The UK is taking significant steps to enhance sovereign capabilities in both drone manufacturing and counter-Uncrewed Air Systems (C-UAS), as confirmed by Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence, in response to parliamentary questions from James Cartlidge, MP for South Suffolk.
Eagle highlighted the government’s commitment to bolstering the UK’s defence industrial base and ensuring security against emerging threats from unmanned systems.
In her response regarding drone manufacturing, Eagle emphasised the importance of industry partnerships, stating, “Our industry partners are at the heart of producing cutting edge uncrewed systems for defence.”
She outlined the government’s intention to align its Defence Industrial Strategy with the broader Invest 2025 Modern Industrial Strategy, which focuses on promoting UK industry. “We will ensure that this will link into the government’s wider ‘Invest 2025’ Modern Industrial Strategy, which includes a clear focus on promoting UK industry,” Eagle explained.
The MOD is also expanding its governance and assurance around uncrewed systems to provide industry with a clear understanding of defence requirements. Eagle stated, “The Ministry of Defence is also expanding the governance and assurance around uncrewed systems to ensure that Industry get a clear understanding of what Defence requires.” These efforts are expected to support innovation and production in the UK, with a focus on aligning security and economic priorities.
On the topic of anti-UAV capabilities, Eagle highlighted the MOD’s focus on strengthening its C-UAS systems to counter growing threats from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). She confirmed that the MOD is working with UK industries to develop and procure advanced C-UAS technologies.
“The Ministry of Defence (MOD) continues to evolve and strengthen our Counter-Uncrewed Air Systems (C-UAS) capabilities. To counter the growing threat from UAS, the MOD has developed and procured a broad range of cutting-edge C-UAS capabilities, including from UK industries,” Eagle said.
Eagle also mentioned the role of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in guiding future capabilities, ensuring that the UK remains secure and resilient in the face of new challenges.
However, she withheld specific details for security reasons, explaining, “I am withholding the detailed information requested as its release would, or would be likely to, prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of the Armed Forces.”
So not a single concrete investment or product or technology, jsut the same rhetoric as the last 15 years of “we are committed to this and that”
A couple of hungdred thousand fipv drones would be a good baseline
I know??. we keep saying it, but politicians never seem to listen or start to late,
we need them now, not tomorrow, at the very least announce some ordering of drones,
right or wrong, our enemies will just not wait until we are ready, just my opinion.
feel free…
Urgent Operational Requirement before Royal Navy crew are put at risk by returning to the Gulf for some more hootie shootie?
Let’s hope nothing as slow as merely “urgent”. The last drone brought in as an UOC was Peregrine (FTUAS). It took 3 years to get in the air and we still haven’t heard much about its progress since it started operational testing at the end of August.
All sounds promising. Though the uk could do with manufacturing some current drone type technology to scale so we at least have a decent amount of kit for national defence if required. Kit we can also provide to ukraine so the churn rate is high to guarantee constant upgrades in technology advancement while making sure kit stored does not become obsolete. Let’s hope we don’t go down the road of super complexity for high cost only , when Ukraine has shown there is also a huge demand for Keep It Simple products .
It is rathet depressing that, 15 years after the Taranis concept design, we have not actually produced a single, militarily capable UAV.
We filled the high-end MALE role with the GA Reaper and now Protector from the USA. We got the AOP/recon battlefield drone from IAI in Israel.We are testing out various smaller UAVs and UUVs from elsewhere. But I don’t think we have a UK-made drone in the mix.
It is not that technically challenging to produce a drone, dozens of countries are now fielding their own useful products…
The military seems unable to specify what we need and so we have several.single-se4vice unmanned projects running simultaneously. Feel that someone in the MOD should have grabbed the reins several years back and devised a comprehensive programme.
We often seem to be extremely slow and muddled in defining and building new technology kit. While many others seem to be more nimble and already have growing fleets of USVs we are only now getting into examining UUVs and are going to be at the cow’s tail again.
Part of the reason may be the ‘anyone but BAE’ mentality within MoD and HMG