The £483m contract to develop this cutting-edge air defense system - known as Sea Ceptor - is being awarded to UK industry.

The system uses a new UK-developed missile capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 3 and will have the ability to deal with multiple targets simultaneously, protecting an area of around 500 square miles (1,300 square kilometres) over land or sea.

Sea Ceptor will be developed under a demonstration contract with MBDA (UK) that is expected to last for five years.

This contract will sustain around 500 jobs in MBDA and its supply chain in key locations across the UK such as Stevenage, Filton and Lostock.

Minister for Defense Equipment, Support and Technology Peter Luff said:

"The development of this missile system is a huge boost to the UK's world-leading missile industry and once again proves our commitment to providing battle-winning technology for our Armed Forces.

"The introduction of this cutting-edge missile system will not only ensure that the Royal Navy will be able to continue protecting our interests wherever they may be, but is also highly significant in sustaining and developing the UK's skill in building complex weapons."

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope said:

"This new weapon system will equip our frigates to deal with the type of sophisticated missile threat expected in the coming decades. Investment in advanced defense technology, such as Sea Ceptor, is vital to ensure the Royal Navy's continued ability to defend the UK's interests wherever necessary."

Chief of Defense Materiel Bernard Gray said:

"There is no room for complacency when it comes to providing the Armed Forces with the kit that they require and the development of Sea Ceptor is testament to the forward-thinking attitude of the MOD. While we are committed to providing our Armed Forces with the kit they need now it is also vital that we have one eye on the future and the threats that may face us."

Sea Ceptor has been designed for initial use on the Type 23 frigate to replace the Sea Wolf air defense system when it goes out of service in 2016 and it is planned that it will be used on the Type 26 Global Combat Ship. Its flexible design also means that it could in future be adapted for use by the Army and RAF.

The Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Submarine Combat Systems Group have joined contractors Babcock in successfully delivering major packages of work during the Revalidation and Assisted Maintenance Periods (RAMPs) for HMS Trenchant and HMS Talent, the last of which completed last month. The result is a significant uplift in the operational capabilities of both submarines.

The size of the combat system work packages for each RAMP was a step up from those undertaken previously which meant that the Combat Systems Group, Babcock and the Project Contract Manager Team at Devonport needed to work even more closely together and carefully review all processes to get the job done in time.

The nature and complexity of the system upgrades meant that some new equipment was immature when accepted into the package, while still having to achieve the qualifications required to be fitted on a submarine. Guidance information needed to be fully developed, and contractual and financial elements finalised.

Interdependencies between each of the individual upgrades meant all the individual parts of the work had to be delivered for the whole to be achieved.

Failure by an individual project to deliver was not an option. To delay the upgrades until the next appropriate fit opportunity would deny the Royal Navy's fleet a capability advantage.

This approach was met with scepticism by some who did not fully understand how quickly combat system equipment has to evolve to stay current in the face of new technology and obsolescence. The front line demands the very latest capability it can get.

Along with the normal maintenance and defect rectification that takes place during a RAMP, 14 interdependent combat system alterations and additions were completed on Trenchant, and 14 on Talent, together with a sizeable package of work on legacy combat system equipment.

The volume of work required a large number of independent project teams at Abbey Wood to deliver their element of the project on time.

Sound co-ordination and proficient programme management by the Submarine Combat Systems Group was vital in ensuring they delivered on their promises and therefore built on the confidence and rapport that developed as the projects evolved.

Project staff admitted that things did not always run smoothly. But thanks to the pragmatic and flexible approach of Babcock and the project managers, and with a high level of trust being built between them, problems were overcome.

The expertise and unique capability of Babcock in delivering submarine support and offering solutions to emergent problems without doubt ensured that success was achieved in partnership with the DE&S Submarine Combat Systems Group.

Submarine Combat Systems Group team leader, Captain Pat O'Neill, said:

"While I was always confident in the delivery of these extensive work packages, others were less certain of the outcome. I am therefore very pleased that through excellent teamworking and professionalism the MOD and industry team has succeeded.

"It is vitally important that with fewer submarines than we once had, but with many operational commitments still to be met, we are able to deliver combat system updates at any scale within the normal maintenance cycles, and we have demonstrated this on these platforms.

"They now sail with systems that deliver the latest capability requirements and at the same time embody new technology which will dramatically decrease future support costs and enhance system reliability."

