Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 11 February 2026. © Richard Kemp
America is going into ‘burst mode’, seriously ramping up production of vital missile stocks. Recent commercial framework agreements with the Department of War for ground attack systems and interceptors aim to increase output up to four times current rates to meet global demand unprecedented since 1945.
According to a recent contract announcement, the US will raise production of the well-known, very powerful Tomahawk cruise missile to ‘more than 1,000’ per year. Output of the Amraam beyond-visual-range weapon, America’s premier air-to-air missile at the moment, will rise to ‘at least 1,900’ annually. Manufacture of the SM-6, one of the few defensive weapons able to shoot down hypersonic threats, will rise to ‘more than 500’ annually. Production of the complex SM-3, able to engage ballistic missiles or even satellites flying outside the atmosphere, will also rise.
Meanwhile Britain is taking its customary plodding approach to the same problem. Knowledgeable observers have suggested that our munitions stocks – from rifle bullets and artillery shells to long range missiles and drones – would see out only about a week of intensive fighting. That’s even taking account of the fact that our Armed Forces are now very small, having been repeatedly hollowed out by successive governments. Even the handful of soldiers and tanks we could put into the field would be out of ammo in a matter of days.
We haven’t been firing a lot ourselves in recent years, but we have given much of the little we had to Ukraine, with the cupboards now worryingly bare.
How did we get into this parlous condition in the first place? The answer is that after the Cold War ended, Britain – like the rest of Western Europe – did not expect any more large-scale state-on-state wars. Our generals planned only for short-term limited overseas conflicts. Our Armed Forces were sized and stocked for counter terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq style conflicts and limited precision strikes. That meant lean stockpiles rather than warehouses full of shells and missiles.
To save money we also shifted to just-in-time manufacturing which (more…)