Ted Jeffery is co-founder of Defence On The Brink

Kemi Badenoch is right: Britain needs better air defences. If you’ve spent five minutes researching Britain’s glaring lack of anti-missile and counter-drone systems, it won’t take long to see how exposed we are to an attack.

So although the Tories are right with their analysis about the dire state of our air defences, their proposal, the patriotically named Britannia Shield, is less of a fix and more of a back of the fag packet idea designed to grab headlines.

Bringing together advanced radar systems and interceptor missiles, shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge says the cost will be in the region of £10bn over 10 years; given there is very little detail as to what Britannia Shield is actually set to look like, it is difficult to tell whether this is a conservative estimate. Analysts who know what they are talking about estimate that, if the real aim is to cover the whole of the UK in an air-defence dome, the price tag could exceed the nuclear deterrent budget: £3bn a year. Don’t forget, the armed forces need people to man and maintain these systems. We struggle with recruitment and retention enough as it is.

Many, including Tories who should know better, have compared this proposal to Israel’s Iron Dome. However, that comparison misunderstands not just the geography but the nature of the threats both nations face. The Iron Dome was constructed to stop short-range rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon across a country about the size of Wales. Britain doesn’t face that threat.

Instead, we are faced with the very realistic prospect of Russian cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and long-range drones fired in mass waves. Many might say this is alarmist rhetoric, but with regular stories of Russian drone incursions in NATO airspace and reported plots of an Iranian operation spider web-style drone attack on RAF Fairford, we have to come to terms with the new age of warfare, fast.

Whether we like it or not, the wars that we once thought were thousands of miles away have been brought to our front doors. Russia and Iran, who have been adversaries of ours for years, have now decided they are no longer afraid to probe the UK’s hollowed-out defences and wreak havoc.

Assess how many military bases, intelligence buildings, airports, ports, government buildings, and energy infrastructure would need protecting, in addition to key cities; the next question is what exactly the Tories are proposing falls under this air-defence umbrella. Are they proposing a system that protects only military bases and critical national infrastructure, or are they including Britain’s 35-40 commercial airports?

Britain could take a leaf from Israel’s book on its layered air defence system, which includes medium- and long-range ballistic missile defences such as David’s Sling and Arrow. This is what the Tories should have been announcing today—a detailed plan for layered defences that covers everything from ballistic missile threats to FPV drones. Right now, with only a couple of Type-45s at sea and their anti-ballistic upgrade still being fitted, we’d struggle to stop something like Russia’s Oreshnik.

The one thing we’ve learned over the past few years is that cheap and malleable drones are the preferred instrument of destruction for Russia and Iran. Both countries have used kamikaze drones to attack both military and civilian targets at a fraction of the cost of standard missiles. If Britain faced such attacks, the current proposal would be to use £1 million interceptor missiles to take down £20,000 one-way attack drones. The money speaks for itself, and as the United States found during its war with Iran, its THAAD stocks ran dangerously low; meanwhile, Tehran built up an arsenal of cheap Shahed drones.

Going forward, any proposal must consider cost-effective counter-drone alternatives that don’t end up crippling Britain’s missile stockpiles or bank account. The much-anticipated DragonFire laser, set to be fitted to Royal Navy destroyers over the next couple of years, is a promising start. Still, with very few operational Type-45s, more investment is needed in areas such as electronic jamming and interceptor drones.

The 14-year Tory hollowing argument might seem a little knackered by now, but for millions it remains a sore point. Successive Conservative governments cut ground-based air defence back to almost nothing. So although their urgency on this issue is welcome, many taxpayers will ask: can we really trust a party that can’t even deliver mass-scale, billion-pound projects like HS2 to build an air defence system that is not just effective, but on time and on budget?

Kemi’s shield is optimistic, but sadly, at this stage it is little more than an undefined aspiration. A good headline and soundbite, but it leaves analysts with more questions than answers. Britain does need a shield. But the Tories need to tell us what it covers, who mans it and how they’ll pay for it.