UK Defence Review?? Check Ukraine's deep drone coup

What else do we need to say?

OK, I’ll say a couple of things, plus a little anecdote BTL.  

• Whatever defence money we can spare, it must at least stretch to keeping all military aircraft under cover … but then again, the list of potential targets is Just So Great
• Asymmetric warfare with a vengeance: which nation on earth has the greatest capacity to replicate Ukraine’s Big Idea on a massive strategic scale?  And which nation is possibly the most difficult on the planet to infiltrate with a load of foreign trucks ..?
• As with the Dambusters’ raid, now Ukraine needs to think how it defends against Russia retaliating exactly in kind.  (In 1943, but only after the raid, it suddenly occurred to some bright spark in the War Office that we’d better mount serious protective measures against British reservoirs being hit in the same way.) 
• Submarine-borne nuclear deterrence never looked more useful.  (If you can figure out who’s launched the attack …)

What else should we be thinking about?  But, to our alarmist brethren: please don’t say “Putin will now nuke Kharkiv” – because he won’t.

ND

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As a teenager, I was an avid aircraft spotter.  (Hard to believe, I know)  With three mates: and we were seriously organised.  At 6:00 a.m. we would cram into an old Ford Prefect or Austin 1100, and make elaborate, intricately-planned circuits of the south of England, OS maps carefully marked up, stopping off at vantage points overlooking RAF airfields, telescopes in hand.  Rarely were we chased off; frequently we were just a mere wire fence or even hedge away from costly aircraft.  (We once ducked through a hedge to photo a Victor bomber at a range of 100m at most.)

This was in the days of IRA outrages up and down the land and it occurred to us (though not, it would seem, the genius that was Martin McGuiness) that nothing could be easier than to strike at a couple of dozen RAF bases simultaneously, not of course with drones but with hand-carried semtex.  The IRA was replete with desperadoes who’d think nothing of it. 

The effects would have been considerable: hit the British establishment where it really hurt (prestige and prowess); minimise casualties, esp. civilian (if the IRA cared about such things); cause the deployment of tens of thousands of troops etc to guard vulnerable UK premises.  Tens?  Make that hundreds of thousands.

And that’s where we are today, I suggest:  i.e., nuclear deterrence is the only way.