British Army moves to restore long-range anti-tank strike

The British Army is moving to restore a beyond-line-of-sight anti-armour capability more than 30 years after Swingfire left service, with MBDA and Thales awarded contracts to explore a new weapon system, Defence Readiness and Industry Minister Luke Pollard has announced.

Speaking at DVD 2026, Pollard said the work would examine technologies for a weapon able to engage armoured targets beyond direct line of sight, improving the ability of British land forces to strike from greater distance while reducing their exposure on the battlefield.

He said: “And thirdly, I can also announce today that we have awarded contracts to MBDA and Thales to explore how we can develop the tech behind a new beyond-line-of-sight anti-armour weapon system, a capability that the British Army has not had since Swingfire, left service over 30 years ago, a capability that can drastically improve the ability of our land forces to strike and survive on the modern battlefield.”

Swingfire was a wire-guided anti-tank missile developed for the British Army and notable for its ability to turn sharply after launch, allowing the firing vehicle to remain concealed while the missile was guided onto a target from another position.

Its withdrawal left the Army without an equivalent long-range ground-launched anti-armour system able to engage targets beyond direct line of sight, with more recent anti-tank weapons generally centred on shorter-range engagements.

The new work with MBDA and Thales forms part of the Army’s wider Recce Strike concept, which is intended to combine surveillance, targeting, drones, armoured vehicles and longer-range weapons into a more connected force.

Pollard described the approach as being built around “better targeting, better battlefield surveillance and more lethal long range fire” , with the aim of improving both the speed and effectiveness of targeting.

The Government is committing more than £19 billion to land warfare capabilities over the next four years, alongside £11 billion for weapons and ammunition.

That includes £190 million for short-range ballistic missiles, £400 million for inexpensive one-way attack drones and weapons, and £220 million for Project Nyx, which is intended to develop armed autonomous aircraft capable of operating alongside Apache attack helicopters.

Another £370 million is being spent on Project Asgard, the digital command-and-control architecture supporting the Army’s Recce Strike model.

Pollard said: “That’s about improving the lethality and delivering against CGS’s 20:40:40 strategy, which has been baked into the Defence Investment Plan. Now, that will be collectively a higher resolution picture of the battlefield and increase the effectiveness and speed of our targeting.”

The new anti-armour work is also being tied directly to lessons from Ukraine, where long-range fires, drones and distributed targeting have changed how armoured forces are detected and engaged.

Pollard said: “Now, these are just three procurements that will not only demonstrate how we’re evolving operationally in response to the lessons from Ukraine, but they’re programmes that demonstrate how we have reformed our procurement processes in response to what we’ve learned from our friends in Ukraine.”

The MBDA and Thales contracts are therefore an early step towards restoring a capability absent from the Army for decades, while fitting into a wider effort to connect reconnaissance and long-range strike more closely across the land force.