The UK has announced a £600 million package of air-defence support for Ukraine, including automated counter-drone turrets and additional missile systems, as Russia continues to target energy infrastructure through the winter.
The Ministry of Defence said more than 1,000 UK-built air-defence missiles have already been delivered to Ukraine since June, marking the largest single-year British investment in air defence for Kyiv. The latest package includes new systems designed to counter Shahed-type one-way attack drones, alongside further deliveries of British-developed air-defence platforms.
Among the capabilities being transferred are remotely operated counter-drone turrets, acquired from Estonia, which are intended to provide a lower-cost way of defeating large numbers of attack drones. These systems are expected to be delivered in 2026 and form part of Ukraine’s longer-term defensive posture. The UK is also handing over five RAVEN air-defence systems announced earlier this year, while the first GRAVEHAWK systems, revealed in January, are now entering service to help protect critical infrastructure from deep-strike missile attacks.
The announcement coincided with a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, co-chaired by Defence Secretary John Healey and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. The virtual meeting brought together representatives from around 50 nations, including NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, to assess Ukraine’s military requirements for 2026 and coordinate future equipment deliveries.
In addition to complete systems, the UK has delivered more than 250,000 rounds of air-defence ammunition in 2025, alongside a final tranche of 650 Lightweight Multirole Missiles, which ministers say are already playing a key role in countering drones and cruise missiles.
Defence Secretary John Healey said the package was critical as Ukraine defends its towns, cities and energy networks, adding that Britain’s support is intended to put Ukraine “in the strongest possible position to secure peace”. He also pointed to the recently announced UK-Ukraine “Octopus” initiative, which will see interceptor drones manufactured in Britain for use on the front line, offering a cheaper alternative to traditional air-defence missiles.
Terrahawk paladin as well.
So British industry has the skills for GBAD.
It is good to see British emergency innovation is still as flourishing as usual. Just a shame it tends to take an emergency for it to flourish, rather than stymied by Committees and lack of investment.
Defence Industrial Plan (how) derived from Strategic Defence Review (what) is imminent so more likely to be coherent and relevant than usual Committee outputs.
Limited peace time spending on the military and then Wallace and Gromiting your way out of the s**t in war time is the British way of war.
The Germans never figured out that it was all those garden sheds they needed to take out.
😀
Any underwater drones?
As an island nation with a very long maritime tradition you would have thought we would be at the very forefront of maritime drone developement and implementation, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
M Subs in Plymouth is a world leader in XL UUV’s
Probably and classified seems likely.
Off topic, the DIP is now promised “after January 5, 2026.” So sometime next year.
Apparently, getting the Treasury to agree the cost is proving an issue. Who’d have thought.
Funny what they can find money for though isn’t it?
Aint it just! Potentially £8 billion over the next decade on Erasmus so students can lounge around in Milan instead of Manchester. Priority no doubt.
No £8billion for EU students to lounge around Manchester. Double the number of students come in this direction than the other for the obvious reason of the universality of English as a second language.
Urgh. Anyone remember when they were going to be the department of transparency?
It’s proof of the need for Transformation to All-Of-Government that the Strategic Defence Review proposes.
Director of Defence Equipment has his or her work cut out..
Do you have anything that confirms the treasury role, my understanding is the headline budget is set.
Clearly the Treasury wants to see value for money and know that the MoD is not wasting the biggest peace time uplift in its budget since the 30’s which is their role.
The MoD does not have a great track record.
Couple of newspaper reports. Maybe as you say it’s the value for money thing. Or maybe the Treasury are putting pressure on the MOD to finally decide on Ajax before they give the nod. There’s been a number of answers to Parliamentary questions this week implying that a decision is immanent.
Great pun – Immanent…..present as natural and permanent 😂
You’re very kind, but I’m afraid it was just a typo. Unless the predictive spelling on my phone knows something I don’t!
Yup the decision to continue or replace Ajax is going to have a major impact on what can be spent on other things.
They should have the 90 remaining operational Challenger tanks; there isn’t even an armored brigade left. They’re better off in Ukraine.
What’s 20th and 12th BCT then?
BCTs aren’t full brigades as I understand it.
