Warships to get ‘stop-gap’ missiles as threat from Putin increases

THE Ministry of Defence has been forced to fit warships with new missiles after the Ukraine war meant it had to “grab what it could” ahead of the Harpoon’s retirement.

Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, announced that 11 Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers will receive the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) to boost their long-range precision strike capabilities. It was decided that Harpoons, introduced in the 1980s, would no longer be used from 2023, leaving the Navy without surface-to-surface missiles for frigates and destroyers. A Navy source said that the decision was “reassessed” in light of Russia’s invasion.

They described the NSM capability, which can elude radar and defence systems by flying at sea-skimming altitude and using evasive manoeuvres, as a good “short-term solution”. They added that it was one the UK “could get our hands on quick enough before Harpoon goes out”. “What we can’t have is our warships not being able to engage the King’s enemies at range,” they said.

The decision not to replace Harpoon has been known since 2016, with Naval sources warning that it was “like Nelson deciding to get rid of his cannons and go back to muskets”. Some criticised the Government for a lack of long-term planning, given an increasingly threatening Russia and China.

Admiral Lord West, former first sea lord, said the Government had been “very shortsighted”. “We knew Harpoon was going to go and it is extraordinary we were willing to say there will be a gap,” he said.

“We should always be thinking that we might have to fight tomorrow,” he said. “That’s the reality. It was not good that we hadn’t put in place a sensible missile to replace Harpoon.”

Lord West described the fifth-generation missile, which uses integrated sensors and autonomous target recognition to strike targets on land at more than 115 miles, as a “stopgap”. “If there is a mistake by happenstance, suddenly we could have a war between Nato and Russia which means we could be fighting at sea and we need to be ready to fight at short notice,” he said. Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defence Select Committee, said short-term thinking in the Government was “all too common”.

The NSM will be fitted to three vessels “at pace” and will be ready for operations onboard the first Royal Navy vessel in more than 12 months.

The missile system will be integrated in UK Dockyards through Babcock and BAE with Norwegian support.

Britain promised to send helicopters to Ukraine for the first time in a new £50million package. Three Sea Kings, the first of which has already arrived in Ukraine, will form part of the bundle, as well as 10,000 rounds of artillery ammunition. The shells come on top of a commitment by Britain to ship 1,000 surface-to-air missiles and 125 anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine.