Britain ‘must invest in Iron Dome as world war looms’

Britain must invest in an Iron Dome defence system, a former US national security adviser said as he warned that another world war was on the horizon.

General HR McMaster also urged the Government and the US to spend 4 per cent of GDP on the military because “it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to prevent a war than have a fight”.

Asked by Andrew Marr on LBC whether the UK should have an Iron Dome system, which Israel uses to intercept and destroy rockets, he said: “I think that every country is going to have to develop these kinds of defences and long-range missiles.”

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said last month that the UK was in “live conversations” to develop an Iron Dome.

Gen McMaster, who served as national security adviser between 2017 and 2018, said: “I think it’s quite urgent for the United Kingdom, the United States, for all nations to invest more in defence.

“What we’ve seen is we have a huge gap in our defence, industrial base, and in the capacity of all of our services, as well as suffering from a bow wave of deferred modernisation.

“So I go back to what George Marshall said about the lead into the Second World War. He said: ‘When you have the time, you don’t have the money. And when you have the money, you don’t have the time.’

So it’s important, I think, to spend now on defence, recognising that it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to prevent a war than to have to fight.”

When asked if he believed the UK should raise defence spending to three per cent, General McMaster said: “How about four per cent? That would be a historic low relative to Cold War levels.”