Britain has limited means to fight back after years of underinvestment

The expansion of Donald Trump's war against Iran to a British base in Cyprus is a nightmare for the UK, which lacks adequate air defences and only has a limited capacity to fight back.

Sir Keir Starmer talks reassuringly about how his military has bolstered its forces in the Middle East, including with the deployment of a squadron of Typhoon warplanes to Qatar, while six F-35 fighter jets are operating out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.

But these aircraft have very limited stockpiles of munitions, and neither model is the sort of thing that should be used for shooting down drones - they are far more sophisticated, designed for much more capable enemies and their air-to-air missiles are vastly more expensive than the contraption they're up against.

The jets can take down cruise missiles but a much more effective piece of equipment for that task is the army's Sky Sabre air defence system.

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It is unclear whether one of these has been deployed.

The Ministry of Defence by contrast has confirmed that ground troops specialised in countering drones are in the region - though they failed to take out the single attack drone that crashed into a runway at RAF Akrotiri on Sunday night.

Then there is the threat posed by Iran's arsenal of short and medium-range ballistic missiles.

The regime does not have intercontinental missiles capable of reaching the UK mainland, but they could fly as far as Cyprus as well as across the Middle East.

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Yet, the only piece of British military kit capable of blasting this kind of weapon out of the sky is the Type 45 destroyer.

The Royal Navy has six of these warships, but only three are available for deployment and, as of Monday, it is not thought that any were in the region.

If you rewind a decade, Britain had a much bigger naval presence in the Gulf, with one, if not two warships operating out of Bahrain, along with four minehunters and a vast support ship.

Today there are none.

Instead, when it comes to Cyprus and other British Middle East interests, the UK is relying on the US President's "armada" of aircraft carriers and other warships to deal with the ballistic missile threat.

It is an uncomfortable reality, especially as there are several thousand British troops spread across Cyprus, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq and Israel, while some 300,000 British citizens are in the region.

With Iran lashing out in response to the American and Israeli attack, Mr Starmer on Sunday U-turned on a decision not to allow US warplanes to launch strikes against Iran from British bases.

The prime minister justified his change of heart by saying he now thought it was a legitimate request in self-defence provided the Americans only go after Iran's ballistic missile stores and the launchers that fire the weapons.

He said Britain was not taking part in these strikes at the moment - but clearly this is a position that could also change, especially if more British interests are hit.

Though that too raises awkward questions about the UK's ability to launch strikes.

The Typhoon jets and - to a more limited degree - the F-35 warplanes carry bombs that could destroy Iranian missile launchers, according to Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

If fitted with Storm Shadow cruise missiles, the Typhoon jets could also blast the entrance of heavily-protected storage depots where the Iranian military keeps its missile stocks, well protected underground. This would make it impossible for them to be used.

But a larger weapon would be far better for that kind of offensive operation.

The best option for the UK would be a Tomahawk cruise missile launched from one of the navy's attack submarines.

Yet, problems with the maintenance of the five Astute-class boats in the fleet and a shortage of crews mean there have been chunks of time when none of these submarines were at sea.

The situation has improved slightly and earlier this year the government made a rare announcement about the deployment of one of the boats, which is usually kept secret.

It said HMS Anson was visiting Australia - not particularly useful for a war in the Middle East.

Defence insiders say the sorry state of the UK armed forces is the hard reality of a failure by successive governments over decades to invest in more weapons to blast missiles and drones out of the sky as well as the munitions to strike back.

It is now all looking a bit too late.

(c) Sky News 2026: Britain has limited means to fight back after years of underinvestment