The Ministry of Defence is exploring how machine vision technology could be used to improve targeting in one-way effectors, the expendable strike drones increasingly central to modern warfare.
The position was set out by the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, in response to a written question from the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, Ben Obese-Jecty, who had asked what progress had been made in developing the use of machine vision for lock-on and the terminal phase of one-way effectors.
Pollard said the department “continues to explore how machine vision technologies may enhance targeting processes”, including in one-way effectors, “to improve operational effectiveness”. He added that “policy development is ongoing”, in consultation with MoD legal teams, to ensure compliance with the United Kingdom’s “legal and ethical obligations”.
Machine vision refers to systems that use onboard cameras and algorithms to recognise and track a target visually, allowing a weapon to lock on and guide itself through the final, terminal phase of an attack without relying on satellite navigation, which can be jammed or spoofed. For one-way effectors, the cheap, single-use drones that fly into their targets, such a capability would let them complete a strike even where positioning signals are denied, an increasingly common feature of the war in Ukraine.
The reference to one-way effectors comes as Britain pushes to field sovereign deep-strike capabilities, with firms showcasing systems such as MGI Engineering’s TigerShark and Rotron’s SkyLance under the MoD’s Project BRAKESTOP this week, several of them designed to operate in GNSS-denied conditions.
