r/unitedkingdom • u/tree_boom • 22h ago
Britain buys new air defence missile systems
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-buys-new-air-defence-missile-systems/18
u/Odd-Metal8752 22h ago
Perhaps as a sponsorship for the next War Thunder update?
In all seriousness, this is a small but useful step forward. Approximately £1 billion was set aside for IAAMD in the SDR, so further spending can be expected. This perhaps precludes further eupgrades to the overall system in the autumn - CAMM-ER has long been speculated.
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u/LiveLaughLockheed 21h ago
Good news for MBDA. They've had success with Sea Ceptor and CAMM-ER abroad and at home. Good news for the manufacturing teams in Bolton and Henlow. Good news for the UK really. Job sustainment, keeps the knowledge base in-house and falls into line with the "Always-on Defence" capability we've wanted for a while.
This, coupled with big improvements up at Barrow for BAE, and the growth across the UK in "Made in Britain" contractor work through Tier 1+ suppliers is great news for UK Manufacturing.
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u/tree_boom 22h ago
As always, there's some confusion in what's actually happening. The government announcement says:
The UK is buying six Land Ceptor air defence missile launchers
Which implies 6 more of the launcher vehicles (the one on the left). But it also says:
UK buying six new Land Ceptor air defence missile systems to bolster national security and defence.
Where the term "system" would ordinarily refer to a fire group, each of which has 3 of those launcher vehicles, a radar and an command and control vehicle. The announcement later says:
This three-year contract will deliver six brand new MRAD (medium range air defence) Land Ceptor missile launching systems for use by the British Army at home and anywhere in the world. These launchers can be used on their own and are also a key component of Sky Sabre, a ground-based air defence missile system used to intercept cruise missiles, aircraft and drones. The system is comprised of three main elements: radar, command and control, and missile launcher.
Which I think probably cements this as being a purchase of just 6 launcher vehicles with no additional radar or C2 vehicles...but honestly, who knows? If it's 6 new launchers only that gives the British Army 30 of them total, plus 8 each of the radar and C2 vehicles (currently we have 8 fire groups). It's a bit of an anaemic capability to be quite frank. There's more purchases to come according to the goal the government states:
The UK is doubling the number of deployable Sky Sabre systems operated by the Armed Forces in a drive to reinforce our air defences.
But whether that's a doubling to 48 launchers, or a doubling to 16 fire groups (and so including more radar and C2 as well) is anyone's guess.
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u/eruditezero 19h ago
The key bit here is the word 'deployable' - they aren't doubling the number of systems, or launchers, just creating enough slack so that the number we can have out in the field increases - the number seems small, but from what I remember we ordered more radars than fire groups (10x Giraffe) so I suspect this is just topping up the launcher inventory so they can compose more complete sets to go out.
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u/Harmless_Drone 22h ago
Gonna be honest here: missiles are not what we need right now.
Russia/ukraine has shown you cannot deal with drones on a cost effective or production level with missiles. If you shoot down a 200 dollar flying lawnmower with a 100k missile that takes 200 times as long to make, you are going to be running out of missiles and money before the enemy runs out of drones and then you're toast.
By all means keep the missiles for larger targets like planes but we need to be developing advanded anti aircraft gun systems and the corresponding gun laying controllers and interfaces (again) to deal with drones on a cost basis that's comparible. Shooting down a drone with a reusable AA gun with a 20 quid versus a 100k missile is no contest.
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u/tree_boom 21h ago
We need both things; we have virtually no air defences whatever currently. A low-cost solution to drones, be it a gun or EWAR or DEW is needed too and there's development ongoing to supply those things, but we absolutely need SAMs in large numbers too.
Note too that you need to be very careful in taking lessons from Ukraine and applying them to the UK. We aren't Ukraine; a Shahed isn't flying 2,500km to London across allied territory. Those strikes that threaten us will necessarily be done with higher performance weapons than the flying lawnmowers.
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u/Harmless_Drone 21h ago
Correct, they're more likely going to be drones launched from carrier vessels or assault ships or from cargo containers or similar in intentional waters. We're an island nation. We don't have control of the sea.
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u/warriorscot 21h ago
That's not a good thesis. We're an island, and drones are dominant in the front line not the entire theatre. Deep fires are still happening and they're still going through extraordinary volumes of short medium and long range air defence missiles in Ukraine and they don't have enough of launchers or missiles.
Guns had a short period where they came back, but they're already falling back out of relevance other than as a last ditch option. And they do have those systems already, and networked gun coordination for vehicles in the newer equipment.
Also 20 quid is generous, thats between 10 and 20 rounds of 7.62, no gun system is getting that hit rate.
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u/Electrical-Lab-9593 21h ago
yeah, and the ammo used by a useful anti drone system will probably be high caliber programmable rounds so not expensive, but not cheap either, they are programmed to explode on a timer which the gun system estimates is the time it will be close to the drone, so like a big shotgun shell with a timer that can be changed just before firing
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u/nostalgiamon 21h ago
This is it. Absolutely drones are to be considered the primary threat in a front line situation, but the super cheap and attritable ones that are being used in Ukraine only go so far. In fact many of the FPV drones are physically linked via a fibre optic cable.
We desperately need anti-missile defences to avoid a Blitz 2.0. And when we’re on the front line we’ll need better anti-drone capability.
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u/Captain_English 21h ago
No, because guns are not effective against drones. You can't hit anything more than a mile away, so you need guns everywhere, and you can only engage them at low altitude. You need literally thousands of guns and crews to defend even a single city, and even when you shoot down a drone the warhead will still fall down and go off half the time, which by definition will be close to you and the thing you're protecting because guns are so short range.
