The Conservatives will announce plans to build a £10bn British “Iron Dome” similar to Israel’s air and missile defence system, which the party will christen “Britannia Shield” in an announcement at conference on Tuesday. The shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, will say Britain needs to be ready to defend itself from potential aerial attacks and that new investment was needed in advanced radar and interceptor missiles. Claiming it was “one of Britain’s most significant military programmes since the cold war”, he will say it is one that was “totally necessary because of the threats we face”.
Britain’s military has traditionally believed it does not need to purchase Iron Dome-style air defence systems given other spending priorities and the fact that the UK has not faced drone and missile strikes as has Israel or Ukraine. Military officials argue that the UK’s strategy is based around deterring any attack or a full-blown war with nuclear weapons and that any conflict that involved a direct threat to the British homeland would almost certainly involve Nato allies assisting. The UK does not own any Patriot air defence systems, and in an acute crisis would have to rely on Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers to protect coastal areas, but the circumstances in which expensive air defence would be needed in the UK are very remote.
The Conservatives will say the new system would be funded out of the defence uplift from their commitment last month to increase defence spending by more than £10bn a year to reach 3% of GDP by 2030. Cartlidge will say in his speech that the aim would be to deliver a minimum deployable capability within the first five years, with further improvements, expanded capability and missile stockpiles delivered over the following five years. The party will argue that the UK is being left behind in Europe when it comes to investment in air defences, which was criticised in a report from the defence select committee last November.
The government has currently committed about £790m for integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) in the Defence Investment Plan. Cartlidge will say that the British version of the Iron Dome will have new advanced radar systems to detect threats, a new command and control system and a new stockpile of missiles and counter-drone capabilities. That would in practice be a fundamentally different model to the Israeli Iron Dome system, which protects a country a twelfth of the size of Great Britain and is primarily designed to counter short-range threats like rockets and artillery, with other defence systems that counter longer-range missiles.
Other European countries, including Germany, Greece, Cyprus and Poland, are investing significantly in air defence systems, though the UK is under limited direct threat from ongoing conflicts, unlike some of those nations. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said that Labour were “failing that basic test” of keeping the country safe. The chancellor, John Healey – who previously quit as Keir Starmer’s defence secretary over the limitations of his defence settlement – is now unlikely to set out when the UK will meet the target of spending 3% of GDP on defence until next year’s spending review.
War has returned to Europe. Missiles and drones are transforming warfare in the Middle East. Cheap weapons can now threaten cities, military bases and critical infrastructure in ways that would have sounded like science fiction a generation ago,” Badenoch said, announcing the air defence investment.
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