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.
Even I know that won’t work. Iron Dome is designed to take down relatively unsophisticated short-range missiles. Israel as I’m sure everyone is aware has an ongoing rivalry with a particular neighboring nation. It’s not a general purpose defense.
But Russia and China because that’s of course who she’s talking about, all firing from much further away so they’re coming in from orbit not through the atmosphere so an iron Dome system wouldn’t do anything except fail to intercept a missile in the last 2 seconds of its flight coming in at orbital velocity.
I’d also assume anyone firing missiles at us would know about our defences and just lob hypersonic missiles at us.
Frankly the biggest threat is that our enemy goes low-tech and just drops grenades from drones. You don’t need to destroy a city completely to render it unlivable, the threat of being blown up at any minute will call the people to leave.