Britain should install an Israeli-style “iron dome” missile defence system, Penny Mordaunt has suggested, in an unusual intervention highlighting concerns within the government about the increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape.
Ms Mordaunt, the House of Commons leader and a former Royal Navy reservist, again called for an increase in defence spending, saying the government has a “duty to our citizens” to keep them protected as the world becomes less safe.
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The UK currently spends just over 2 per cent of GDP on defence, but there are growing calls for this to be increased to at least 2.5 per cent, with some figures pushing for as much as 3 per cent.
Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, in a piece that could be interpreted as a pitch for the future leadership of her party, Ms Mordaunt said the UK must be more ambitious about the amount of resources it puts into defence.
“To those that say, about our defence ambitions, we ‘can’t do’, ‘shouldn’t do’, or ‘can’t afford to do’, I say ‘Look to Israel’ – a nation a fraction of our size that has staved off an attack from a nation 10 times its size,” she told the paper.
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The Iron Dome system, developed with backing from the US, specialises in shooting down short-range rockets. It has intercepted a vast number of rockets since it was activated early in the last decade – including thousands during the current war against Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel says it has a success rate of over 90 per cent.
The Iron Dome is supported by the Arrow system, which is designed to intercept long-range missiles including the types of ballistic missiles Iran said it had launched against Israel.
The defence system is extremely expensive to maintain and operate. Reem Aminoach, a former brigadier general and chief financial adviser to the head of the Israeli military, told Bloomberg that it would have cost Israel around $1bn (£808m) to thwart Iran’s attack, with some interceptor missiles costing $3.5m (£2.8m) alone.
She’s, presumably, smart enough to know that a system to shoot down short range missiles is a massive waste of money unless the French or Germans start getting ideas again. There are much better ways to spend that money on more flexible and multipurpose systems that can be deployed where they are most needed. If the UK comes under attack from a large number of missiles then something has gone very, very badly wrong.
I suppose the key bit is:
However, I can’t see many people calling for greater defence spending when voters’ chief concerns are the cost of living and the environment. So it just seems a crude play to keep her name in the headlines until she reckons it is a good moment to make her move and I can’t see that happening this year.
Currently it’s only the Royal Navy that has a need for defensive systems against short range missiles and drones. Those kind of weapons could threaten UK naval assets. But there is already technology both in service and in development to handle that.
If Dragonfire works out (as the system you’re alluding to as “in development” I suspect) then I could see that being installed in land based systems as well. The key question is how you power it (the navy have reactors). There has been talk of providing a land based version to Ukraine to help with air defence.
The US have a smaller scale system as well for taking down drones, possibly small missiles. Obviously they can take down larger things as well with other systems, such as the patriot missile, but it saves them the ordinance if they don’t use them for the easier targets.
I suppose we could either use the US system or develop one of our own. But I think there’s already pretty good counter drone tech so perhaps it’s a bit pie in the sky. Doable, but somewhat pointless.