Air defence for the UK in 2026

A bit later than intended: but I said we'd have a post on Badenoch and her £10 bn 'Britannia Shield'. 

One should never fall for "the bomber will always get through" as an excuse for doing nothing.  She's right that we haven't been doing remotely enough.  But we need to examine both the history of our air defences and the current threats, to recognise the challenge we face.

1.  WW1  No air defences at all, until some fighters were belatedly deployed against Zeppelins.  Even then, the casualties per ton of bombs dropped, on an essentially unprepared nation, were extraordinary - so much so that, extrapolating to the Luftwaffe's bombing resources, it was estimated that London alone would suffer a quarter of a million casualties in the first week of a prospective WW2**.

2.  WW2  Fortunately, this didn't result in a policy of What's The Point?  Quite the reverse.  Making good use of the months of Phoney War, effective multi-layer defences were instituted.  Radar station, very capable fighter cover, barrage balloons, anti-aircraft guns, air raid shelters of various types, blackouts, ARP wardens and teams of fire watchers.  

All very well: but that's a time of flat-out national effort, no expense spared.

Cold War  A very different enemy, based in East Germany and point eastwards, with no aircraft carriers.  Our interceptors were pretty effective but, by the 1960s, few in number: our long-range AA missiles (Bloodhound, Thunderbird) were not impressive, neither in quality nor quantity.  Quite plainly, the strategy was one of (a) forward defence on the Lüneburg Heide & (b) hide behind the Americans.  

The one area in which some rather more impressive protective measures were put in place against air attack was the Navy, which was then upgraded significantly post Falklands / Exocet. 

But now, however well armed, we can't muster a single destroyer on demand!  So a protective line of these vessels is certainly out of the question.

Threat in 2026  It's not bombers!  RAF Typhoons may be expected to make short work of any stray Tu-95s.  Clearly, it's cruise missiles (however launched), ballistic missiles and, since Ukraine's impressive Spiderweb operation, drones launched from lurking trucks and coastal vessels.  Here's the thing.  The USA and Israel have invested mightily in "exquisite" air defences, and since February have been comprehensively taken to the cleaners by Iran.  

Solutions  Our needs are not the same as theirs, however; and as regards long range missiles, forward defence in the classic sense remains the solution (though not for Poland et al).  What else can / should be done?

Firstly, get the well-armed destroyers operational!  In recent years the Navy has become a disgrace.  (Gordon Brown's bloody aircraft carriers are of course much to blame.)   

We may safely rule out Trump's 'Golden Dome' as a solution or model for us: £10 bn doesn't buy you much down that track.  Passive defence - hardening our military assets - must be part of the plan: but Russia, the USA, Israel and the Gulf States have discovered that it's really difficult to protect infrastructure (being static, with locations known precisely).  The Russians have in fact tried to harden their refineries, to no avail.  (As regards the Spiderweb military targets, they hadn't even tried.)

When we get down to the level of hostile drone swarms, it's not clear the 'nuclear option' - even supposing we had an independent capability - gets us very far.  Another very important form of forward defence is intelligence from all sources, which should definitely be beefed up: we're even quite good at it.  

Which brings us to tech solutions, which probably require a load of R&D - and not into the exquisite systems that can't be afforded.  Early-warning detection systems are definitely needed for ship-launched short-range cruise missiles: shouldn't be beyond the nation that developed radar.  The real puzzle is the drone swarm from within, or just offshore.  Detection at a distance?  I am not abreast of the latest technology, but it seems implausible to me.  However, no detection = precious little chance of shooting down: so R&D should go into that, too.  If the drones were to be guided or require Starlink, it's possible GCHQ might have a very useful role.  But Ukraine deploys pre-programmed autonomous drones requiring merely the initial launch command.   

Finally, bringing down drones on the perimeter of targets, 'Goalkeeper' style (albeit all these things are easier at sea).  We're in danger of getting into science fiction here, but is there some kind of laser etc that could both detect and defeat an attack on the spot?  It needs to be cheap, if it's to be deployed at scale. 

Last thought: we should (continue to) stay close to Ukraine in these matters.  They are so far ahead of the game, we could do a lot worse than making this a joint venture. 

Any other perspectives?

ND

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** The authorities were debating as to whether the bodies should be dumped in to the gravel pits where Heathrow is today, or into the Thames at high tide.

Peak Polanski in the rear-view mirror

On Monday I called Peak Green and by now, the by-election lost, it looks almost like we're going to see a re-run of Your Party: hundreds of thousands of members but so dysfunctional, and split so comprehensively, it ain't going anywhere.  

One need have no sympathies whatever for the charlatan "Polanski": but the MSM pile-on is really quite extreme, and merits a moment's analysis.  I have to believe the London-based, Labour-supporting meejah classes saw him as a genuine threat on the left; the Israel lobby saw him simply as a threat (the Auld Alliance back in action again); and they have both decided to bury him here and now, Corbyn-style.  He provided the shovels, and by last weekend had already dug his own grave.  It's not a pretty sight.

Does he really deserve all this?  "Deserve", as Clint Eastwood's William Munny famously said in Unforgiven "got nothing to do with it".  Live by the entryist surge, die by the care-nothing entryists' toxic baggage.  Can't imagine he'll go down without a lot more of his trademark motormouth interviews, but we'll just have to put up with it for a while.

