ABSTRACT
The UK’s experience as the first country to be attacked by ballistic missiles contained many elements, in the compressed timescale of 1942-45, which were to become consistent features of BMD in succeeding decades: intelligence, early warning, counterforce operations and active and passive defence. Air Chief Marshal Hill observed in 1948 that ‘the A-4 [V-2] was a notable advance on anything that had gone before, and a source of problems with which the nations are still grappling’.1 That was true just four years after the first attacks. It remains true nearly 60 years later. One does not have to agree with his historical analysis to realise that the British Foreign Secretary was identifying the enduring legacy of the V-2 when, in late 2001, he said:
If we had had a form of missile defence against the V1 s and, above all, against the V2s, I would suggest the war would have ended earlier because the terror which the V2s were able to inflict enhanced the confidence of the Nazi regime at a point when it was otherwise failing.2
