appears to be on the horizon, apart from talking about new kit, which is what the Treasury planned all along. The budget in November will attempt to support the new defence initiatives, but use the poor economic circumstances for further deferrals in new equipment orders.
The F35As were not new money.
The next tranche of F35B was already funded under the last government so the move to A is actually a cut!
SB, it’s worse than I thought!
SB is right. Just shuffling the type from B to A to save money, potentially hamstringing the Carrier Air Group ( Less B overall vs more available for tasking not used for training? ), and giving Starmer something to Grandstand about in Paris, with zero real substance behind it apart from the headlines they knew the A would receive.
The whole point of the exercise….
As supportive and Daniele said the f35A order was essentially a stealth cut..buying the slightly cheaper version of an already planned and announced order.. a cheaper version that cannot be used on the carriers and essentially removes the possibility of the OCU becoming an in extremis extra f35b squadron for the carrier battle group.. essentially If the whole bucket of shit hit the fan and the Uk had to go all out it could have put ( in the future ) 3 front line F35b squadrons and the OCU onto its carriers.. essentially allowing for both carriers to have an air wing if the stars aligned or pushing an extra squadron for an overloaded airwing on one Carrier, the Elizabeth’s first captain was on record saying the carrier could carry up to 70 aircraft… or just 12 more aircraft to regenerate the air wing if it’s suffered significant combat losses over a long period of time.
A very very shorted sighted saving of a few quid.. or the RAF brass playing politics, because they don’t want their fast jet budget paying for fighters to go on RN carriers, when they could have proper fighters on nice airfields.
“when they could have proper fighters on nice airfields.”
Which brings me on to another fav gripe, posters saying our Carriers are white elephants that are sitting ducks and undefended.
Carrier. Moves.
Airfield. Cannot.
Carrier. AA Guns, CIWS, ESM.
Airfield. Nothing.
Carrier. Escorts, with CAMM, Sea Viper.
Airfield. Nothing.
Carrier. Hard to target if lost in ocean and targeting kill chain negated.
Airfield. Sits there waiting to get hit.
The QEC are ACTULLY the best defended airfields we posses.
Maybe the critics would prefer we closed all the RAFs airfields as well?
It’s because of this bizarre notion that people have that ships are both easy to find and track if they don’t want to be found or tracked. Plus a complete lack of understanding that it’s easy as hell to get a kill chain and fire an effector at a fixed geographic point but hard as hell to get and keep a kill china on something on hidden in millions of square kilometres of ocean and travelling at 30mph in random directions..
I always here the argument that a carrier has no use in the air defence of the nation..my response is that if Russia has plastered all the airfields with ballistic and cruise missiles.. then having 3 squadrons of 5th generation fighters hidden in the high north ready to ambush any long range Russian strike aircraft is just what you want.
Isn’t it Germany? And is already deploying missile defense…
So lots of chats, meetings, tea and biscuits, deeper understandings, CGI presentations, but absolutely no orders of anything.
Bingo.
This explains the great increase in the price of tea and biscuits, a direct correlation to the increase in the number of committees I am sure.
Time to Get my Coat 🙄
Can we give a round of applause to the MoD acronym generator team for ‘DIAMOND’. Take the rest of the day off chaps!
I do wonder if the UK is “leading” this because it’s the nation that actually has a bit of chance of not falling out.. it seems to the US and our EU friends.. would much rather knock lumps out of them.. I can so the UK spending a lot of time in the future sat in the middle being facilitator.