Badenoch's £10bn air defence plan points to growing concern over protecting UK's skies

The UK's air defence systems are facing growing concern over protecting its skies due to the increasing threat of long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

According to the government and Conservatives, the need for better air defences has been explicitly stated in their Strategic Defence Review published in 2025.

The Labour government is allocating up to £1bn to address this issue, while the Conservatives plan to spend £10bn over a decade.

Tories pledge £10bn for British anti-missile defence system

Currently the country has a number of systems to deal with short and medium-range threats – from drones to cruise missiles. But the armed forces still lack a weapons system to deal with long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

And those don't come cheap. Each interceptor used by the US Patriot missile system costs about $4m (£3m).

Sophisticated air defences that can deal with a range of threats are expensive. The US Army alone wants to increase its budget for both missiles and interceptors by fourfold next year – to $36bn (£27. 1bn).

Israel also spends a significant proportion of its $45bn annual military budget on air defences.

For the Conservatives there's also a presentation problem. Their original press release mentioned building a new air defence systems that would be