A new generation of British missile capable of taking out Iranian drones and missiles has been lined up for delivery to the country's Middle East allies next month, it has been announced.
John Healey, the UK’s Defence Secretary, has said the AI start-up Cambridge Aerospace has been granted a Middle East contract for “hundreds of new missiles and launchers”.
The interceptor supplies will be ready for use by the UK armed forces deployed in the region, as well as its allies, “within weeks”. Less than two years after it was founded, Cambridge Aerospace has developed the tube-launched drone killer to take out incoming bomber swarms.
Speaking at the London Defence Conference, Mr Healey said a new era of threat had arrived with the Iran war. “We're going to see from [Cambridge Aerospace] within weeks hundreds of new interceptor missiles and launchers that we'll be able to put to our own forces and our allies within the Middle East to reinforce the air defences and then deterrence beyond that.”
The interceptor missile is known as Skyhammer and is designed to counter Shahed-style attack drones. The first deliveries are scheduled for May.
The interceptor has a range of 30km and a maximum speed of 700kph, according to a statement. The UK government said the initiative emerged from last month’s round-table event in London, at which representatives from 13 major UK defence companies met Gulf ambassadors and defence attachés to explore new industry support for regional allies. Skyhammer is reportedly jet-powered and can manoeuvre in flight thanks to built-in radar.
The Gulf ambassadors' liaison group is one of a number of steps the UK took to support self-defence operations among its long-standing Gulf allies after the start of the US-Iran war. Mr Healey said the UK should be judged on its actions in the Middle East rather than Donald Trump’s social media posts.
“I’d rather our actions spoke for themselves [but] if you look, even in this current conflict, the basing permissions that we in the UK have agreed with the US have been invaluable to their military operations,” he said.
“In northern Iraq, our RAF regiment has been, almost daily, taking down drones and jointly protecting US forces and that joint base we’ve got with them. If we focus on our actions rather than just simply the exchange of words and social media posts, then the fundamentals for me remain.”
Hormuz Strait
Meanwhile, Mr Healey's deputy, Luke Pollard, warned that accepting tolls in the Strait of Hormuz following the conflict could have an equally damaging spill-over to the Red Sea, where Iran-linked Houthi forces are arrayed.
“To be open, the Strait of Hormuz needs to be open for all international traffic with freedom of navigation – with no tolls,” he said. “So if we accept tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, it would encourage other nations to do exactly the same – other adversarial nations.
“If you’re thinking about the Houthis, for instance, on the other side of the Middle East, doing a similar type of thing in the Red Sea. It would not help our international situation if we accept that Iranian position, which we do not accept.”
British officials from Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the head of the armed forces and the head of the diplomatic service have toured the Gulf in recent days to strengthen co-operation after weeks of Iranian attacks on civilian targets.
Mr Starmer said on Friday that he used a call with Donald Trump to set out the views of Gulf states.
“I had a discussion with President Trump last night and set out to him the views of the region here, these Gulf states are the neighbours of Iran, and therefore, if the ceasefire is to hold – and we hope it will – it has to involve them,” he said.
“They have very strong views on the Strait of Hormuz. We spent most of the time on the call talking about the practical plan that’s going to be needed to get navigation through the strait and the role that the UK is playing.”
The UK has been working to bring together a coalition of countries to come up with a plan to get shipping moving through the vital route for global oil and gas supplies, which Iran has effectively shut down.
