European allies are struggling to supply Saudi Arabia with more air defence weapons as they are needed for protection against the Russian threat, military analysts have told The National.
Saudi Arabia is pressing for more air defence systems to counter rebel Houthi attacks, but defence sources have disclosed that Britain and France cannot “strip out” systems without weakening the deterrent against Russia in the Baltics.
Britain is among the European allies who are sending significant arms supplies to Ukraine including a reported consignment this week of Stormshadow cruise missiles to strike Russian military infrastructure.
But Dr Lynette Nusbacher, a former military intelligence officer, said Saudi Arabia remains in urgent need of more air defence capabilities from Britain, France, Italy and the US.
“They need it because they are a big country,” she said. “They've got a lot of big targets that are easily spottable on Google Earth and they're up against people who have got sufficient ballistic missiles.”
The kingdom’s vulnerability has been demonstrated by the Houthi missile attack on King Khalid International Airport last Saturday that killed 12 people and injured 309. This suggests that Yemeni rebels are more willing to attack civilian targets and given Saudi Arabia is five times the size of Ukraine it needs more defences.
But with commitments to Eastern Europe and the desperate need in Ukraine for missile and drone interceptors, the cupboard is bare in many western countries.
France has announced it will send defensive military systems to cover the key Red Sea port of Yanbu but has not given details of the equipment in question.
Empty locker
“We have very little left in the locker to give,” a UK defence source said. “We really have nothing to send over to them.”
Britain already has a battery of Sky Sabre air defence systems at King Fahd Air Base, operated by 16th Regiment Royal Artillery but sending more would mean taking them from Eastern Europe, where British and French armoured deployments are intended to deter Moscow from invading.
“If they ask the UK to send them more Sky Sabre, where will they get it?” Dr Nusbacher said. “Well, the answer is we've got to strip it out of the Baltics.”
The analyst, who has warned of the dangers of a spreading global conflict, said withdrawing defences from Eastern Europe would weaken a key deterrent at a time when Russia was testing western resolve.
“What we see here is that we are being asked to dislocate combat power,” she said. “The French are being asked to dislocate combat power from Eastern Europe, from one theatre of this wider war to another theatre of this war.”
A reduction in air defence deployments, she argued, could encourage Russia to become “even more kinetic”.
American Patriot systems in the Middle East have been prioritised to protect US bases, with spare interceptors already drawn down from western Pacific stocks.
But a western diplomatic source said Saudi Arabia is keen for Britain to take a greater role in its defence. “The Saudis are desperate for more UK involvement,” the source said.
“It is seen still as a reliable, trustworthy partner with military capabilities and they would hugely welcome greater UK involvement. They need hardware in terms of air defence systems and are desperate for more of that.”
It is understood that until recently the kingdom had been firing five to seven interceptors at each incoming missile, but to conserve stocks was now using only a couple at a time.
Destroyers and jets
Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Eye, said Britain could offer a small number of Rapid Ranger systems, which can mount Starstreak and Martlet missiles for short-range air defence.
“We've only got a couple of dozen of those and we've already deployed some in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Britain could send a Type-45 destroyer into the southern Red Sea to provide ballistic missile defence and deploy RAF Typhoon fighters to Saudi Arabia, as it did to cover the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain earlier in the year.
France and Italy could potentially provide their SAMP/T systems that are armed with the highly effective Aster interceptors but again they already have commitments.
Britain is expected to provide intelligence gathered through surveillance satellites and, potentially, listening stations in Cyprus, including facilities in the Troodos Mountains, to monitor Houthi activity.
'Malign actors' motivated
Joe Walker-Cousins, a former UK diplomatic official who has spent 25 years working in the Middle East and is now based in Saudi Arabia, said Britain should discretely offer more diplomatic and intelligence support.
The UK had major commitments in Ukraine and the Baltic states, but meanwhile the Middle East was “becoming increasingly uncertain”.
“Investment in air defence must become a much greater priority, not just so we can stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in the Gulf but also back home,” he said, speaking from Riyadh.
“Britain is a global player and must be prepared to meet its global commitments,” he added. “That requires a major and sustained increase in defence spending. Anything less leaves Britain and its allies perilously exposed and projects a weakness that only encourages malign actors to push further.”