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12:09 28.04.2025 •
Russian missiles overwhelmed Britain in a war game based on the war in Ukraine.Defence chiefs simulated the first night of the war to test the UK’s air defences.
Air Commodore Blythe Crawford said: “It was not a pretty picture,” ‘The Sun’ quotes.
The drills suggested bases would be blown to smithereens and £100million fighter jets could get blitzed before they could hide.
Air Cdre Crawford, who ran the RAF’s Air and Space Warfare Centre, said it showed the UK “home base” was no longer safe.
The drills used a £36 million wargaming system to test the UK’s responses to “hundreds of different types of munitions” attacking from multiple different directions.
It exposed multiple vulnerabilities including a chronic shortage of airfields and a lack of hardened shelters for protect and hide jets on the ground.
The government sold off scores of airfields and watered-down the RAF's powers to commandeer civilian runways.
The UK has no Iron Dome-style air defence system to protect the home nations from incoming missiles.
The only British missiles that could intercept Russian ballistic missiles are based onboard the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers.
Air Cdr Crawford warned Britain had got lax by standing at the edge of Europe and "feeling as though the rest of the continent stood between us and the enemy".
He said: "Ukraine has made us all sit up.”
He warned that for decades military planners had assumed they were “safe to operate from the home base because most of the wars we've been fighting have been overseas”.
He said: “We need to reverse that thinking and assume that from here on, we're under threat in the home base now as well.”
His warning comes as the government prepares to unveil a blueprint for the future of UK armed forces.
The test took place on a simulator known as Gladiator.
But the results have not been revealed until now.
Addressing an Air and Missile Defence Conference at London-based RUSI think tank, Air Cmdr Crawford said: "We loaded night one of Ukraine into that synthetic environment and played it out against the UK and as you can imagine it was not a pretty picture.
“It reinforced the fact that we really need to get after this.”
The drills were stopped before bases were hit but it triggered an urgent review of the RAF’s resilience.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston said it was his duty to prepare for a “worst case scenario”.
Speaking in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where the US Pacific fleet was decimated by a surprise attack in 1941, he said: “There is a worst case scenario where things we hold dear, parts of the UK, are within range of Russian missiles.”
He added: “It sounds a bit Cold Warry, but there is a pressing requirement to remember how to do it.”
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