The Ministry of Defence has announced another modest but important step in the growth of Medium Range Ground Based Air Defence through the award of a 118 million pounds, 3-year contract to MBDA for 6 new “LAND CEPTOR missile launching systems” for the SKY SABRE batteries.

Unfortunately, the MOD persists in its use of extremely vague and inconsistent terminology so that it remains at present impossible to say for sure if they refer to individual launcher vehicles or actual systems as in Fire Groups. The MoD too often using "launcher" and SKY SABRE 'system' interchangeably and to this day uncertainty persists on the actual composition of SKY SABRE batteries.

The launcher vehicle is a single MAN SV 8x8 truck carrying a demountable launcher module with 8 MBDA CAMM missiles ready to fire, while a “system”, more correctly a Fire Group, by design would have 1 radar, 1 command and control module and 3 launchers, plus a number of additional MAN SV 4x4 vehicles to carry reloads and supporting stores.

According to Jane’s, in fact, under a separate deal connected to the new MBDA award, DE&S is also procuring 12 Fire Support Unit (FSU) trucks to carry reloads, 8 “baggage” vehicles and 8 “threat evaluation and weapon assignment systems”.

The MOD says that the new MBDA order will enable the “doubling” of deployable SKY SABRE systems, but, again, it is difficult to say what this exactly equates to. The 16 Royal Artillery Regiment is composed of 4 equipment batteries with SKY SABRE: 11, 14, 30 and 32.

In the past few years, these batteries have undergone an expansion in terms of personnel and equipment assigned, in order to make their 2 Fire Groups entirely independent. Until December 2024, the SKY SABRE batteries were sustaining 2 enduring out of area operations: the defence of the Falklands Islands and the defence of the airport of Rzeszów, in south-east Poland. As the individual batteries rotated into their Readiness period, the deploying formation split into 2 with one Fire Group in the Falklands and the other in Poland, a good 11,000 kilometres apart.

It is known, with photographic evidence, that the Fire Group in Poland had at least 2 launchers, possibly with a third in another spot, and the same is true of the Fire Group in the Falklands but it remains unclear whether the 16 RA actually owns enough launchers to outfit all batteries at the same time.

At least 3 batteries (11, 14 and 32) are known to have completed the double deployment and related expansion by the time Operation STIFFTAIL concluded in December 2024.

With the uncertainty on the nature of the current MBDA order, it cannot be said for sure if the new launchers will merely enable the completion of existing Fire Groups or if the MOD is talking about the formation of new ones.

6 new Fire Group “systems” proper would enable the formation of an additional 3 batteries (assuming SAAB UK was also awarded an additional order for the GIRAFFE AMB radar to complete the system). This would indeed deliver a near “doubling” of Medium Range GBAD capability as promised by the previous Chief General Staff, who had also announced the intent to “triple” SHORAD capability.

Rumours have it that 7 Air Defence Group will eventually become a 1-star command and gain a third regular Regiment. At present it comprises 12 RA (SHORAD), 16 RA (MRAD) and 106 RA (Reserve SHORAD).

To coincide with the MOD’s announcement of the new order, it also finally been confirmed that 16 Royal Artillery live fired SKY SABRE at the FORMIDABLE SHIELD 2025 exercise in the Hebrides back in May. We knew 16 RA was present, but earlier releases had only focused on very low level anti-UAS work with GPMGs.

FORMIDABLE SHIELD 25 marked "the 1st live firing on UK soil of the British Army’s SKY SABRE". 16 RA shot down an unspecified number of QinetiQ’s BANSHEE JET 80s target drones and a single Banshee Whirlwind (this type is propeller driven) during the exercise.

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