Funnily enough, neither of the Green factions really care about becoming a major Parliamentary force.  The traditional sandal-wearing Greens were happy with one MP, delirious with 4.  They don't much mind going back to their eco-protest roots in Bristol, Brighton and the shires, if becoming Big means they must accommodate the 'progressive' dregs of bedsit London Labour by the tens of thousand.  Likewise, the dregs care not for Parliamentary success if it means they must give up their fevered foreign policy fantasies.  Those who do care are a smaller, strategically-minded metropolitan motley of fence-sitters whose relatively sophisticated dream is of plain-speaking Polanski fearlessly shifting the Overton window decisively leftwards, in a way that no Labour politician is able to.  Then Burnham and his genuine party-of-government can safely occupy the newly-liberated ground and win an election on terms they like.

Well let's see if this strategy is gaining any traction.  The Budget looms, and there are a lot more issues making calls on the public purse than to leave much left for the big causes progressives are interested in. 

ND

Mis-steps by party leaders becoming costly

Six months ago with Starmer still in office, I mused that we'd already seen peak Reform but not yet peak Green.  Since then, the cards have pretty much been dealt for the rounds leading up to the next GE, and mis-steps are becoming increasingly costly.  

Reform is the easy one: Chancer Farage has made a complete git of himself over the summer and is now left with the purely negative, reactive politics he made his name with over those long wilderness years.  He knows what he hates: this often coincides with what a lot of other people hate: he can sometimes get traction.  But he's reduced to rejoicing in other leaders misaligning themselves with those hate-themes - or rather, what he perceives as their misalignment.  And he can be wrong, because clever political operators can sometimes flip these issues on their head: on a good day, both Burnham and Polanski are good enough communicators to be capable of reframing things in a confident and positive manner that can change the mood noticeably.  Like many a sports team that peaks fruitlessly between World Cups, Farage has had his top-of-the-rankings period and it's over.  We all remember how UKIP and the Brexit Party ended in turn: and he's so given to petulance, with so little bench depth, there's even the possibility of complete melt-down.  The wonder is that so many - not least on the left - reckoned he was nailed on as next PM.

The less technicolour mis-steps are to be seen on the left.  After a stellar honeymoon, Burnham seems (IMHO) to have failed to use that period to cement a truly solid platform for what's coming next - namely, some very stormy political weather indeed.  When you see a man ad-libbing on the Man City affair as grotesquely inappropriately as that (did he also think Jimmy Saville did some good stuff for charity?), you realise you're dealing with an amateur of highly fallible instincts.  (Starmer of course was another, albeit of a very different variant.)  Charm is a great asset, and we'll see a lot more of it in the months to come: but it doesn't ultimately deliver when it's the only diamond-tipped tool in the box.  Let's see how Burnham navigates the rocky shallows between now and the New Year.

As for Polanski, well, maybe I should wait for the by-election result on Friday.  But however that falls, we can confidently record that he, too, is revealed as being incapable of parleying superb communications skills into what's needed at the top - again, because there's no adamantine core of genuine political judgement.  In his case, that wasn't ever really in doubt: he was just an object of fevered wish-projection from the left, on (proportionately) an even bigger scale than Burnham still is.  Polanski's performance over the past two weeks has been really poor - celebrity by-elections are no easy trick to pull off - and last week's Green party conference may very well go down in history as a pivot-point back into shrill, sad obscurity, for him and his hopeful-but-hopeless party.

Amusingly enough, in the context of widely lacking political judgement, Ed Davey can actually seem quite a pro!  In a basically irrelevant way, he really is - much good may it do him.  Anyone being offered good odds on Badenoch might want to take them.  In a nation of highly conservative people of all political hues it is my unwavering conviction that, far from being utterly doomed, the Conservative Party - like Labour - is a genuinely enduring institution.  Let the derision follow!  But that's what I think.

ND     

Mysterious fire: what can have happened?

We return to a location in Croydon we've visited here before: to a house directly opposite this pair of beauties (of which one remains stubbornly unsold, even at a much reduced price).  For years, this fine but dilapidated edifice that they look out onto has commanded the road, twin turrets and all.  The owners are the Datoo brothers, gentlemen well known to Croydon Council, who had submitted wave upon wave of planning applications, involving complete demolition, generally for large, low-rise blocks of flats.  Most of these had not found favour.  Their latest plan is for a 60-resident nursing home.

Ten days ago at 4 am, a large conflagration broke out, seemingly in two different parts of the house simultaneously (not that I'm a forensic scientist).  The place immediately became what must surely be a crime scene, with a 24-hour police presence (!) being mounted for at least 5 days after the fire, and a regular presence there even today.

What can possibly have happened?  Did a group of pyromaniac squatters move in and take against the place?  We must wait patiently for an inquiry.

In any event, locals are distinctly Not Happy.  "It would appear that there's been foul play here."  All very odd.

ND

Seven-Up / 70-Up and a big coincidence

I can't guess how widely the 7-Up series has a following among the C@W faithful, but in Schloss Drew we've certainly always watched it over the decades.  Capped off this week by 70-Up, which looks to be the very last outing for that format and crew.

Here's a remarkable coincidence.

Having not been at school with any of the 14 subjects, nor come into contact with them in any shape or form in my youth, nor sought them out in any way, nor ever come anywhere near the TV programme and any of its workings or personnel,  in later life I came to know two of the 14 personally (one in the Army and the other ay University).  What are the chances of that?[1]

One of them I subsequently avoided.[2]    With the other, Mrs D & I were in reasonably regular incidental contact until he moved away from London; and still see him once in a while.

Curious.  Small world.

ND

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[1] That said, there seemed to be several coincidences around that set of people, as recounted by the lad who became a taxi driver.

[2] Libel is still a thing.