BRITAIN'S defences are to get a £2billion boost in a bid to counter the ongoing threat from Russian armed forced.
Often the Russian underwater vessels have only been discovered after colliding with private boats and now Government ministers are eager to plug the gap in defences with aircraft to track them.
Around a dozen top of the range planes will be bought for the RAF over the next two years.
These are likely to include the US developed Boeing Poseidon P8, designed for 'long-range anti-submarine warfare' and worth around £150million each.
The P8 jets look for magnetic fields under the water's surface.
Despite the promise of more austerity cuts in the coming months, the Government has been persuaded to invest in submarine detection due to increased aggression by Putin's forces.
A similar incident involved a trawler just off the coast of Scotland weeks earlier.
A senior defence source told The Sun: "There have been several occasions in the last five years where foreign submarines have entered British water.
"They have been detected more by chance than anything else because we have no means of monitoring their activity."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said the "full spectrum of submarine detection capability" would be reviewed this year.
Yesterday, Putin displayed the full scale of the military power available to him during the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow's Red Square.
The ex-KGB spy also accused the West of "ignoring" international rules in a speech likely to inflame tensions with Western powers.
Relations between Russia and Britain, the US and their Nato allies are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War following Putin's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea region last year
No comments:
Post a Comment