The bulk of the United Kingdom’s largest-ever drone package for Ukraine, set to deliver at least 120,000 drones this year, will be spent with British-based firms including Tekever, Windracers and Malloy Aeronautics, in what the Ministry of Defence has called an effort to underwrite UK industrial capacity at the same time as supporting Kyiv, the Ministry of Defence has told Parliament.
The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, set out the breakdown on Monday in a written answer to the Labour MP for North Durham, Luke Akehurst, who had asked what steps the department was taking to ensure investment in the Ukraine drone package generated sustained UK domestic industrial capacity.
Pollard told MPs that at the most recent Ukraine Defence Contact Group in April, the Defence Secretary had announced “the UK’s largest-ever drone package for Ukraine, delivering at least 120,000 drones this year, with deliveries already underway”, and that “the majority of this investment will be spent with UK-based companies”.
The minister named three of the UK-based firms in line for the work, listing “Tekever, Windracers and Malloy Aeronautics”, and said the spend would support “high-skilled jobs and strengthening domestic production capacity”. The approach, Pollard said, would help ensure that “rapid support to Ukraine also contributes to the long-term growth, resilience and scalability of the UK’s defence industrial base”.
Tekever is the Anglo-Portuguese maker of the AR3 and AR5 long-endurance reconnaissance drones that have been used by Ukrainian forces against Russian assets in the Black Sea and across the front line, with significant production capacity in the United Kingdom. Windracers, based at Solent Airport in Hampshire, builds the ULTRA twin-engine heavy-lift autonomous aircraft, while Malloy Aeronautics, headquartered in Maidenhead and acquired by BAE Systems in 2024, has supplied its T150 and T400 heavy-lift quadcopters into operational use with Ukrainian forces.
Build the infastructure here good move
Agreed the technology has yet to mature and develop into a final form so infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure and scalability ftw
it would be even nicer if the government also increased our own drone force.
I understand ours amount to 10,000. but much more needed if poss.
just an opinion chaps..
Well at these this creates the ability to do so. If direct conflict occurred I suspect these and other core producers could quite quickly involve others (F1 manufactures for example) to produce their designs and parts in great numbers, indeed probably progressively improve upon them.
Hopefully the companies involved have good counter sabotage policies. The Russians must be itching to do something spectacular yet deniable in the UK.