British warship ‘shoots down’ waves of attack drones

HMS Dauntless dealt with more than a dozen simulated attacks on Exercise Sharpshooter in Cardigan Bay and passed the training that allows her to deploy on operations, according to The i Paper’s Molly Blackall, who joined the ship.

The paper reports that the week-long exercise used dummy drones and simulated missiles, forcing the crew to respond day and night to unexpected attacks from air or sea. Forty analysts work in rows in the operations room, and from off the Welsh coast the ship’s radars can spot threats as far away as Paris and monitor hundreds of objects at once.

Crews begin with the longest-range weapon suitable for the target and move through the ship’s options as it closes, from fighter jets, the Wildcat helicopter and missiles to the main gun, which fires 25 rounds per minute, and on to machine guns as a last defence. An armed helicopter can lift off in under 15 minutes. Lieutenant Commander David Ferguson, who spent six weeks aboard HMS Richmond as she tackled Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea in 2024, told the paper his crew had responded in as little as 45 seconds.

Royal Navy images of the exercise dated 28 September say the destroyer, commanded by Commander Neil Skinner, was tasked with “fending off attacks from a range of autonomous systems”. Dauntless also took part in Sharpshooter in spring 2025, a five-day serial against Banshee and Hammerhead drones and virtual attacks, using her Phalanx, 4.5-inch and 30mm guns and Martlet missiles fired from her Wildcat helicopter.

Sharpshooter range deal set for award to Qinetiq

The exercise takes place at MOD Aberporth on the west Wales coast, where QinetiQ operates the range for the Ministry of Defence under the Long Term Partnering Agreement. The range danger area covers about 6,500 square kilometres of Cardigan Bay from sea level to unlimited height, with outposts around the bay and on the Lleyn Peninsula holding equipment used to assess weapon performance. The main base covers about 550 acres, and about 200 people work there in direct support of the range.

The partnering agreement, signed in 2003 for 25 years and covering 16 sites, received a five-year, £1.54 billion extension in May 2025. Aberporth is one of the few UK ranges able to support live air-to-air missile firings over the sea, and RAF Typhoons trialled the APKWS anti-drone weapon there earlier this year before it was cleared for deployment to the Middle East.

QinetiQ delivers Sharpshooter with its subsidiary Inzpire, covering planning and range safety and supplying the targets, with scenarios designed alongside the Royal Navy’s Fleet Operational Standards and Training team. The programme began in 2019 as a weapons functionality exercise and now mixes live and synthetic threats, including Banshee Whirlwind aerial targets launched from Aberporth and Hammerhead uncrewed surface vessels. The Dutch frigate HNLMS Evertsen became the first NATO ally to take part, and the Ministry of Defence published a pipeline notice in August setting out a planned single-source award to QinetiQ for the Sharpshooter enabling requirement from October 2026 to September 2028, citing the unique capability of the Aberporth range.

An earlier iteration put the Type 45 destroyer HMS Duncan through a four-day serial delivered with Fleet Operational Standards and Training, in a scenario developed by Inzpire that combined Banshee Whirlwind aerial drones and Hammerhead uncrewed surface vessels with simulated cruise missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles and hostile aircraft. Working by day and night, her crew tracked and neutralised five aerial targets and destroyed two surface drones, meeting all assigned objectives, according to QinetiQ.

Will Blamey, Chief Executive, UK Defence at QinetiQ, said after that serial: “Our combination of live and synthetic threats mean we can deliver training scenarios that provide the very latest in threat representation, helping our warfighters to achieve mission-readiness at pace.”