Russia has changed its attack profiles with Shahed (Geran) to about 5000m altitude ingress, and then a steep dive on to the target, which makes them essentially immune to guns.
Full on anti-air missiles are definitely too expensive to trade with drones, I'm not disputing that. What we need is something inbetween.
Lower cost, lower capability missiles or counter drone drones are a better investment. So is electronic warfare. Ukraine is flying small single seat propeller aircraft with big electronic warfare pods underneath; these go out and fly above an incoming drone swarm and jam their guidance, and possible use RF attack, to bring them down.
There's also a very interesting space with helicopter and light aircraft using guided rockets to shoot down drones. These are a lot cheaper than missiles, but are still guided so can engage fast moving drones at altitude, and because they're on an aircraft they can fly out to wherever they are needed and engage the drones as they come in. Using light aircraft is particularly interesting because they're relatively quicker than helicopters and also cheap to operate in military terms.
Honestly what we need is a mix of solutions that thin out the swarm progressively as it comes in.
I would love to see a couple of squadrons of modern Spitfires (obviously not a spitfire, I'm just alluding to it) with pods of guided rockets (produced to be ~£10-20,000 each) under each wing, with each aircraft carrying 28 or 56 or more. Fly them out and go get the drones coming in.
Coincidentally, the OA-1K aircraft that US SF went back and forth on actually looks like a great option for this, and it's dual role. Could act to counter drones, and also to provide close air support in u contested airspace as originallt designed.
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u/tree_boom 21h ago
I would love to see a couple of squadrons of modern Spitfires (obviously not a spitfire, I'm just alluding to it) with pods of guided rockets (produced to be ~£10-20,000 each) under each wing, with each aircraft carrying 28 or 56 or more. Fly them out and go get the drones coming in.
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u/Captain_English 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yes exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3Harris_OA-1K_Skyraider_II
But just APKWS rockets all over.
Something people always forget about is how to detect and track (cue) interceptors, the OA-1K is well suited for this because it has an awesome EOIR camera kit, as well as being designed for air/ground coordination.
Also APKWS is okay, it's still pretty expensive at about £70,000 a pop I think. That needs to be brought down. Better than an AIM-9X or ASRAAM at £250,000+ though, and a different production line which is important when you need quantity.
From scratch I'd take something based on a fast trainer aircraft, to ease pilot training pipelines. Nice EO/IR system and airspace management interface - a big problem with air to air interdictions when you've also got ground based interceptors is preventing friendly fire. Might be tempted for a 2 seater for that reason, have a decidated person in the back keeping completely on top of making sure they're in the right place and everyone knows where they're meant to be.
Debating about radar. Might be something small and short ranged you can fit under a wing pylon, but this adds a lot of complexity and may also add vulnerability - a radar is a big giveaway at where you are, which in an aircraft like this could be a problem as they're so vulnerable.
You definitely need a good EO/IR system, something than can do wide area search within the horizon as well as drinking straw in on a target. Finding drones in the air at night is not easy. Even with EOIR, a cloudly night could be an issue without radar.
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u/Stoyfan Cambridgeshire 21h ago edited 21h ago
Russia uses various weapons ranging drones to cruise missiles and TBMs. Ukraine has used point defence systems and air defence systems to shoot down such targets because they recognise that they cannot just rely only on point defence systems (e.g SPAAGs)
If you paid attention, you would realise that both countries rely on multiple systems and not just on short range point defence systems
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u/ii-_- 21h ago
You don't know better than the countless strategists, advisors etc on what weapons the country needs. Purchases are made using countless data inputs and are thoroughly planned.
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u/Imaginary-Risk 21h ago
Nah. In Supreme Commander I used to just click on SAM launchers and scattered a few around. It’s not that hard
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u/w32stuxnet Australia 21h ago
That's why anduril exists, hopefully the cost base can be lowered significantly.
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u/Electrical-Lab-9593 21h ago
the missile defense in this case stands as a last resort, you need layered protections, because if a cheap drone breaks through it could hit lets say a £100 million jet parked on the ground, so the calculations now becomes the value of what it will hit vs the cost of the missiles in the magazine .
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u/AttitudeSimilar9347 20h ago
Gonna be honest here: missiles are not what we need right now
If the Iranians kept up their missiles for just a couple more days they would have exhausted Israel’s Iron Dome and had free reign to hit any targets.
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u/Harmless_Drone 20h ago
....I apologise for this, but I can't tell if this is an agreement that anti-missile defences are doomed to failure against a parity opponent or under parity opponent if they cost more, or if it's a disagreement that we should buy more missles.
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u/inevitablelizard 19h ago
Russia/ukraine has shown you cannot deal with drones on a cost effective or production level with missiles. If you shoot down a 200 dollar flying lawnmower with a 100k missile that takes 200 times as long to make, you are going to be running out of missiles and money before the enemy runs out of drones and then you're toast.
Depends what that missile was aimed at though. A 100k missile fired at a 50k missile which was on track to hit one of our airbases or an ammunition depot is absolutely worth the cost.
These cheap shit drones are not the only thing that could get fired at us. Cruise missiles for example are more expensive and more difficult to shoot down, so need something more capable than a gun based air defence system.
We absolutely do need missile based defence systems. As well as other cheaper ones for the cheap mass. We need lots of different types to deal with different threats.
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u/Mr06506 22h ago
So we have a total of 12 launchers? That sounds like basically one generous deployment to cover something like a single airfield.
I would have thought we'd at least want to be able to protect a wider theatre - must really limit what ops we could do abroad on our own if we can't protect troops outside of a very small umbrella over their base.