Britain to get £10bn ‘Iron Dome’ as Badenoch warns ‘the threat is here’

Kemi Badenoch has pledged £10bn to build a nationwide air-defence network, promising a British equivalent of Israel’s missile shield as the Conservatives seek to make defence spending a central dividing line with Andy Burnham’s government.

The proposed “Britannia Shield” would combine radar, command-and-control infrastructure, interceptor missiles and counter-drone technology to protect the UK, its sovereign territories and British military bases overseas. The Conservatives say the programme would cost about £1bn a year for a decade and form part of their commitment to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2030.

The proposal reflects a growing debate across Europe over whether existing air-defence capabilities are sufficient for an era of cheap drones, ballistic missiles and increasingly sophisticated long-range weapons.

Badenoch described the programme as one of the largest military investments since the Cold War, arguing that the character of warfare had changed rapidly.

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“The world will not wait for Britain to get ready. War has returned to Europe. Missiles and drones are transforming warfare in the Middle East,” she told the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.

“Cheap weapons can now threaten cities, military bases and critical infrastructure in ways that would have sounded like science fiction a generation ago.”

“The threat is here. Britain must be ready. And Britannia Shield will help make sure we are.”

The Conservatives argue that Britain currently lacks an equivalent to the US Patriot system and relies heavily on Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers for aspects of ballistic missile defence. A nationwide system would therefore represent a significant shift towards a more integrated approach, linking sensors, command networks and weapons capable of responding to different types of attack.

The financial commitment is also intended to underline the Conservatives’ argument that defence spending can no longer be treated as a secondary claim on government resources.

Badenoch said the programme was necessary because “only Government can defend the country”, while accusing Labour of failing to commit sufficient resources to national security.

“Yet Labour still will not commit the money Britain needs for defence,” she said. “They keep pouring billions into a broken welfare system while leaving our security underfunded.”

The Conservatives propose financing their wider defence plans by reinstating the two-child benefit cap and reforming housing benefits, making the proposed shield part of a broader argument about competing demands on public spending.

Labour rejected the proposal and instead attacked the Conservatives’ record in government.

“Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives hollowed out our armed forces, leaving our army at the smallest size since the Napoleonic era,” a Labour spokesman said.

The government argues that it is already delivering a sustained increase in defence spending, including £1bn for air defence, and remains committed to spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035.

The competing proposals point to a difficult fiscal and strategic calculation. Building an integrated missile-defence system would require not only substantial upfront investment in interceptors and radar, but also long-term spending on maintenance, ammunition, personnel and technological upgrades.

There is also a question over the extent to which any national shield could protect Britain from the full range of threats. Modern air warfare increasingly combines drones, cruise missiles, ballistic weapons and electronic warfare, potentially placing significant demands on sensors and interceptors.

The debate is nevertheless moving beyond the traditional question of the size of Britain’s armed forces towards the resilience of the infrastructure they are expected to defend.

For the Conservatives, Britannia Shield is an attempt to turn that vulnerability into a major political argument over the scale and urgency of defence spending. For Labour, the dispute is also a contest over how Britain should finance its competing priorities while expanding military expenditure.

The proposed £10bn programme therefore carries significance beyond the hardware itself. It is a test of whether Britain is prepared to commit sustained resources to defending cities and critical infrastructure against a generation of weapons that are becoming cheaper, more numerous and harder to deter.