The exotic location of the Arrcade Strike Drill, which the British Army conducted at the Charing Cross metro station in London, has already ensured special attention to it. According to photos of the headquarters deployed right on the station and the general phrases that it is a drill to repel russian aggression in the hypothetical year 2030, much more important details are hidden, which are already relevant now.
As reported by the UK Ministry of Defence, the main official goal of the war game was to test the ability to manage large-scale military operations involving about 100 thousand people. This was done by the headquarters of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), a structure designed to quickly deploy and take command of NATO's multinational land forces.
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The newly formed formation, the 9th Deep Reconnaissance and Strike Brigade, participated in the drill for the first time. Its task is to detect enemy targets at considerable distances and issue targeting instructions for missile systems as well as long-range drones. A key tool for the task is the digital headquarters platform based on artificial intelligence - Project Asgard, which was deployed during these exercises.
This system analyzes terabytes of data flowing from all sensors, satellites, intelligence sources and "helps commanders make decisions faster than the enemy can react." What is most important, it helps to deliver deep, high-precision strikes and accelerates the so-called "defeat chain" – the sequence of events from the moment a target is detected to its destruction.
Asgard was introduced into the British Army in the summer of 2025 after successful tests in Estonia during the Hedgehog exercises in May 2025. London assures that "this system will make the Army ten times more combat-ready over the next decade." They also note that it is part of a common digital target designation system for the Armed Forces, which is to be deployed in 2027 with funding of more than 1 billion pounds.
But it should be noted that the main problem of the British Army is that it has nothing to deliver strikes at significant distances. In 2025, it was said that the system would integrate the Dart 250 strike drone by Modini, with a flight range of 250 km and a warhead of 25 kg.
Since then, little has changed. For example the project to create a Brakestop cruise missile with a range of over 600 km and a warhead of 200-300 kg continues to be delayed. It is known that instead of starting production in 2025, in December last year only the start of testing was reported.
The project to create a Nightfall ballistic missile is facing similar difficulties. If initially the British military wanted a range of over 600 km and a warhead of 300 kg at a price of 500 thousand pounds for 1 missile, then at the beginning of 2026 the requirements were lowed to 500 km, 200 kg and 800 thousand pounds. But there was no news about progress in the creation of Nightfall either.
That is, despite the existence of a whole target designation system, there is no one to give these instructions to, even if the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters will be subordinate to ground units from other European NATO countries, which simply do not have their own long-range weapons with a range of more than 500 km. That is why calls are already being actively heard in EU countries for the urgent purchase of Ukrainian long-range solutions.
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