Add in your 150-knot (278km/h) speed, a keen wind, a rolling sea state, a touch of mist, a black night, and you can see why landing an aircraft on a ship is probably the most difficult task most pilots will ever face.

Welcome to the deck of one of the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, due in service by the end of the decade. Well, not quite the real carrier, which is under construction at Rosyth. This is BAE Systems' simulator at Warton, the only one in the world where the F-35 aircraft meets the future pride of the 2020 Royal Navy.

But this is not about training pilots, nor honing the skills of the personnel whose deck-based task is to guide the aircraft in safely.

This is about designing the flight deck, making sure its massive array of coloured lights and lenses, deck markings and arrestor gear make for the safest environment for recovering the aircraft.

Tests are at an advanced stage using US Navy F-18 pilots, hugely experienced in taking off from and landing on carriers.

This is something new for the UK. Our carriers, remember, have operated the short take off and vertical landing (STOVL) Harriers for more than a generation. Skills in landings are, shall we say, a little rusty.

Tests will inform the Aircraft Carrier Alliance on design of the deck. With every simulated landing, Defence Equipment and Support's Joint Combat Aircraft Team learns more about the behaviour of the F-35's Carrier Variant (CV), the F-35C, which the UK will be operating - a decision firmed up by the Strategic Defence and Security Review.

The simulator at BAE Systems in Warton is hosting tests to design the deck of the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers:

"Basically we are dealing with a completely different method of landing," said Pete Symonds of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance.

"With STOVL landing you stop and land; CV landing is land and stop. So it's a completely different set of lights in completely different positions. Then the aircraft is different. We've built a new model into the system as clearly the control laws are different with many different characteristics including an arrestor hook."

Every simulated landing provides the Joint Combat Aircraft Team with more data about the behaviour of the F-35's Carrier Variant, the F-35C [Picture: Andrew Linnett, Crown Copyright/MOD

"And we're helped by the fact that the actual size of the carrier flight deck was driven by the requirement to be adaptable. The STOVL ship could have been smaller but the adaptable design was driven by the size of the runway, which was needed to recover the aircraft.

"We've taken the flight deck, and started again. After the decision was made to move to the Carrier Variant we had a period of looking at variable equipment selection before we started the work.

"We now have the flight deck at what we call level two maturity, so effectively the big bits are already fixed. The design of the flight deck is pretty well sorted."

Testing will soon move to other simulators to test recovery of helicopters to the carriers.

From the Joint Combat Aircraft (JCA) Team's point of view the F-35C will be equally capable from sea or land:

"The current focus for the JCA Team is ensuring the aircraft is integrated onto the carrier in the most optimal way," said Wing Commander Willy Hackett, the team's UK Requirements Manager.

"This aircraft will be the first stealth platform to operate from an aircraft carrier, which will bring new challenges. Recovering an aircraft to a small moving airfield, especially at night or in poor weather, has always focused the mind of any pilot who has flown at sea.

"The F-35 will bring new technology which in time will make landing on an aircraft carrier just another routine part of the mission. On entry into service the aircraft will be equipped with the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System [JPALS] which will guide the aircraft down to a point where the pilot can take over and land the aircraft manually.

"Future upgrades intend to allow JPALS to actually land the aircraft without pilot input in very poor weather."

He added: "A new flight control system, combined with new symbology in the helmet-mounted display, looks to drastically reduce pilot workload on a manually flown approach.

"This technology is being investigated by the US and UK, and if successful will see a major reduction in the training required to keep pilots competent at landing on aircraft carriers from the middle of the next decade.

"Once this new technology is invested in the F-35C the pilot will be able to focus on the mission to an even greater extent than is possible now in the current generation of carrier variant aircraft.

"UK JCA squadrons will therefore be more operationally focused than current generation sea-based aircraft and will keep UK air power at the front rank of military powers."

So who benefits most from the current carrier testing? Back to Mr Symonds:

"Well actually it's both the Aircraft Carrier Alliance [ACA] and the Joint Combat Aircraft Team," he said. "From the aircraft side the team has to be satisfied it is safe to operate the aircraft at sea efficiently. So in terms of the JCA safety case, it is critical that we are able to demonstrate safe F-35C recovery operations.

