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.

George Allison
George Allison
George Allison is the founder and editor of the UK Defence Journal. He holds a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and specialises in naval and cyber security topics. George has appeared on national radio and television to provide commentary on defence and security issues. Twitter: @geoallison
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31 COMMENTS

    • Agreed the technology has yet to mature and develop into a final form so infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure and scalability ftw

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  2. 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.

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    • I’m guessing the tech is changing so quickly, those will be obsolete next year. So not much point in have a large stockpile

    • Do we actually need a massive stockpile of drones?

      We’ve proven we can produce them very quickly. Something that can’t be said about the high-end equipment.

      So in peacetime wouldn’t we be better off spending more on the things that take a while to produce and quickly increase drone sizes if needed.

      • First, we haven’t proved that we can build them at speed. At speed is many hundreds of thousands or even millions per annum. That’s the scale/speed Ukraine and Russia are building at. I agree that we don’t need a massive stockpile while we are producing for Ukraine. We don’t have one.

        Do we even have enough to train with? I’m not sure that we do. We don’t hear about training in environments with thousands of drones overhead, or even drone-on-drone training. Instead we occasionally hear about Ukraine coming to play the red forces against other NATO countries and by using relatively small numbers of drones, handing us our arses. Hedgehog was over a year ago and we should already be having regular large-scale drone training multiple times a year. Aurora 2026 suggests we haven’t learned the lessons.

        • Issues around training are less to do with numbers of drones. Unlike real combat using a drone in training doesn’t really “expend” it, or at the very least it doesn’t expend drones at anywhere near the rate they are in combat (you might occasionally loose a drone to do bad piloting or LOS, or ahem… accidentally hitting your drone with airburst fires >_>).

          Bigger issues are around air permissions, training operators and retaining competence.

          Again Hedgehog mentioned, as it always does, as if it was a football game, which it isn’t. Same for Aurora 26.

          • The football match thing doesn’t invalidate the point. If the Ukrainians were doing the same thing every couple of months on Salisbury Plain, that would be us learning lessons. The lesson from Hedgehog isn’t that we lost, oh dear. It’s that it was a good learning experience and we need more of them until we can reach an equilibrium and people stop complaining that training can’t keep up. And that includes scaling up the numbers. And feedback. We can’t rely on Ukrainian feedback forever to drive new designs.

            I agree permissions are a real issue. However training operators and retaining competence is exactly what I’m saying we need the drones for.

            • We have enough drones for training operators and retaining competence. It’s not the drones that’s the choke point. It’s air time/range time that’s the choke point. Unit’s are trying work arounds, but you can’t simply take your drone outside and wizz it around camp to keep your hours and practice up unfortunately, since the difference between a service member practising with a drone and a hostile actor flying a drone over camp is not exactly easy to determine with a MkI eyeball. (Let alone the fact that a lot of camps are either near active airfields [eg Aldershot] or are on reserve airfields [Cottesmore])

              • I get the impression training is taken on in situ within the unit at the location that unit is garrisoned?
                Do we need more dedicated ranges? Other capabilities have camps/schools dedicated to a particular role, like in Phase 2 establishments across the Army.
                Could one take a chunk of say SENTA, STANTA, or SPTA, or a part of all three, centred round an existing Camp, which all three have for visiting units training, and say here you go, this is dedicated airspace already within restricted Defence airspace, and rotate elements in and out on an ongoing basis?
                Or is it a case that new areas need opening up and more infrastructure built?

                • Problem is you have to clear it. You can’t just take blokes out and fly drones about over the camp. Effectively you need a range plan and then to clear it. You can partially get around this with indoor courses and the like but that’s limited.

