Recent articles from a variety of sources have claimed that Britain is buying the Iron Dome missile defence system from Israel to protect the Falklands, it’s not.

The UK is not buying Iron Dome. Land Ceptor and Giraffe AMB will however be integrated with the BMC4I functionality of Iron Dome to deliver the Sky Sabre comprehensive air defence capability.

A host of deals were agreed around the turn of the year but are only now becoming public. This includes award of a contract by the British to the Israeli company to supply a key battlefield command-and-control network for the Sky Sabre system. The main contract award, which the MoD valued at £78 million, was signed in January with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, to develop a battle management, command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (BMC4I) network.

Missile builder MBDA and surveillance radar supplier Saab have also been awarded contracts to integrate other, already ordered, ground-based air-defense system elements into the BMC4I.

Rafael, with help from UK partners Babcock, will supply its Modular, Integrated C4I Air & Missile Defense System and associated equipment in a development and manufacture phase likely to be completed around 2020.

Babcock will provide a proportion of UK based activity including: synthetic based test and integration facilities, project management and hardware procurement. The percentage of UK work content on BMC4I is put at 40% with the remainder coming from Israel.