The UK government revealed plans to produce up to 7,000 British-made long-range weapons as part of the Strategic Defence Review published yesterday (2 June) without any reference to type or timeline.
Long-range weapons offer deep strike and precision, which have a coveted effect in the modern battlespace as Ukraine has learned in its key strategic objectives to strike military targets deep inside Russia.
The UK Armed Forces will increasingly adopt these systems, increasing Army lethality by ten times, for aerial stand-off strike, to transforming aircraft carriers into hybrid airwings from which users will fire from the deck as part of the so-called ‘Atlantic Bastion’.
It is ironic that the SDR does not point to any particular type of system to produce on mass when the MoD already has numerous long-range programmes in the works.
The ambiguity may simply leave more room for manoeuvre, allowing the government to hedge their bets as programmes continue to mature in the coming years, at which point the MoD would provide extra investment in one of the many ongoing programmes.
Several programmes in the works
Most notably MBDA’s SPEAR 3, a 100-kilogramme air-to-surface cruise missile, also available as an electronic warfare variant, faces enduring delays. SPEAR 3 is delayed into the 2030s due to issues of integration with the F-35 fighter’s internal bay.
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By GlobalDataBizarrely, the Royal Air Force are testing SPEAR 3 from the Eurofighter Typhoon – not the F-35 – which will not operate the missile once it enters service.
Other existing long-range concepts include the Future Cruise Anti-Ship Weapon jointly developed among France, Italy, and the UK.
“We should be accelerating SPEAR 3. We should be getting the Future Cruise Anti-Ship weapon, both variants that we’re developing with the French, into service as soon as possible,” remarked Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, during a briefing after the SDR’s release on 2 June. Notably, these are programmes the SDR does not mention at all.
Meanwhile, other nascent programmes have emerged over the past year such as Project Brakestop, for which the UK government has approached sovereign industry to deliver a 500km effector to be launched from a mobile, land-based platform.
One more recent project emerged just last month as part of the Trinity House agreement between Germany and the UK in which the two allies intend to design and build a weapon with a range of up to 2,000km. Delivery is not expected until the 2030s.
Simultaneously, Germany are already pursuing a similar concept as part of a Nato group – including France, Italy, and Poland – under the European Long-range Strike Approach (ELSA), which established on the sidelines of the Washington summit in 2024.
While ELSA’s design remains vague at this early stage, the bilateral Trinity House endeavour may open up the possibility of the UK joining the programme as a prospective partner, especially given the “Nato-first” approach peddled throughout the SDR.
A strategic effect?
While there are many ideas for the system floating weightlessly throughout the SDR, the significance of long-range effects in the report has not gone unnoticed, especially since the weapon provides a strategic dimension to UK operations.
“By enabling deep strikes across borders, long-range missiles allow for the projection of strategic force while minimising the exposure of launch platforms to enemy retaliation—an advantage often lacking in shorter-range tactical systems,” said GlobalData analyst Harshavardhan Dabbiru.
Crucially, they also serve as powerful deterrents without crossing the nuclear threshold, providing armed forces with a critical middle ground between conventional and nuclear escalation.
“This approach enhances the UK’s ability to project strategic power while maintaining escalation control and strengthening operational readiness against the backdrop of a destabilised European security environment shaped by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” Dabbiru added.