"From the ACA perspective, we have to prove that the ship is safe to operate the aeroplane so we have to provide sufficient visual landing aids to demonstrate to our safety case that it works. Both teams must be confident that what we will be putting on the deck works. We will be making sure it is a win/win for both teams."

Landing on the new carriers - what the pilot sees

Aircraft approach the stern as the carrier steams into the wind. Pilots aim for the second or third of the arrestor wires - the safest, most effective target.

Aircraft are guided by deck personnel - the Landing Signal Officers - via radio and the collection of lights on deck.

When the aircraft has landed the pilot powers up the engines to make sure that, if the tailhook doesn't catch a wire, the plane is moving fast enough to take off again.

Pilots will look at the Improved Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System for guidance - a series of lights and lenses on a gyroscopically-stabilised platform.

Lenses focus light into narrow beams directed into the sky at various angles. Pilots will see different lights depending on the plane's angle of approach. On target, the pilot will see an amber light in line with a row of green lights.

If the amber light is above the green, the plane is too high; below green it is too low. Much too low and the pilot will see red lights.

So how did I do? My first attempt saw my F-35 scream way past the carrier, too fast, too high, and with no hope of landing. A second was just as wayward, overshooting and just missing the island superstructures, necessitating a stomach-churning go-around.

A third and final approach needed a last-second drop in height, allowing me to find the last of the arrestor wires, ending in a landing more akin to Fosbury than any of the elite pilots who have been using the simulator for their landings.

The flight deck has about 250 metres of runway distance for landing aircraft. A runway on land would be around 12 times longer. And doesn't move.

Landing on a carrier deck pitching up and down by up to 30 feet (9m) in a rough sea can be daunting enough. A pilot has to place the aircraft's tailhook in a precise part of the deck 150 feet (46m) long by 30 feet (9m) wide to catch the arrestor wires, and do it at night too.

The arresting wire system can stop a 25-tonne aircraft travelling at 150 miles per hour (240km/h) in just two seconds in a 300-feet (90m) landing area. Deceleration is up to 4Gs.

The NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS) is stored and maintained in a giant purpose-built hangar at HM Naval Base Clyde. It is so sophisticated that it can dive to 2,000 feet (610m) - deep enough to operate anywhere around the world's continental shelves.

Owned by Britain, France and Norway, it is always on standby - and happily, so far, it has never been used.

During the test, 25 volunteers were entombed in the NSRS's two giant decompression chambers for 18 hours to see how they would react to the confines and changes in atmosphere and pressure that they would experience during a rescue from a stricken sub.

The NSRS can be on the move within three hours - on 27 lorries. Ships all around the world are designed to take the loading platform, decompression chambers and rescue submersible - if there was an emergency the nearest ship would be alerted.

The whole loading platform is bolted onto the ship's deck and the system's submersible - straight out of a sci-fi movie with its glass-fronted nose - is ready to go, lowered into the water by the giant cranes that are part of the kit.

If a submarine's hull is breached it is automatically sealed and the rest of the hull becomes pressurized. The NSRS's decompression chambers, which can take up to 35 people at a time, are set up and the rescue submersible transfers survivors straight into them. If the hull of the stricken submarine is still intact, the rescue submersible can do the job on its own, bringing up 15 survivors at a time.

Timing is important because it can take up to four days to get someone fully decompressed. So the rescuers need to get as many people out of the submarine as they can and as quickly as possible.

The decompression chambers are staffed by professionally trained divers and nurses who can tend to the injured, clean any who are contaminated, and generally run things until it is safe to open the doors to the outside world.

Lieutenant Commander Kevin Stockton, who runs HM Naval Base Clyde's Northern Diving Group, said:

"It is a quite brilliant stand-alone system designed simply to save lives.

"Speed is essential in getting to a stricken submarine and the fact that we can be on the move in three hours with 360 tonnes of equipment is impressive in its own right.

"Although it is essentially a NATO asset, the brotherhood of the submariner is such that I am sure we would respond to a request from any government which had a submarine in distress.

"The brutal reality is that if a submarine were to go down in really deep water there is nothing that anyone could do because the pressures would become too great for anything to survive."

The divers, doctors, nurses and specialist operators from Britain, France and Norway operated as a seamless team for four days.

The exercise, called Massivex, ran the course of an actual rescue timeline, from initial alert response to 18 hours of simulated decompression time.

