Land Ceptor does not replace naval area air defence

Should Britain invest in land-based air defence rather than relying on Type 45 destroyers?

Additional land-based cover would be useful, but Sky Sabre or Land Ceptor is not an area-air-defence substitute and responsibility for a new system would need resolving.

Stronger land-based surface-to-air cover would be useful, but any proposal must identify which service would own and operate it. The existing Land Ceptor or Sky Sabre family is distinct from a genuine area-air-defence system. Type 45 therefore cannot be treated as redundant merely because Britain fields a land-based missile battery. The exchange frames air defence as an institutional and force-structure problem as well as a question of missile performance.