UK will know of incoming hits but cannot stop most missiles

Giving evidence on the Defence Investment Plan alongside Lord Robertson, his fellow Strategic Defence Review author, the former Commander of Joint Forces Command was asked whether the roughly 790 million the plan provides for homeland integrated air and missile defence is enough to be ready for possible Russian aggression against NATO by 2030. Setting out what the money actually purchases, Barrons said the bulk of it goes on improved command and control. "You'll know better that you're going to be hit by a missile," he told MPs, alongside "some improvements for the Air Force's ability to shoot down cruise missiles" and improvements to the Type 45 destroyers "so it has a better capability against ballistic missiles." The distinction matters because command and control determines how well a country can detect, track and warn of incoming threats, while the capacity to intercept them depends on launchers, interceptors and directed energy weapons held in numbers, and it is that layer, on the general's account, that the plan barely touches.