The Ministers were hosted by the Station Commander of RAF Fylingdales, Wing Commander Rayna Owens. Also accompanying them were members of the National Space Security Policy Team, part of the Cabinet Office.

In addition to experiencing first-hand the importance of RAF Fylingdales, whose primary role is ballistic missile warning with the secondary role of space surveillance, the visit will help inform work that is being done to develop a National Space Security Policy.

The National Space Security Policy will seek to cover issues concerned with UK military and civil use of space.

In addition to being briefed on RAF Fylingdales operations, the visitors toured the operations room and made the most of the good weather by viewing the site from the top of the radar building.

Wing Commander Owens said:

"We were honoured to host such an important visit, key to the National Space Security Policy and to the future."

Mr Luff said:

"It was a pleasure to visit RAF Fylingdales today with my colleague David Willetts. RAF Fylingdales is an important part of the North Yorkshire community and is also a vital component of our national security, helping to provide an uninterrupted ballistic missile warning and space surveillance service to both the UK and the US.

"This visit will be of great assistance to us as we work towards a National Space Security Policy, which will consider the challenges and opportunities for both civil and military uses of space, an area of growing importance for the UK."

The MOD's plans remain on track to have a new carrier strike capability from around 2020. We are taking delivery of our first Joint Strike Fighters for test and evaluation purposes this year and are committed to purchasing the carrier variant of these jets.

The Defence Secretary recently met his US counterpart to discuss a number of issues including the Joint Strike Fighter and following the meeting we are confident that the US Defence Review will not impact upon our plans for regenerating carrier strike.

An agreement was signed that will see the US and UK work closely on joint training and the integration of our carrier programmes.

Plans to reduce the size of the Army by 7,000 personnel and both the Navy and RAF by 5,000 personnel by 2015 in order to ensure our Armed Forces are sufficiently flexible and adaptable to meet the demands of an uncertain future were announced in the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) in October 2010.

Some of these reductions are being made through a redundancy programme. When looking at the balance of Regular to Reserve forces, further reductions were identified in July 2011 for the Regular Army, taking them to around 82,000 by 2020.

This second tranche will consist of up to 400 members of the Naval Service, up to 2,900 members of the Army and up to 900 members of the Royal Air Force.

This will be the last major tranche for the Navy and the RAF who will be able to achieve the remaining reductions through other manning levers such as slowing down recruiting and not replacing those who leave.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said:

"Difficult decisions had to be taken in the SDSR to deal with the vast black hole in the MOD budget. The size of the fiscal deficit we inherited left us no choice but to reduce the size of the Armed Forces - while reconfiguring them to ensure they remain agile, adaptable and effective.

"As we continue with the redundancy process we will ensure we retain the capabilities that our Armed Forces will require to meet the challenges of the future. The redundancy programme will not impact adversely on the current operations in Afghanistan, where our Armed Forces continue to fight so bravely on this country's behalf."

No-one who is preparing for, deployed on, or recovering from such operations on the day that redundancy notices are issued will be made redundant unless they have volunteered.

No personnel who are medically downgraded will leave the Armed Forces through redundancy.

Medically-downgraded personnel are not discharged until they have reached a point in their recovery where leaving the Armed Forces is the right decision, however long it takes.

Those who are assessed as being permanently below the level of fitness required to remain in the Forces will not be considered for redundancy, and will instead leave through the medical discharge route at the appropriate stage in their recovery.

Last September 2,860 Service personnel were notified that they had been selected in the first tranche of redundancies. This included 1,020 from the Royal Navy, 920 from the Army and 920 from the Royal Air Force. 62 per cent of those selected had applied to be made redundant.

NOTE: THE FIGURES ANNOUNCED TODAY ARE NOT NEW OR FURTHER REDUCTIONS

The successor to the trusty Lynx, which has served the Navy and the Army admirably since the 1970s, will spend the next month flying on and off HMS Iron Duke in the English Channel as part of its most extensive trials yet.

Wildcat is the next generation of light multi-role helicopter to serve both the Army and the Navy in the future. The Navy variant of the Wildcat will be the mainstay of helicopter operations from Royal Navy destroyers and frigates, with 28 ordered for the Fleet Air Arm.

