The Army is to bring the Tekever AR5 into service under a contract worth up to £400 million, replacing the Watchkeeper system in use since 2014, alongside a separate £16 million deal delivering more than a thousand small drones, the Ministry of Defence stated.
Luke Pollard, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, announced both at Defence Vehicle Dynamics, the biennial land warfare exhibition, on Wednesday.
The AR5 is a long-endurance surveillance aircraft able to carry up to 50kg of cameras and sensors. The deal begins with an initial order of six, rising to up to 24 by 2029, with the aircraft to be built at a new Tekever factory in Swindon. The type has already been used by Ukraine against Russia.
Mr Pollard said: “Our soldiers deserve the best technology, and that’s what we’re delivering. From small drones giving troops eyes on the enemy, to the AR5 offering commanders better intelligence over the battlefield, we’re transforming the Army’s ability to see, understand and act first.
“This is defence procurement that backs British industry, creates skilled jobs and keeps our Armed Forces ahead of our adversaries.”
According to the department, the Tekever contract will support more than 1,000 highly skilled jobs by 2030 across the company’s British sites, which include Bristol, Swindon, Lydd, London, Southampton, Edinburgh and West Wales Airport.
Karl Brew, Managing Director of Tekever UK, said: “We are proud to be delivering the AR5 to the British Army at this critical moment for national security. This investment allows us to grow our UK operations, create hundreds of skilled jobs and bring cutting-edge surveillance technology, proven on the battlefield in Ukraine, into service with British forces.”
The smaller aircraft come from three British small and medium-sized companies, with deliveries nearing completion. Evolve Dynamics of Hampshire is supplying 245 FOXE-NATO drones weighing less than 250g and fitted with infrared cameras for use at night. Marlborough Communications Limited of Surrey is providing 670 Skydio X10 INTL aircraft, which the department says can be ready to fly in under a minute and reach 45mph. A partnership between Brigantes Consulting of Exeter and Harmattan AI is delivering 110 SONORA drones, designed to help train soldiers before they use similar systems on operations.
That deal has created more than 30 new roles so far, with 18 already filled in Hampshire, Surrey and Exeter, including several veterans. The small drone contract was delivered by the National Armaments Director Group and forms part of Project Rapstone, the Army’s programme to bring new technology to soldiers faster, with the stated goal of doubling the Army’s fighting power by 2027 and moving new equipment from industry to the front line within 24 months.
Watchkeeper, the system the AR5 replaces, entered service in 2014 after a development programme that ran considerably over time and cost, and was withdrawn from service earlier this year. The Strategic Defence Review identified its replacement as part of a wider shift towards uncrewed systems, and the Defence Investment Plan commits new investment in the Army’s long-range surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities including the next generation of uncrewed aerial systems.
This makes an awful lot of sense. Are we sure it’s us? 🤔
Already announced months ago.
16 million each?
£24 million for the drones. The rest is for MOD admin. 🙃
Indeed. Those 3-day team-building getaways to 4* country clubs don’t pay for themselves.
More grandstanding about previously known announcements. 24? my arse, 6 will be in service by 2029 onwards, the rest to slip to 2035, watch this space. These clowns know they wont be in charge in a couple of years so wont “waste” money or time on defence, but want to waste it on their voter pool in a blatant effort at buying votes.
These are properly cheap drones already in use by the Border Force, I would be astounded if the MoD managed to mess this one up.
You would think this would be simple, but never underestimate the ability of the MOD to fuck things up, and HMG to continue to bullshit! 👍
Don’t worry by the time the Good Idea Committee have come up with some ideas the engineers will be hard at work producing plans for square circles……
Absolutely, General Bluster looks at the specs, “hmm, can we move the wings and add more bumbs and get a reassuringly expensive bespoke avionics package to go inside, wonderful you can, here’s a blank cheque old bean, take your time”
You could lose that amount on a bad day. They are making the same mistakes when it comes to drones I fear, buy too few and at a price not much cheaper than a manned version.
All good. Though I keep reminding myself that HMG were claiming that Watchkeeper was too vulnerable over the battlefield and was a sunset capability.
So how are half the number of AR5s less so, for that money?
Genuine question, what is making AR5 survivable?
Anything is a vulnerable sunset capability if Treasury decides it so.
Half as many to shoot down mate, so a 50% reduction on the projected loss rate of Watchkeeper, so a big improvement, honestly Daniele, do try to keep up!
🙄😬
😂😂🤣
Haha
It’s just more attritable, there aren’t any extra survivability features apart from a) not sounding like a lawnmower and b) being less likely to fall out of the sky of its own accord.
GA-ASI have developed a chaff/flare/DIRCM pod for MQ9 but that would probably be too big and expensive for this role.
400 million for 24, I’d not call more attritable.
It’ll get blown out the sky like Watchkeeper, which was leveled at that platform and amongst the reasons HMG stated to get rid.
Seems no difference to me.
A basic civilian AR5 costs about £400k, I have no idea how the MoD have managed to haggle upwards that much. So hopefully once the programme is out of the way replacing lost drones would actually be a lot cheaper than it looks, unlike with Watchkeeper.
Mil spec components cost a lot more
Which is silly, because the drone flies perfectly well anyway. 24 drones at £410k each makes up £10M, are they really spending all of the rest on sustainment and military electronics?
Hopefully the ‘up to’ £400M just means that the MoD plans to get a lot more of them in time.
and of course a drop in number from 54 watchkeepers
I was always under the impression Watchkeeper never really lived up to its requirement, and was a bit pants. Never heard of it deployed in numbers. Happy to be corrected by anyone who had hands on experience with it.