                  Same thing with training areas. Yeah we can currently use them for drone training, but you have to book them and get people on them. As you said it’s restricted defence airspace, so you need to clear using air assets in them. I’ve been there and seen what happens when soliders send up a drone on exercise without prior permission, people get very upset, for understandable reasons,

                  • urch used the word clear way too often. Point being, the issue is because it is an aircraft, and because it can’t be visually ID’d as a military drone vs a civilian flying a drone over a military establishment, everyone needs to know what you are doing, where you are flying it, etc. And someone needs to have over all picture of the airspace because what if Cpl Atkins decides to fly his drone up into the air and happens to run it into a Chinook that is moving a platoon of Paras?

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                    • “urch” ? Typo?
                      So, as you rightly, say, the established TA’s are all well utilised by all sorts and by air assets, thus the great risks and complexity.
                      So would an entirely new area far from any other TA’s help? With no other aviation allowed anywhere near it?
                      I don’t see a solution otherwise? What are other nations doing regards this issue?

  3. Hopefully the companies involved have good counter sabotage policies. The Russians must be itching to do something spectacular yet deniable in the UK.

    • A good point, and I’ve no doubt you’re right. They’ve already been doing so further east, but for some reason the UK is apparently the bogeyman for Putin and Russians in general.

      • That’s because we are much better than people give us credit for. We are small, but effective, and get under Russia’s skin.
        Our politicians are vocal in their grandstanding way in opposition to Russia. We’ve also played the spying, special forces, unconventional warfare game for a long, long time, way before most. All the stuff you don’t always see that is hinted at in Ukraine.
        UK Intelligence and the US were the only ones warning of what was about to happen, most of ENATO scoffed at it. They lacked the sources we have.
        We were supplying UKR and training them long before 2022.
        Then you have the Salisbury stuff and no doubt plenty that we will never get to read about. I also think those Russians from Soviet times have never forgotten or forgiven how MI6 and the CIA utterly shafted them in and after the Cold War.

        • Fair points Daniele, I guess I always just assume that they’d consider the US their bogeyman..!
          If you’re interested, I watched a decent YouTube video the other day about UKSF involvement in Ukraine- it’s a tad sensationalist but I think they often have to be. The channel is called Cappy Army (long story), should be quite easy to find in his recent videos. It’s obviously only using open source reporting, but strings together a lot of pieces into a pretty involving timeline. I won’t post a link in case I go into review purgatory…

          • Morning Joe.
            Yes, I watched it after Jim here mentioned it.
            Nothing much new apart from 18 and SF in the border area prior to kick off, didn’t know that.
            The leaked NATO presentation, what muppets. 50. That’s the majority of an SAS Squadron.
            So assume Sqns rotate in and out as they did in Iraq.

            • Ah, I hadn’t seen Jim’s recommendation- glad to see I’m not the only one who watches the channel.
              I find it hard to keep track of all the OSINT stuff, especially as I’m not on X or anything, so having someone do the hard work of compiling it all together was helpful for me!
              No, I didn’t know about the 2022 stuff at all- will be interestiing to see if any more info comes out about that in 10 years.
              In terms of numbers now, I wonder if it’s actually only a troop or two making up that 50; reason I say that is because of what was said about building out SF units with other skills from other units/branches. I’ve read that same quote elsewhere too. Within that context, 50 troops would be 1-3 reinforced troops, rather than a full squadron? I’m also not sure if that figure include SFSG troops, or just the SAS/ “Tier 1” guys themselves.

  4. Beinmake a good second stage…g able to produce munitions, etc, in quantity is a good first stage – making sure we have enough ourselves would

  5. Sounds like a good foundation to build on, we need these so we can scale quickly if we go to war. Are the drone interceptors being made here not on the list because Ukraine is buying them directly without UK government assistance?

  7. Good to hear, although I note that these are all transport drones- no interceptors or attack drones. Are they just not in the headlines, or do we not have any manufacturing for those types of drone in the UK?
    If not, then I think a great way of “underwriting” UK industry and building out capability is to produce those for Ukraine too.

  8. I’m not clear from the article about who is paying for all these drones for Ukraine. Are they paying or the British taxpayer?

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