Although the aircraft looks similar to its predecessor - with the exception of its distinctive tailplane which improves the helicopter's stability - Wildcat's characteristics are sufficiently different from Lynx to warrant extensive flight trials, setting the parameters within which it can safely operate.

Wildcat has gone to sea before, landing on the back of aviation training ship RFA Argus off the south coast of England back in November 2011.

And the prototype ZZ402 paid a brief visit to HMS Iron Duke just before Christmas, when pilots and technicians tested some of the basics.

Those trials were carried out with the ship stationary in Portsmouth Naval Base. For the 'Ship Helicopter Operating Limits' trials currently underway, Iron Duke and Wildcat have put to sea.

A team of more than 30 experts has joined the Type 23 frigate for the evaluation; the ship has also been fitted with specialist instruments to record every aspect of the trials.

Initially the trials will take place in Lyme Bay, before Iron Duke sails increasingly westwards, not least searching for rough weather to help define the helicopter's operating limits 'over the full envelope of operations' (i.e. payloads and weights carried by Wildcat in all manner of climatic conditions).

The trials should take until around early February 2012 after which around nine months is required to analyse and evaluate all the information gathered.

A new Air Defence Radar that is not adversely affected by wind farms has been installed and tested on the Norfolk coast, allowing for the potential releasing of 3.3GW of renewable energy. Until recently, the MOD has objected to wind farms located near Air Defence Radars due to the interference caused by the turbine blades.

In an award-winning follow-on deal, the MOD recently ordered two more of the wind-farm-friendly radars, funded by developers, which will be installed in Northumberland and Yorkshire, unlocking a further 750 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy. This deal will promote further development of wind farms and help the Government reduce carbon emissions.

Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans Andrew Robathan said:

"The MOD was instrumental in convincing the energy companies to collaborate and jointly fund the cost of the radar, meeting operational requirements and ultimately enabling the generation of more renewable energy. This is good news for all parties to this arrangement."

Energy Minister Charles Hendry said:
"We must rapidly increase the levels of homegrown clean energy produced in the UK. Wind farms and other forms of renewable energy will help boost our energy security, and ultimately our national security. I am pleased that an outcome has been reached that is beneficial to our national security, energy security and decarbonisation goals."

On behalf of the MOD, Serco installed a Lockheed Martin TPS-77 Air Defence Radar near Cromer, on the Norfolk coast. The MOD has therefore removed planning objections to five further offshore wind farms in the Greater Wash. The new TPS-77 was delivered in a project between Serco, Lockheed Martin, the MOD's Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, to produce a radar not affected by wind farm turbine blades.

The radar project was delivered on time, within cost, and met stringent performance requirements, and, as a result, the DE&S project team was shortlisted as one of the top three of 750 project teams in the Civil Service Awards 2011, and won an internal MOD award.

The two new wind-farm-friendly radars in Northumberland and Yorkshire, replacing existing radars, provide the potential to remove objections to multiple future wind farms, estimated to be able to provide in total over 750MW of renewable energy.

Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring, which employs a "stealth" design to help avoid detection, is to join the British presence in the region, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.

Although the deployment of the high-tech vessel has been planned for more than a year, it comes as Britain and allies have issued clear warnings to Iran over its threats.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has warned the regime that any attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz would be "illegal and unsuccessful" and would be countered militarily if necessary.

Another set of Revolutionary Guard naval exercises in the strait, which is used by a third of the world's oil tanker traffic, have been announced for February by Iran earlier.

Tehran has suggested it could block the route if sanctions are imposed on its oil exports by western nations over its perceived ambitions to use its nuclear programme for military purposes.

An MOD spokesman said: "The Royal Navy has had a continuous presence East of Suez for many years, including the Armilla patrol and its successors since 1980.

"While the newly-operational Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring is more capable than earlier ships, her deployment East of Suez has been long planned, is entirely routine and replaces a Frigate on station."

HMS Daring completed four years of sea trials and training late last year and is the first of six new destroyers which will replace the Type 42 vessels which started service in the 1970s.

The vessel, with a crew of 180, is the first to be built with a futuristic design that makes it difficult to detect using radar.

The Type 45s are armed with high-tech Sea Viper anti-air missiles and will be able to carry 60 troops. They also have a large flight deck which can accommodate helicopters the size of a Chinook as well as take on board 700 people in the case of a civilian evacuation.