Defence: a degenerate system
By Richard North - March 30, 2026
Something I missed on Friday brings me back to the subject of defence far earlier than I expected, although this is more at a political than a technical level.
The issue at hand is the publication that day of The National Security Strategy by the Joint Committee bearing the same name – shortened to JCNSS – comprising members of the Lords and Commons.
This is a committee dealing with high politics and, in the scheme of things, they don’t get much higher than considerations of our national security and the government’s approach to it, set out in its Command Paper published in June 2025.
Back then, the event was easily missed as it coincided with the publication of the Strategic Defence Review and the two reports sort of got blurred into each other. But, with the Joint Committee coming out with its own report, one might have thought that the broader issue might have got a little bit more attention.
However, that was not to be. Despite the higher profile of defence issues, due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the current conflict in Iran, the only mention I can find in the British press is a brief report in the Standard, and a few specialist defence periodicals such as the UK Defence Journal, with a broadcast report from Sky News.
Both pick up on the point reflected in the parliamentary press statement, where the Committee says:
The unpredictability of the US relationship is a growing concern. The UK’s deep dependence on the US for security guarantees has a long history, and the partnership will outlast Prime Ministers and Presidents alike. But the UK needs a clear plan to move away from some areas of strategic reliance to ensure the UK can pursue its national interest.
Thus we see the Standard headline “Britain must ‘move away’ from defence reliance on America, MPs and peers warn”, where they warn that the government should prepare for a “worst-case scenario” in which Europe could no longer rely on US support in a crisis.
The UK, the paper says – mirroring the Committee’s words – should plan to transition to a more European-led Nato and “move away from a bilateral relationship with the United States that is so dependent on the latter”.
In particular, it draws attention to the fact that Britain currently relies on US support in several key national security areas, including maintenance of its Trident nuclear missiles, intelligence sharing and major projects such as the F-35 and the Aukus submarine deal with Australia.
What worries the JCNSS are recent comments by Trump which, it says, have shown “demonstrable areas of tension” in UK-US relations that could “compromise the reliability of these dependencies”.
The UK Defence Journal is a little more explicit telling us that the Committee recommends that the government “develop a clear plan, along with other European allies, for a transition towards greater European leadership of NATO”.
This must include preparing for a “worst-case scenario” where Europe has to act without US backing in a crisis. Alongside that, it says the UK should “plan to move away from a bilateral relationship with the United States that is so dependent” on Washington for major areas of defence capability, even if cooperation continues where it makes sense.
It is this general thrust which brings me back into the ring, particularly as the JCNSS mentions certain areas of US cooperation and dependency but does not identify ballistic missile defence (intermediate range and potentially ICBMs), despite its report making specific reference to cooperation between Russia and China on the manufacture of warheads for hypersonic missiles.
For all that, though, there is no further mention or exploration of the missile threat until we get to this paragraph embedded deep in the report:
There was agreement that Russia poses the most significant security threat to Europe, despite challenges to the longer-term regeneration of its military capabilities. It was suggested that Russian deterrence encompasses the full spectrum of diplomatic, hybrid and nuclear activity, using tools in an agile way to achieve its aims. Experts also warned that Russia’s deterrence emphasises long-range strike systems, meaning Russia may be more likely to target countries that neglect homeland defence, missile defence systems and civil defence.
If one is to take that statement at face value, we should recall – as I have noted – that while the major European powers have limited sovereign anti-missile capabilities, the UK currently has no defences and is thus entirely reliant on the US financed and operated EPAA network, including its five Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke destroyers.
On the basis that the Committee seems to accept that the lack of defences would make us more vulnerable to attack, that would suggest that the UK is in no position to move away from the US. Such anti-missile protection as is afforded to the UK stems entirely from the US, to which effect I have argued that an important and continued part of our defence posture (and therefore National Security Strategy) must be to keep the US within Nato.
Given that neither the UK nor any European nation has the technical capability to produce a “mid-course” defensive screen, and a point defence system would be ruinously expensive for the UK (unless we resort to the Israeli Arrow 3 system – which might not be politically feasible), we are for the time being entirely dependent on the US for protection.
Nor can we assume – as the Committee seems to do – that Russia poses the most significant security threat to Europe (and by inference the UK). As we have seen recently, a threat from Iran remains at least a theoretical possibility, especially as reports indicate that, despite intensive attacks by the US and Israel, only a third of the missile inventory has been destroyed.
That the Iranian missiles still represent a potent threat (in general terms) is evidenced by the recent attack on the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, used by US forces.
The attack is said to have been carried out using drones and ballistic missiles and has effectively written off an E-3 Sentry and damaged five air-refuelling tankers, injuring 12 US personnel, some seriously.
But what is especially significant about this attack is that the Russians almost certainly supplied targeting data and intelligence to the Iranians, thereby indicating the degree of cooperation that exists between the two nations.
It has already been determined that Russia has also provided physical help in the form of attack drones and, should the Regime survive, there is no reason to believe that future help would be limited to drone technology.
Russia itself, although largely reliant on ICBMs and short-range tactical missiles, has recently added to its armoury a potent IRBM, named the Oreshnik, currently stationed in Belarus.
When used against a Ukrainian facility last year – without explosives, relying entirely on kinetic energy – the targets were reported to have been obliterated, with little trace left of them after the attack.
In what is already regarded as a proxy war between Russia and America, Russia, either directly or through proxies, could supply Iran with the technology to build such missiles – or even supply the finished missiles. This is hardly in doubt.
The UK would make an attractive target for Russia, as it is a staunch supporter of Ukraine. One cannot rule out, therefore, an attack on Britain as a quid pro quo for supplying the capability, against which the UK would have no defences.
Thus, we are, potentially, in an extraordinarily vulnerable position, entirely reliant on the US for our defences, yet we have a key parliamentary committee calling for us to reduce our reliance on the US and look more to Europe for our salvation – despite it not having the technology to produce an effective anti-ballistic missile system.
The irony of this is that the world’s most capable BMD missile – the SM-3 Block IIA – is the fruit of a cooperative venture between the US and Japan, the latter being driven by the very real threat of North Korean missiles. But then, Japan seems to take its own defence seriously, which is more than can be said of the UK.
When we also have parliamentarians – who are the essential longstop in the scrutiny system – recommending a course of action which could eliminate such defences as we do have, we can only wonder at how far this nation of ours had degenerated.