Last I’d read of it it they’d exercised with it IDing targets for Apache with its SLAR.
I think training was a major issue.
My point was if it works, keep it, as it’ll get shot down just like this will.
Google AI gives a pretty good explanation. It was to long to copy and paste. 👍
Hmmmm….AI!
You might be surprised how accurate it can be when it comes to finding more technical information. I asked it ” Why is the AR5 more survivable than the British Army Watchkeeper drone”. And it’s reply was very informative. Give it a try mate you might be pleasantly surprised. And you’ll get a none biased reply.
Haha! I have mate, a while back, on a totally different subject defence wise, certain military government facilities in the UK I’m aware of.
Just to see what it said, to compare with what I knew.
Results were mixed shall we say!
It just trawls through the available info online much like Google. I went to a talk on AI once, the lady said it’s also dependent on what the humans inputted into it in the first place. A lot of them are in Africa, apparently.
So yes, useful, but I’d not rely totally on it.
I’ll have a play with AR5 though mate.
Anything must be better than watchkeeper
At an increased cost of course 😂👍
” Up to 24…!” Jesus Christ!! So nowhere near that really. Pollard may state that the soldiers deserve the best, but they certainly don’t seem to deserve too many.
They’re all words, as you know.
How about announcing big LMV and HPM orders at DVD?
Or CAVS?
Reportedly, because there’s no money.
Ajax is in the doldrums, there’s no money for Stormer HVM replacement, Boxer is delayed 2 years and still has a machine gun, and now there are delays with Ch3.
I try to be positive but I refuse to get sucked in by endless HMG spin at how wonderful everything is.
I look at kit and orders.
Where are they?
As you often point out, shovelling money into the MIC seems to be the actual priority. There must be countless bespoke, gold plated projects, all under the guise of ‘sovereign capability ‘ that burn money, go nowhere, and ultimately get cancelled or are unfit for purpose, whilst all along, a cheaper ots variant was available. Meanwhile, still nothing on GBAD,, or what platform will support it. It cannot be Boxet, there aren’t enough units, yet sticking a SHORAD turret on the remaining Warriors seems just too obvious a solution. No MIC profit there .
Exactly.
And you have to appreciate you have far from the full picture of what is in development and the kit our Armed Forces have in the pipeline. 19Bn is being spent on land warfare over the next 4 years.11bn on weapons and ammunition. That’s serious cash. And not every single order is going to appear on the pages of UKDJ. Our government’s past and present make more MOD/military information available to the public then pretty much any of our allies, and certainly vastly more than our enemies. You can get arrested just for a bit of harmless plane spotting in some countries let alone discussing complex MOD procurement. And every other nation with its own MIC protects it at all costs. Yes it can be about job creation, but If we as a nation want to continue to have the ability to build highly complex weapons like T26, or Nuclear Submarines or to even contemplate designing a 6th gen capability for the RAF, then we need to protect ours. Otherwise the French will happily do it all for us. And the R&D is one of the most critical elements. Frustrating as it is when money is committed that doesn’t lead to anything. The R&D will lead to capability further down the line. We have kit in service today that wouldn’t exist without the R&D that took place 25 years ago. We wouldn’t be building 15% of every single F35 and have the manufacturing capability to design and build Tempest without the R&D that took place in the 80s and 90s. Or to build the carriers. And the new loyal wingman will draw from the experience of the last 15 years of R&D thats gone into that area. The simple alternative is we don’t have that manufacturing capability and we are totally reliant on the Americans and other allies to call the shots. I don’t want that. And I’m sure you don’t either.
So it’s a proven failure then.
Oh dear
The main thing that is dictating smaller orders than needed, delaying production and extending the delivery timetable for just about every major project, is that the bulk.of the defence budget is going into the nuclear.
It has to, because the nuclear enterprise is, despite all the spin to the contrary, a shambles.
It is allegedly short of 18,000 trained personnel. Such efforts as can be made are going into keeping the Vanguards operational.l at the expense of getting the last two Astutes into service. The RR reactors for the Dreadnought and future SSN-A subs are again flagged red at the MOD, which means late, severely over budget and probably not achievable – this for the fourth year running. On top of this, we are now faced with our share of the cost of the new USA/UK Astraea warhead for Trident. And now have to embark on rapid plans and envelopment of the AUKUS sub.
While simultaneously refurbishing nuclear operating facilities at Aldemaston, Devonport and Faslane.
The hard reality is that HMG has inherited a right old mess here, due to the can being kicked down the road for years, which now requires £130bn – and probably a lot more – to fix over the next 7 years just to get back on track.
The knock-on effect on conventional procurement is obvious. We are ordering 24 of these Tekever drones – to replace 64 Watchkeepers. But we can only afford 6 just now, so the order schedule is being stretched over the horizon. The same is going on right across defence procurement, with just about every order being slowed down and stretched as far as possible.
It’s the result of a couple of decades of wilful, irresponsible underfunding of defence. Increasing defence spending to 2.6% of GDP is great, but is nowhere near enough. Healey may succeed in conjuring-up the missing £5bn from the DIP settlement, but that is just a pin-prick against the demands of the nuclear programme. It needs a big injection of new money and far more than any Government can squeeze out of revenue. It can only come from some SAFE-type scheme or the Canadian defence industry alternative, from defence bonds or City investment in a defence fund or a penny in the pound on taxation, probably all of the above. Otherwise, it’s going to be a decades-long slow process of barely meeting equipment replacement needs and only doing so by constantly gapping kit and reducing equipment numbers. Both of which are exampled in this Tekever purchase.