Nato has just 5% of air defences needed to protect eastern flank

"The UK's air defence capability is entirely inadequate," said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. Full integration of Europe's various air defence systems could help compensate for the shortfall by creating a dense mesh of sensors and interceptors across the continent. But "attempts to update NATO's command and control infrastructure for air defence have never gotten off the ground", Watling said.