How to talk about IAMD for and in the UK
IAMD is a complex concept that is often difficult to communicate clearly and can be inaccessible to the public. Though the term may appear straightforward, it spans multiple domains—air, land, sea, cyber, and space. As the last viewpoint on the UK and IAMD, both during and after the Cold War, explored political discourse can sometimes oversimplify the issue, with references to a potential UK ‘Iron Dome’ serving as a shorthand that obscures the true complexity of the challenge.
Perhaps it would be easier to begin by describing what IAMD offers the UK and addressing the advantages a viable functioning capability would provide. To avoid the distraction of inter-service rivalries and tactical debates, the conversation could be framed around four strategic themes—the four ‘Ps’: Protection, Projection, Partnership, and Prosperity.
Protection
IAMD should provide, if deterrence fails, Protection against incoming missiles—whether launched from air, sea, or land—ranging from exo-atmospheric weapons to low-flying drones. As well as the ability to detect, identify, assess, intercept, and engage these missiles, IAMD also concerns passive air and missile defence. This includes concealing important targets, deceiving the enemy, and if practical, moving potential targets—e.g. aircraft. For fixed installations like factories, which cannot be transferred or easily concealed, the focus shifts to resilience and redundancy—ensuring rapid recovery and access to alternative facilities after an attack.
The UK is the only NATO country without a National Defence Plan. The Defence Command Paper Refresh in 2023 mentioned the increasing ‘need to strengthen our resilience and protect critical national infrastructure’, and the Government’s 2024 ‘Defending Britain’ document committed to ‘bring together and exercise a comprehensive National Defence and Resilience Plan’. However, there is little clarity in the public domain on progress, perhaps unsurprising since the 2024 General Election was announced a month later. The current government’s Strategic Defence Review is considering IAMD, including the role of a national plan as part of its deliberations. These efforts to protect will require a cross-government approach. As Sir Bernard Jenkin described in his contribution to a defence debate in May 2024:
We can no longer look forward to an era of global peace. We must jettison what might be termed the peacetime mentality … [and] shift to a wartime mentality [which] demands a shift in culture, not just in the MOD but across Government, led from the centre by No. 10, the Cabinet Office and the National Security Council, to create a national defence plan that must cover … a far wider spectrum of policy—not just cyber-security but energy security, food security, border security, technological security, economic security and even climate security.
In its war against Ukraine, Russia has shown a willingness to target military assets, government institutions, and other elements of Critical National Infrastructure—including civilian targets, most notably in the energy sector. Protection from these will require significant investment in IAMD, including in C2 architecture, to achieve true integration, as well as in sensors and effectors, as Poland is doing.
Protection involves every aspect of government and requires the engagement, understanding, and support of the public—and, of course, politicians. This, in turn, requires Projection of the importance of IAMD.
Projection
Projection involves two key elements. First, the government must clearly communicate the public’s role in a future National Defence Plan, emphasising the importance of resilience across society—from individuals to institutions and businesses. NATO allies such as Finland and Sweden are held as exemplars in this regard, with their citizens regularly reminded of their role in the event of an attack. Consider the contrast between a country like Finland, which still conducts weekly air raid warning tests, and the UK, which only managed to trial a nationwide emergency alert system in 2023 after considerable debate.
That said, encouragingly, the Chief of the Defence Staff has added his voice to the need for resilience in an article in The Times, which quotes Sweden’s minister for civil defence, in the week in which Sweden issued every household an expanded edition of its ‘In Case of Crisis or War’ pamphlet. Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister for civil defence, said: ‘Deterrence doesn’t start at the barrel of a gun. It starts with a society that can muster a credible answer to the threat of an armed attack. This starts with each and every individual in Swedish society … You cannot just outsource security to the military.’
The second element of Projection is communicating the prioritisation given to IAMD by government and defence as a deterrent to adversaries. Deterrence by denial seeks to deter action by making it infeasible or unlikely to succeed, and the current UK IAMD offering is wholly insufficient in this regard. In 2022, at the Madrid Summit, NATO agreed to strengthen its deterrence and forward defences on its eastern flank, ‘denying any potential adversary success in meeting its objectives’.
Partnership
IAMD is a NATO term, and no single country within NATO can protect itself without the support of the NATO IAMD System—known as NATINAMDS. It should protect Alliance territory, populations and forces against air or missile threats or attacks. Measures employed range from air policing to ballistic missile defence, from sensors to command and control. Interoperability, training, and exercise are vital to an effective system and offer a deterrent effect.
While, as already mentioned, the UK has committed to purchasing a ground BMD radar to contribute to NATO IAMD, no timeline for procuring the system has yet to be announced. The Strategic Defence Review offers the new government a chance to stand by its NATO First commitment and finally acquire this capability for its benefit and that of its partners. IAMD is stronger as a system and deterrent when carried out by the Alliance, but it can only be as strong as its weakest link. Recent initiatives by the Labour government, including through the Trinity House agreement and the DIAMOND initiative, have demonstrated more commitment than in previous years.
Prosperity
Current programmes supplying the UK and, more significantly, European allies, notably Poland, demonstrate the competitiveness and potential for further UK defence industrial growth by building IAMD systems. The UK has a strong, complex weapons industry with a successful track record. There is, therefore, the potential to produce IAMD systems in support of the government’s focus on economic growth in the UK.
MBDA, widely seen as a successful model of European defence industrial cooperation and a joint subsidiary of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo, will integrate its Common Anti-Air Missile (CAMM) into the Sea Viper system aboard Type 45 Royal Navy destroyers. It also builds the Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile currently used by the RAF’s Typhoon aircraft and is due to be integrated into the F-35. The Army’s Sky Sabre GBAD capability combines Saab, Rafael, and MBDA UK input.
The UK and Poland signed a £1.9 billion export agreement announced in April 2023 to see the UK equip 22 Polish air defence batteries with UK Common Anti-Air Modular Missiles and launchers under a programme named PILICA+. Later in the year, a deal worth over £4 billion was signed with Poland to continue the next phase of Poland’s future air defence programme, Narew. This is intended to support British engineering jobs in Bolton, Bristol, and Stevenage. MBDA also won a large contract with France and Italy to supply missiles for Aster. In April 2024, Northrop Grumman submitted evidence to the House of Commons International Relations and Defence Committee firmly endorsing increased investment in IAMD. Understandably, defence industries are lobbying for new contracts to service requirements in the UK and amongst allies.
Conclusion
IAMD is not a new task or concept; the RAF was created as a result of the threat of attack from the air in 1918, and by the start of the Second World War, it was developing the first air and missile defence system, which was critical to winning the Battle of Britain and therefore the war. Throughout the Cold War, technological advancements shaped both the nature of the threat and the ability of states and alliances to respond. IAMD remains a fundamental element of modern warfare that is continually evolving, with core principles that can be traced back to the defence of the UK throughout air power’s history against missiles, one-way drones, and aircraft.
However, the UK has significant shortfalls in its IAMD capability across the board, particularly in long-range surface-based systems. The E-7 Wedgetail and the RAF’s combat air force provide an important long-range capability from the air, but as discussed, platform numbers are limited. As the Chief of the Air Staff stated in his Lord Trenchard Memorial Lecture at RUSI on 11 November 2024, the RAF also has a world-class capability in its GUARDIAN Air Command and Control System, which is interoperable with NATO. As he said, the priority must be to integrate what we have, move from fixed to more mobile systems, and recognise the importance of airborne platforms' offensive element.