\n<\/p>\n
Britain should work with Nato allies in developing an integrated air and missile defence system following the incursion of nearly 20 Russian drones into Poland, according to two authors of the UK strategic defence review.<\/p>\n
Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser, said that Russia was \u201ctesting the limits\u201d of Europe\u2019s defences at a time when the military commitment of the US to Nato was uncertain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe message from this is that there needs to create an integrated air and ballistic missile defence system \u2013 and that Europeans are going to have to realise they will have to do this themselves,\u201d said Hill, who was part of the three-strong team.<\/p>\n
The independent defence expert said that while the US says they \u201cstand by [their] allies\u201d, such words mean nothing because they would be unlikely to be accompanied by extra American military deployments to defend Nato\u2019s eastern flank.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump had \u201cno desire to go to war, except at home\u201d, Hill said, citing the US president\u2019s repeated comments that he would like to deploy the military in Chicago in an extreme effort to crack down on crime.<\/p>\n
Poland\u2019s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Monday that three or four out of 19 Russian drones were shot down, raising concerns that the interception rate was relatively low and that Moscow could cause more serious damage in future. Some of the drones flew over a hundred miles into Polish airspace.<\/p>\n
Gen Alexus Gregory <\/strong>Grynkewich, Nato\u2019s supreme allied commander for Europe, said that he had \u201clow confidence\u201d in the drone numbers previously reported, suggesting the defenders were not immediately clear what they were dealing with.<\/p>\n But, speaking at press conference in Lithuania, the military commander said: \u201cBased on the lessons from these events, we\u2019re going to continue to work to improve our ability to defend every single inch of alliance airspace.\u201d<\/p>\n British officials indicated that an agreement signed with Ukraine called Project Octopus to jointly develop large numbers of drones to intercept Russian Shaheds could also be deployed in Poland as well as in Ukraine.<\/p>\n <\/span>Defence secretary John Healey spoke about Russia at the DSEI arms fair.<\/span> Photograph: Ben Whitley\/PA<\/p>\n John Healey, the defence secretary, told the DSEI arms fair in London that the UK had to be \u201cmore ready to fight\u201d in a war in order to deter growing Russian aggression \u2013 and that weapons like the Project Octopus drones would serve both British and Ukrainian interests in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we get is the learning from the Ukrainians,\u201d Healey said. \u201cWhat we get is the shared IP [intellectual property]. What we get are the products of what we produce with the Ukrainians available for ourselves and our own armed forces, not just to supply the Ukrainians and their defence.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, Healey said that he had asked the British military to consider how the UK could bolster Poland\u2019s air defences. Another option under consideration is to contribute RAF Typhoon jets to an enlarged air policing mission in eastern Europe \u2013 six of the fighters were on Nato duty as part of a rotating mission earlier this summer.<\/p>\n The former army general Sir Richard Barrons, a second member of the defence review team, said that the number of drones involved indicated \u201cit was clearly a deliberate incursion\u201d by Russia, although the fact that they appeared to be Gerbera decoy drones rather than armed Shaheds meant it was \u201ca minor act of provocation\u201d.<\/p>\n The drone incursion demonstrated, Barrons said, that existing Nato defences were \u201cwell short of dealing with what is a small tactical problem\u201d. He added that using fighter jets to shoot down drones was \u201cmassive overkill\u201d but that it was necessary to \u201cstep up quite quickly to improve medium to low level air defence\u201d.<\/p>\n He also argued that preventing missile and drone attacks over western airspace \u201camounted to defending on the goal line\u201d and that effective deterrence would require shooting down Russian jets launching attacks into western airspace. Such an approach, however, is unlikely to find favour with politicians who emphasise that Nato is a defensive alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Britain should work with Nato allies in developing an integrated air and missile defence system following the incursion of nearly 20 Russian drones into Poland, according to two authors of the UK strategic defence review. Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser, said that Russia was \u201ctesting the limits\u201d of Europe\u2019s defences at a time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1206,10276,327,320,1988,1968,328,523,392,514],"class_list":{"0":"post-20622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-counter","10":"tag-defence","11":"tag-experts","12":"tag-missile","13":"tag-nato","14":"tag-policy","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-system","17":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}