Air Defence Capabilities

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising the incredibly important subject of air defence. She is quite right to point out the impact on Ukraine; 12,000 missiles have been fired at Ukraine by Russia, showing the importance of air defence now. It has been raised in report after report. I will of course write to her and put a copy in the Library, as a current stocktake of where we are, but we are already taking action. We are seeing the development of ORCUS and anti-drone technology to protect airfields; the enhancement of Sea Viper, which is the T45 missile that allows us to defend against ballistic missiles; and developments such as the DIAMOND initiative, which is bringing European countries together to get a ground-based air missile defence system. A number of initiatives are already being taken, but I agree with the noble Baroness. I will write to her so that we have a stocktake of that and so that the information is available to all Members of this House.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, members of the International Relations and Defence Committee—those in the last Parliament and those members of the committee as reformed in this Parliament—will be aware that on 8 May 2024, two months before the general election, as part of its inquiry designed to learn lessons from the conflict in Ukraine, the committee published evidence from Northrop Grumman, arguably the key MoD defence contractor on missile and air defence capability, which was persuasive to the committee and to others who will read it. It suggested that the UK’s air and missile defence capability was

“limited, to the point of being negligible”

because of persistent underinvestment. The inquiry had to report without the benefit of ministerial wisdom about how this legacy black hole was going to be filled because the Secretary of State, Grant Shapps, refused clearance for Ministers and officials to testify. Will the Minister join me in encouraging Members of your Lordships’ House to read the response of this Government to that report, because it deals with this issue in significant detail?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. Of course I will encourage Members to read the Government’s response to that report. I say to him, all Members of this House and others that the report was an important wake-up call to us about the importance of air defence in the future. Let us remember where we were. This country assumed that we needed to defend ourselves against the Soviet Union and bombers. We are now in a totally different situation where we face a 360-degree threat. The launch of missiles could come from a variety of launch systems, and we need to protect ourselves against not only missiles but drones, as we have seen with what may or may not have happened with respect to various bases. It is an important wake-up call not only for us but for Europe that air defence will become one of the critical systems that we will need to make available to ourselves and our country. Our population need to understand that homeland defence is also now of crucial importance to us all.