Defence: the MoD money pit
By Richard North - April 1, 2026
True to Starmer’s word that his government would “stand by our allies in the Gulf region”, defence secretary John Healey has announced extra British troops and more UK air defence systems will be deployed to the Middle East, as well as four more Eurofighters, to join the RAF’s joint UK-Qatari squadron.
The number of troops have not been specified, but we are led to believe that the additions will bring the total number of UK personnel involved in the defence of the Gulf and Cyprus to around 1,000.
As to the “air defence systems”, these are said to include a Sky Sabre battery, otherwise known as the Common Anti-air Modular Missile or CAMM. This is going to Saudi Arabia, which amounts to a handsome gift to one of the richest nations on Earth.
At current prices, each battery (comprising launchers, the radar module and the control centre) costs in the order of £368 million, with individual “Land Ceptor” missiles coming out north of £400,000 each – possibly up to £800,000 a pop depending on the basis of the calculation (whether system capital costs are included).
The system has no anti-ballistic missile capability, being designed primarily as an anti-aircraft weapon but, in the absence of any likely threat from Iranian fixed wing aircraft, will be deployed to counter expected drone attacks.
Critics are rightly pointing out that, since the primary drone being deployed by Iran against the Gulf states is the Shahed-136, with a unit cost in the order of £20,000, the financial exchange rate is not exactly favourable.
Since the assets being protected are often valued at hundreds of million of pounds, though, the use of such expensive defence systems is regarded as justified: a successful hit far exceeds the price of the missile.
The trouble with that equation, though, is that Iran often sends their drones over in waves, as many as 1,000 launched in a single attack, so the cumulative costs begin to stack up.
Nevertheless, for Saudi, the Land Ceptor represents a bargain. Up to press, the Kingdom has been relying on US-made Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles, at a unit cost of $3.7-4 million (or more if system costs are included).
Total interceptor expenditure over the first 25 days of current conflict is estimated at between 250-350 missiles, potentially an expenditure well in excess of a $1 billion.
Burn rates for the Gulf coalition as a whole are that much higher, with Saudi and other Gulf Patriot batteries having fired 943 missiles, consuming roughly 18 months of global factory output in just four days. At the current rate of usage, missile stock could be depleted in a matter of weeks.
To that extent, the UK’s contribution must be welcome, but it does point to the fact that little has been done in the four years of war between Russia and Ukraine, where the use of Iranian Shahed-136 drones (renamed as Geran-2) has been a feature of the conflict.
For all those years, therefore, the UK and other powers (including the Gulf States) have been sitting on their hands, more or less as passive observers, apparently never imagining that they too might at some time have to face the same threat.
Instead, the UK, European powers and even the United States are still producing complex and hugely expensive defence systems which are not only unaffordable but unsustainable in the long-term as the rate of manufacture cannot replace the rapidly depleting stocks during times of intensive use.
Caught in what has come to be called the “drone trap”, where for every $1 Iran spends on attack drones, Saudi is having to spend between $80 and $600 on defence, an aggressor can wage asymmetric war at an economic level.
Almost too late the Saudis have woken up and, in the last two weeks have signed a “huge deal” with a Ukrainian manufacturer to buy large numbers of interceptors.
Doubtless, the way of the future is to use drones to kill drones, but there is still room for the “old school” approach of using anti-aircraft guns to down these drones. Here, the old Soviet ZSU-23-4 “Shilka”, quad, radar-guided 23mm cannon comes to mind.
Although first produced in the 1960s and long-superceeded by the more modern 2K22 Tunguska hybrid gun/missile system, it is still being used with effect by the Ukrainians to supplement their drone defences.
Also in use by the Ukrainians is the German mobile anti-aircraft system, the Gepard, based on the Leopard I tank chassis, mounting two radar-guided 35mm Oerlikon cannon. The system is preferred due to the much lower cost per engagement and higher availability of ammunition.
As I recall, the British Army once used a radar-guided version of the Bofors 40mm gun, specifically the L/70 (Light Anti-Aircraft Gun No. 12), which served as the primary light anti-aircraft weapon from 1953 until 1979 when it was replaced by the Rapier missile system.
Given the propensity of the (now) MoD to sell off obsolete weapons, I doubt any L/70s exist in British reserve stocks, although the Indian Army uses a heavily modernised version, which is now redesignated as its Drone Guard System (DGS), tasked specifically to counter UAVs.
However, Lithuania and the Netherlands used the system and, in 2023, donated their L/70 units to Ukraine. These are said to be highly effective at shooting down Shahed-type drones and protecting critical infrastructure. The weapon’s 40mm proximity-fused rounds are ideally suited for such slow-moving aerial targets.
Currently, the ultra-sophisticated British Army has moved on from the Rapier and is now fielding the Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM), better known as the Martlet – a version of which also equips the Royal Navy’s Wildcat helicopters. The land-based system is integrated with Saab’s Giraffe 1X 3D radar to provide a mobile air defence system known as the Rapid Sentry.
This has recently done good service in Iraq in the hands of the RAF Regiment when gunners at the Erbil airbase intercepted 14 one-way attack drones during a single swarm attack
It has been deployed to Bahrain along with UK experts who will work to integrate the system into Bahraini defence and, as part of the package announced yesterday by Healey, a system is on its way to Kuwait to strengthen air defences there.
In the economy stakes, it doesn’t do too badly by modern comparisons, with a cost per missile estimated at £50,000, but this still makes shooting down drones more expensive than flying them.
Interestingly, though, we haven’t seen the last of the Bofors. In 2024, the Swedish subsidiary of BAE Systems launched a “next generation” version of the gun using advanced 3P (Pre-fragmented, Programmable, Proximity-fuzed) ammunition, which can be programmed into six different modes (e.g., airburst, impact, or proximity) to shred drones or disable missile sensors.
Called the Tridon Mk 2 (pictured), it can be mounted on any suitable truck or other platform, and – financed by Sweden and Denmark – it is now being supplied to Ukraine. There, it is coupled with Saab’s Giraffe 1X radar, which provides detection out to roughly 75-100 km. It is significantly cheaper to operate against mass drone attacks, preserving expensive missiles for high-priority targets.
The package financed by Denmark and Sweden for Ukraine was valued at roughly $290 million (approx. £228 million) for an estimated 15–20 units, including the guns, the radars, spare parts, and ammunition. It is roughly comparable with the cost of the Rapid Sentry system, although vastly cheaper to operate – and massively cheaper than Sky Sabre.
Despite it having been developed by a British-owned company, though, the MoD has shown no formal interest in acquiring the Tridon system for our own armed forces, even though the gun – at the heart of the system – is specified for use on the Royal Navy’s new Type 31 Frigates.
It does seem to be the case, therefore, that the British government, through the MoD, is committed to acquiring ever more complex, expensive systems, even where cheaper weapons would do the job better, thus determined to overwhelm us to impotency.
This is why I am unlikely to join in with the throng of pundits calling for an increase in defence spending. The only result I can see from greater taxpayer-funded generosity is that the MoD will waste even more money on still more complex systems – of which Ajax is a prime example – creating a money pit that can never be filled.