I think you are making an assumption too far there, that we have a spare 90 challey 2 in any state that would allow for them to be gifted.
can find monney and kit for Ukraine but not our own army, says it all
No, these are separate funding commitments that don’t overlap. Only the FSB seeks to promote that talking point in the hope of undermining support for Ukraine.
The invaders will be defeated 🔥
Slava Ukrainia 🇺🇦
Heroyam Slava 💙💛
#StrongerTogether
#vpdfo #FDJT
Look, the UK army has been hollowed out to help Ukraine which is in stalemate on the battle field. Yes we had to help but its gone too far we putting up tax’s to fund your war while ruining our own defence.
Absolutely not. Personally i’d rather these systems were out there killing the enemy now rather than sitting idle in UK.
whos enemy? Ukraines or ours? not my enemy just a nation that not friendly to us.
You don’t count a nation that used a deadly nerve agent in this country that killed a UK citizen (and could have killed many more) on UK soil an enemy?
No, how many of our soldiers were killed in Irag by EFP supplied by Iran? is Iran classed as an enemy? How many of our soldiers we killed in NI by weapons funded by Americains?. How many people have bee killed by muslim hot heads in the UK, yet we do not class the middle east as one whole enemy. How many terrorist were harboured in Ireland after killing members of the SF? Do we class Ireland as an enemy?.
How may die from drugs? do go to war with south America?.
• No it hasn’t.
• It’s not a stalemate.
• Taxes aren’t going up to fund Ukraine.
Perhaps you should stop reading Kremlin funded propaganda.
deluded,
Thats a poor excuse, as you probably wouldn’t be deluded if you didn’t read the disinformation in the first place. 🤷🏻♂️
Not really. What is the biggest and realistically only threat to the UK, it’s Russia. That money is directly going to systematically destroying Russia’s military equipment and capability. There is an arguement to giving Ukraine our whole defence budget and let them wipe out the Russian military and in turn making the UK far safer.
Look, the UK army has been hollowed out to help Ukraine which is in stalemate on the battle field. Yes we had to help but its gone too far we putting up tax’s to fund your war while ruining our own defence. What idiot things ruining one to help the other is wise? There is no argument to giving Ukraine our money when struggle to defend our own country should it be attacked.
Sorry you are deluded, help Ukraine yes, rob our own Army to do it, madness.
Yes Ukraine is in stalemate but as part of that Russia is sending endless meat waves at Ukraine and losing hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment. Neither of which is it cable of rebuilding in a very long time.
Agreed. And a real war is the ultimate test bed for our kit.
In reply to Martin, look at things as if Ukraine is the UK’s eastern border. Better to fight a war there than wait for an attack at home.
we made an enemy of Russia no good will come of that and we weakened our own defence what will Ukraine do if we were attacked?
Martin, you are a lone voice crying in the wilderness-a veritable John the Baptist perhaps. Alcohol Anonymous teach the serenity prayer to recovering alcoholics.
‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference’.
The first problem is to identify who is addicted to what.
What ever, we go around helping every one, who ever helps us. Robbing our Army for others is the idea of fool. At some point we have replace what we gifted. Or do just let our Army muddle on with out dated crap and do with stuff? then what? just hope peace lasts for ever? Defence has to be a deterrant to stop a war in the first place.
Your limited command of English is slipping, comrade.
Oh no stop crying just because some does not back giving every thing to Ukraine and then never replacing it, Only an idiot would be fine with our Army run down and un able to deploy and the mess its in.
The Ukrainr war is stalemate, Russia will not attack Nato show me where that story comes from? NATO out guns Ruissa in every thing less Nukes.
Some on here have no concept of reality its attack, insult, if some disagrees with you, now thats very Ruissain. We gave too much to Ukraine its harmed our own defence.
You should really try a different Russian to English translator, as your current one is really failing with hilarious spelling and grammatical errors.
Pretty sure Russia was already an enemy after deploying Novichok around Salisbury and Polonium in Chelsea.
Unfortunate that we don’t seem to be putting the same level of effort into providing offensive systems, without which Ukraine is always on the back foot, unable to effectively destroy the lines of communication and supply chains that Russia relies on to attack them.
Really! There are plenty of reports and videos out there explaining Russian logistics and strategic assets getting clobbered by Ukraine s own domestically produced missiles,even partisan groups are active in Crimea and Russia itself.
