It’s 2044 and Britain is under attack. Russia has launched wave after wave of missiles, streaking through the skies above London. Re-engineered Tupolev bombers drop a dozen sea-skimming cruise missiles aimed at RAF Lossiemouth air base in Scotland.
A rogue terror group, funded by Iran, sends swarms of drones, coordinated by AI, up the Thames to spread chaos and carnage in the capital.
But the missiles never reach British soil. Instead, they explode in mid-air, sparing thousands of lives. The drones, too, drop as one into the murky depths of the river. All thanks to the foresight of our political and military leaders who oversaw the completion of a state-of-the-art defence dome a decade earlier.
An onslaught of this scale sounds, thankfully, far-fetched, despite threats made by our foreign enemies. Though older Britons remember how German rockets wrought devastation across the country during the Second World War, most of us see an air attack on the UK as so unlikely as to be irrelevant.
Israel faced a devastating salvo of about 180 ballistic missiles fired from Iran on Tuesday night
Israel, however, is not so lucky, having been under siege for the past year from missiles fired by Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the mullahs in Iran. But thanks to its stunningly effective Iron Dome defence system, developed by US and Israeli scientists and arms firms, Israel has managed to keep most citizens safe despite the best efforts of its warmongering neighbours.
On Tuesday night, Israel’s sophisticated network of radars, transmitters and rockets shot down almost all of the 200 missiles launched on its cities by Iran.
What many do not realise is the Iron Dome – used to destroy smaller missiles and artillery shells at short range – is just one part of Israel’s multi-layered defence system. Above the Dome sit additional systems: David’s Sling, designed to hit medium-range missiles, and Arrow, used to destroy longer-range missiles. All are operated through a unified command and control network.
Yes, in Britain we are lucky in our geography. We are an island – and not shoulder-to-shoulder with hostile states as Israel is. But global peace is precarious.
Israel is now in all but open conflict with Iran as it heads towards nuclear capability. The Middle East, Russia and Ukraine are at war. Ukraine is having its cities regularly hit by Russia’s silent glide bombs and cruise missiles, killing scores every month. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be next. Each of these conflicts is coming ever closer to dragging in Western powers.
Iranian-launched missiles are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system above Jerusalem
President Vladimir Putin’s regime already considers itself in conflict with us. Russian TV pundits regularly boast that it will take only a few minutes for hypersonic missiles to destroy London. Win or lose in Ukraine, Russia is now bent on conflict, overt or covert, with the West.
Meanwhile, Iran’s longest-range missiles can now reach into central Europe, closer if launched from its ally Syria. Within the decade they will be able to hit London.
Another threat comes from drones, which are becoming ever cheaper to buy and ever faster to fly. I have just returned from Ukraine where I have been finishing my book on Russia’s war. Both Kyiv and Moscow are producing hundreds of thousands of drones per month. Ukraine’s long-range drones blew up two vast arms dumps in Russia less than a fortnight ago, having travelled long distances over the country.
Within a few years, these drones will be linked with each other by Artificial Intelligence and will be flying in deadly swarms. This technology will be available to terror groups in five to ten years.
Since the Second World War, Europe has lived lazily under US protection, but can we guarantee that it will still exist under Donald Trump, or another future President? Retired Air Marshal and former combat pilot Greg Bagwell says: ‘We have become complacent at best, and reckless at worst.’
And this is why Britain desperately needs to prepare itself for war and invest in its own version of the Iron Dome. Germany has already said it will procure its own missile defence system as part of a Nato project, at a total cost of £4billion. Poland, which borders Russia, is also rushing to develop its own defences. If we hesitate, we risk buying someone else’s technology – late.
Britain doesn’t need to replicate exactly Israel’s short-range system given that we are an island nation 11 times larger. We have some 75 cities with a population of over 100,000, whereas Israel has just 16 cities concentrated in a compact area.
Nevertheless, as those bombastic Russian TV pundits remind us, our country is acutely vulnerable to sustained air attack by submarine-launched missiles. Especially if our Armed Forces were needed elsewhere as part of a coordinated Nato military response.
An Iranian long-range missile is obliterated in a shower of flames and red-hot debris in the skies above the northern city of Baqa al-Gharbiya
In that situation, air defence batteries would be protecting our troops on the frontline, our destroyers would be protecting aircraft carriers and our fighter jets would be shooting down the enemy on the battlefield. As such, we should be building our own defence system against air attacks as part of a wider Nato shield – let’s call it an Air Dome.
Despite the UK committing to a ground-based Ballistic Missile Defence radar in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, we have done next to nothing to build one.
A ‘Defence Command Paper Refresh’ in 2023 acknowledged that ‘the challenge of protecting ourselves against attack from the skies, both overseas and at home, is at its most acute for over thirty years.’ Since then, the MoD told Parliament that it was planning to ‘cohere’ policy. In plain English, while our allies rush to protect themselves, we are working on a pointless policy paper.
Given how long such projects take, if we don’t start developing it now it will be too late.
What exactly would an Air Dome look like? First, we need to work with our Nato partners in Europe to develop a European-wide defence system. It is better to shoot down a missile over fields in Poland than over-crowded South-East England.
However, we must be ready for the moment a missile does reach our shores. The bricks are already in place. There are highly sophisticated radar bases in the UK. We have a medium-range missile system called Sky Sabre. BAE on the Isle of Wight makes high-tech naval radars. We are a world leader in electronic counter-drone technologies.
But we need to develop a long-range system, the equivalent of Israel’s Arrow. And, although some dismiss short-range capacity as unnecessary, we need that for missiles launched from the sea.
And we are especially vulnerable in the north of the country. Currently, if Russia were to fire missiles at us from across the Baltic Sea, there are a number of Nato assets that could intercept them.
But if they were to come around the northern cape of Norway, launching multiple cruise missile strikes from the north, we are defenceless. Our umbrella of defence must stretch from Falmouth to Fort William.
Major defence contractors in the UK are already building kit to be used in other countries’ air defences. Why not our own?
In helping states like Ukraine to build up their own air defences, we are preparing ourselves, too. Our scientists can learn from Russia’s tactics.
We don’t know if we will ever face the same mortal threat as Israel or Ukraine. But I would rather play safe. For the security of our nation in a fragile world where both dangers and new technology are increasing, I believe we need to commission the UK’s Air Dome shield as a matter of urgency – and make sure the memories of London under air attack remain confined to history.
Dr Bob Seely’s book, Total War, A Guide To Russia’s War In Ukraine And Across The Globe, will be published by Biteback Publishing next spring.
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