New Defence Secretary opens huge drone centre in Swindon

Europe’s largest drone testing centre has been opened in Swindon by Dan Jarvis, in his first public engagement since being appointed Defence Secretary following the resignation of John Healey, with the new facility intended to let the British armed forces develop and field uncrewed capabilities in weeks rather than years, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The Uncrewed Systems Centre, based at the new DroneTEX facility, will serve as the United Kingdom’s focal point for the development and testing of drone technology and drive collaboration with industry, allies and partners, according to the Ministry of Defence. At 545,000 square feet, the size of more than ten football pitches, the department says it is the largest drone test and development facility in Europe.

Jarvis, who toured the site and met defence industry leaders, investors and military specialists, said the character of warfare “is changing, and it is changing fast.” From Ukraine to the Middle East, he said, uncrewed systems were “rapidly evolving and reshaping conflicts, on land, in the air and at sea.” The new facility, he said, would help ensure the UK “embraces technologies that are redefining warfare”, with technology that once took years to reach the armed forces now fielded “in a matter of weeks, because in this new era, those who innovate fastest will win.”

Rather oddly, media were invited to the opening and then uninvited, presumably to avoid awkward questions over the Defence Investment Plan and the resignations of Healey and the Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, who both quit the department on Thursday over the funding settlement behind the plan. The event went ahead without press in attendance, leaving the new Defence Secretary’s first outing in the job to be communicated by departmental press release.

The Ministry of Defence points to the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran as the driving logic behind the centre, with cheap systems destroying high-value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks. Ukraine uses roughly 200,000 drones a month, the department says, and at the height of the conflict in Iran some 700 drones were being launched per day.

The centre will work with British companies, supporting SMEs, unlocking exports and creating high-skilled jobs, according to the department, and will harness data and digital integration as the UK embraces AI and autonomy, including through the new Task Force RAID, for Rapid AI Delivery, announced by the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff earlier this week.

The numbers attached to the announcement set out the scale of the government’s bet on autonomy. The Strategic Defence Review announced a £2 billion increase in autonomy investment this parliament, taking total defence investment in autonomous systems to £4 billion, while the Ministry of Defence has spent over £450 million on uncrewed systems since July 2024, including £300 million on research and development. In the last year, UK Defence Innovation, the department’s innovation arm backed by a ringfenced annual budget of at least £400 million, has injected over £142 million in rapid investment to scale up production of drones and anti-drone weapons.

The opening hands the new Defence Secretary a friendly stage on his first day in one of the most difficult inheritances in recent Whitehall memory, with the Defence Investment Plan that triggered his predecessor’s departure still unpublished, the NATO summit in Ankara weeks away, and industry bodies, the Defence Committee and one of the Strategic Defence Review’s own authors having spent the past twenty-four hours warning that the settlement behind the plan falls short of what the moment demands.