And we (Europe) are now doing exactly what I hoped we were doing, mass producing subcomponents fire Ukrainian developed weapons.
And at the forefront is Flamingo, we’re producing energetics and sourcing and refurbishing motors (I think, obviously information is not super easy to acquire)
So rather than focusing only on building Storm Shadow, we’re going to make it so Russia gets _buried_ in cheap guided missiles!
Russia slowly taking land is irrelevant when they suffer an internal collapse!
And oh can I not wait.
Like many (MANY) Britons I’m descended for a Ukrainian (and English and Polish) family, many fled here (to Scotland in fact, I think it reminds them of home) from Soviet conquered nations before the wall went up. I no longer have any family there or in Poland (I can thank Adolf and Josef for that) but it’s still an ancient home for us and being British, of course, nothing gives me greater pleasure than watching Russia get burned for it’s actions.
The two long range submersible explosive drone subs were particularly spectacular, taking out those Kilo class subs they use to launch Kalibrs
Shame they didn’t send a dozen and sink the entire fleet, as they were all moored up and undefended.
I guess they just didn’t want to risk a dozen of their latest design in case there were lots of torpedo nets up and they lose them all captured.
Most hardware supplied to Ukraine is for defence purposes almost one step up from being sitting ducks. Attacking Russia should be more on the agenda. There is evidence Russian targets are being hit but not near enough. I believe it will go to the wire then someones ass will go. You see Trump is mentally unstable and can be dangerous but Putin is more mentally unstable they are both seconds away from being sectioned. Its a dangerous situ to be in two meglomaniac psychopaths deciding we live or die.
The ruzzian Refinery Bingo Board shows that attacks on ruzzian hydrocarbon infrastructure continues to increase in severity and frequency with output down by 40% by some estimates.
That has been so effective that firstly oil export terminals Novarosoya, Ula Lug have been destroyed and secondly the shadow fleet vessels have been made unserviceable usually while empty.
Thus insurance costs are 300% to before, crews are very reluctant and owners unwilling to loose their ships.
The terrorist state is losing money with each barrel costing more to extract and transport than it can be sold for. Since there’s no safe storage, they must sell at a loss, mindful that stopping extraction will result in clogged Wells and Pipes that cannot be brought back to service economically if at all. New drilling requires western competence that’s not available to a sanctioned country.
The sovereign wealth fund is already 70% depleted and ruzzian banks insolvent following the instruction to fund failed business borrowing. Private savers continue to withdraw their savings making it worse.
Economic collapse is imminent.
Meanwhile the British military holding out a bowl asking “Please sir, may I have some more?”
If they didn’t keep pissing it up the wall on things that don’t work, then maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to beg…
Helping Ukraine fight back against Russia’s invasion is the correct policy response for the UK.
As it is for every country that values peace.
Agreed.
We’ve spent centuries learning how to fight but for all the wrong reasons.
We got rich and powerful off the backs of others.
The last we can do is put that knowledge gained, the knowledge to f**t s**t up, to good use and support freedom and democracy arrive the world.
Especially as America has abdicated it’s position at the top.
The UK got rich and powerful off the back of the Industrial Revolution, which we invented.
The UK has fought for many things in recent centuries, such as the defeat of Revolutionary France, and Napoleonic France, the Second German Reich, and Third German Reich, the ending of the slave trade, the protection of Canadians, Koreans, Falkland Islanders and Kuwaitis.
Some of those wars may make more sense from current perspectives than others, but they certainly weren’t for all the wrong reasons.
‘The Ministry of Defence said more than 1,000 UK-built air-defence missiles have already been delivered to Ukraine since June, marking the largest single-year British investment in air defence for Kyiv. The latest package includes new systems designed to counter Shahed-type one-way attack drones, alongside further deliveries of British-developed air-defence platforms’.
Great news! Now how about providing even just the bare minimum GBAD for the UK homeland.
Hasn’t ACM Richard Knighton recently said the UK is developing its own ‘Iron Dome’. Yesterdays Daily Express + other reports
Thats my point we give so much but forget about our own defence, its gone a bit too far and its a stupid policy leaving us un defended almost.
Any chance of us having some of this kit plz MR Starmer ? I’ll get my coat 🤗