Defence: lack of critical analysis

By Richard North - March 25, 2026

It would be useful occasionally if people could focus on some core issues, instead of dissipating energies on peripheral issues which dilute and distract from matters raised which need urgent consideration.

In what is now my third article touching on the UK’s non-existent capability to deal with the Iranian intermediate range ballistic missile threat, such as it is, the role of the Royal Navy’s six Type 45 air defence destroyers has been prominently featured.

What I haven’t really explored in this blog, though, is how useless this class of ship really is, how it should never have been procured and how it represents the destructive tendency of the MoD – with the complicity of serving officers – to commission bespoke equipment at inordinate cost, to deliver sub-optimal capabilities in numbers which leave the armed forces weak and ineffective.

As I recall, I first wrote about this ship in 2005 on EUReferendum (a blog which we had only started a year earlier), when I noted that, while the UK was turning more and more to the inwards-looking EU, with its “European defence identity”, and its European Rapid Reaction Force – a European Army in all but name – our former colony of Australia was forging a strategic alliance with the United States.

One of the fruits of that alliance was the decision by the Australian government to base its new fleet of air defence destroyers on the US Aegis combat management system, fitting the ships with the Mk 41 missile launch silos and the Standard anti-aircraft missile.

At the time, the Australians were budgeting for £600 million for each ship while, at the same time, the UK was going it alone with its own unique design for what was to be the Type 45, at a considerably greater cost of £1 billion per vessel, for less capability.

As I pointed out in a longer piece on my parallel blog, Defence of the Realm, the Type 45 project arose from the ashes of the joint European Horizon project which had cost the UK some £537 million before we withdrew from it.

But, despite going it alone on the ship (and radar) design, we remained committed to the European anti-aircraft missile system, known as PAAMS (Principal Anti-Aircraft Missiles system), which comprised two parts, the missile itself, called the Aster, and the “Sylver” launcher.

Unlike the US Mk 41 launcher, though, Sylver was only capable of launching the Aster missile, while the US launcher could handle Tomahawk cruise missiles and Asroc anti-submarine missiles as well as the proven Standard missile.

The US Aegis ships, the Arleigh Burke destroyer class, were also fitted with a full anti-submarine warfare suite, including a powerful sonar, making them truly multi-purpose ships. Yet, to save money, the Type 45s were not even to be fitted with sonar detection equipment. The Royal Navy was to be equipped with a single-purpose ship which, in campaigns where there was no significant air-threat, would be of little use.

What was not considered to be an important capability then was an anti-ballistic missile capability but in 2010, the emergence of such “carrier killer” missiles, primarily from China, prompted development of that capability in the US Navy, with the parallel development of a land-based system known as Aegis Ashore.

With the heavier, larger Mk 41 launcher, the system could readily accommodate more capable missiles, bringing us to the current day, where the US Navy – and land facilities – are equipped with arguably the most potent anti-ballistic missiles of the class.

The Royal Navy, on the other hand, is committed to the Aster missile, which even in its latest iteration has a very limited anti-ballistic missile capability, not even sufficient to deal with the latest generation of anti-ship missiles.

Conscious of this defect, the MoD in 2024 awarded three contracts worth £405 million to Aster missile-manufacturers, to upgrade the Aster missile in a project called Sea Viper Evolution, to defend the Royal Navy’s Carrier Strike Group against anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs).

Despite the self-congratulatory PR spin from the MoD, though, the upgrade, known as Block 1NT (New Technology) will not reach full operational capability until the Autumn of 2032.

This, however, is on top of a previous upgrade programme launched in 2022 at a cost of £300 million, bringing upgrade costs to over £700 million to deliver a capability which is markedly inferior to that of Standard missiles which have been in service for some years.

Even then, the worst is yet to come. The Type 45s are planned to leave service by the mid-to-late 2030s (assuming no costly life extension programme), and the MoD with the Royal Navy seems set to repeat its mistakes and design yet again a custom ship to replace the retiring fleet.

Provisionally designated the Type 83, the plan is to continue the use of the upgraded Aster missiles but, in a belated recognition of the limitations of this weapon, there is also provision to be made to fit the US Mk 41 launchers, capable of launching Standard missiles as well as Tomahawk (and presumably Asroc).

Thus, a project which started off with the joint-European Horizon frigate, which morphed into the Type 45 using a European missile design, all with the intention of reducing the reliance on US military equipment, has gone full circle to deliver the worst of all possible worlds. Not only will we be dependent on European technology, we will also need the US to fill the capability gaps left by the inferior European equipment.

Only yesterday, though, I was noting that, in addition to the US and the Australians, multiple other navies were specifying the Aegis-equipped ships with the accompanying weapons suite.

It seems hard to believe that all these navies are so wrong in specifying, proven, high-performance, off-the shelf systems, yet the needs of the Royal Navy are so special and so different that we must spend vast fortunes on procuring inferior equipment (which, currently, seems to spend most of its time in port undergoing repair and maintenance, including the replacement of faulty propulsion systems.

One operator I didn’t mention yesterday was the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) which is a long-time user of the Aegis system and has recently commissioned two ships of the Maya Class – modified versions of the previous Atago class – each fitted with the Mk 41 launchers and equipped with the full range of missiles, including the SM-3 Block IIA missile with the exo-atmospheric capability.

Interestingly, the cost of these capable ships came out at around £1.2 billion – coming out at about the same price as the Type 45, despite their superior performance and broader mission spectrum, complete with a hull-mounted sonar and the ability to fire anti-submarine missiles.

What is striking about this long-drawn-out saga, though, is the lack of critical analysis of what amounts to an egregious and expensive procurement failure, which has left the Royal Navy with serious capability gaps.

Even latterly, we have Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute, writing in the Telegraph that, “The UK Armed Forces do possess a small number of highly capable air and missile defence warships: the Royal Navy’s six Type 45 destroyers”.

Doubtless, they are capable but, by comparison with what is available elsewhere for the same money, we are getting very poor value. Yet no-one in politics, in the media, the military or specialist think-tanks, seems prepared to say so.

In its own way, this is a repetition of the Ajax saga where, even if the apparent faults were fixed, the original concept is flawed and the vehicle should never have been produced – another bespoke failure that we can do without.

Until we are more critical about our own failures and are able to develop a greater awareness of the nature of our failures, I cannot ever see our armed forces equipment improving.