Why must the UK reprioritise its ground-based air defence?: Army Technology

Air defence remains a hot topic after the exchange of projectiles, including missiles and one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems, between Iran and Israel in the Middle East.

While Israel’s multi-layered air defence proved capable of intercepting almost all of an Iranian salvo, many countries will have been prompted to reflect on their own capacity to withstand such a threat.

Responding to a very different geographical threat, Nato partners in Europe must seek interoperability by fusing common data to identify, track and respond to missile threats. However, the UK “faces a fairly serious capability gap” that hinders them from contributing effectively to a joint, alliance-level air picture, warned Dr Jack Watling, a senior fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute.

In a recent report, Watling and his colleague Sidharth Kaushal observed: “Interoperability… places a premium on experience in dealing with multiple systems, and so professionalising air defence and expanding liaison opportunities is critical.”

The UK Ministry of Defence will need to focus on improving its ground-based air defence (GBAD) command and control (C2) architecture along these lines. In doing so, the nation will contribute in an allied anti-air effort by reinforcing its system-level effectiveness.

It can do so by optimising against converging lower-tier threats, thus allowing other platforms to optimise against elements of the threat spectrum that still require bespoke solutions.

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