The UK has announced a tenfold increase in drone deliveries to Ukraine as part of a record £350 million investment this financial year, significantly boosting battlefield support to Kyiv in its fight against Russian aggression.
Defence Secretary John Healey MP, hosting a meeting of the 50-nation Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) at NATO Headquarters alongside his German counterpart, confirmed the dramatic scale-up in drone support and other aid measures, as part of the UK’s £4.5 billion military support package for 2025.
With more than 10,000 drones delivered last year, the UK is now targeting 100,000 drones by the end of this financial year. Tens of thousands have already been shipped. These range from highly manoeuvrable FPV drones to interceptor drones and new fibre-optic models that resist Russian jamming. Many are British-made, with small and medium-sized UK companies playing a key role in their design and production.
“The UK is stepping up its support for Ukraine by delivering hundreds of thousands more drones this year and completing a major milestone in the delivery of critical artillery ammunition,” said the Defence Secretary.
“We are learning lessons every day from the battlefield in Ukraine, which British companies are using to develop advanced new drones to help protect Ukraine’s civilians and also strengthen our own national security.”
The UK has also completed delivery of 140,000 artillery shells since January, reinforcing Ukraine’s frontline capabilities. British-supplied drones are already credited with helping stabilise parts of the front and are now responsible for more battlefield casualties than artillery, according to Defence Intelligence assessments.
Alongside equipment, the UK will provide an additional £247 million to train Ukrainian troops through Operation Interflex, which has already trained over 55,000 recruits with the help of 13 partner nations. A further £40 million will go into NATO’s NSATU trust fund to support Ukraine with vehicle parts, fuel, and other essentials.
This stepped-up support follows the release of the Strategic Defence Review, which committed over £4 billion to develop drones and autonomous systems for the UK Armed Forces, learning from Ukraine’s experiences. It also reaffirmed the UK’s pledge to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027.
Defence Secretary Healey concluded: “This investment will help keep us secure at home and strong abroad, while ensuring the UK is a world leader in rapidly developing drone technology.”
I feel we should be a bit more careful about what information is put out there as regards uk supplying drones ,storm shadow ,tanks etc.etc ..
And making statements about uk preparing for war by idiot Starmer…
Yes we need to prepare ,but in gods name do we need to put it about all over the world just because Starmer is trying to win over public support because hes a useless prime minister..
This clown PM will get us into a nuclear war …i can see Russia dropping a nuclear missile on London and elsewhere and many many thousands of innocent people will be killed….
Yes re arm by all means and quick but ffs keep quite about it..!!!!!!!!!!!
Twaddle, just an excuse to make an anodyne political point.
The point of rearming is to deter conflict. There is no deterrent unless rearmament is public.
No you don’t keep quiet about your capabilities infact the whole point is to trumpet them.. it’s called the 3 C of deterrent capability, credibility and communication
For those three Cs to work you have to be blatant about what you have and what it can do..infact it’s even better if you lie a bit and make it sound even better.. the Soviets and then Russia were really good at that they managed to convince the west their kit was brilliant and they could crush the west.. turns out it was all a bit of a lie..
The main purpose of western military power is to prevent escalation to kinetic warfare..if you hid what you have you don’t do that you encourage war.. infact the only time you hide what you have is if your actually planning to attack your enemy..then you play it down.
That is why China is so worrying.. it’s got a huge blue water navy..that it hides and obfuscates, it hides its building programmes behind smoke and mirrors,it hides the numbers of missiles it has. That is because the Chinese military is not being built up to act as a deterrent to war it’s being built up to create the capability to initiate one.
Point taken thanks
Hi Ian,
Don’t be afraid or put off asking the kind of question you did above. Folk like Jonathan on here know their stuff and will take their time to answer your concerns. They were valid concerns. I remember what is was like wondering if a nuclear missile was heading towards me as a teenager. I lived not far from a couple of very high value NATO / RAF HQ’s so we would be well up the target list. When the Berlin Wall came down the idea that those concerns could be gone forever was a really nice feeling. Now they are coming back to haunt us again and it is very disconcerting and saddening, and for many who have never experienced it before I should think it is also very frightening.
The point is you asked the question and prompted as very smart answer from a knowledgeable poster. You won’t be the only person reading the that. So your question has provided answers and context that others will read helping to spread the messages that UKDJ is all about. You played a part.
Was a fair question.
Cheers CR
Hi All,
The problem is that pesky democracy thingy: the people (no matter how stupid or selfish they are) have a say. As Churchill quipped, it’s the least worst political system available..
Consequently, I’d argue that Starmer, in fact any PM, would need to mobilise sufficient public support for a ‘guns not butter’ switch in resources.
Especially if we wanted a permanent lift in defence spend to 3+% of GDP since 1. the population is getting older and sicker (so needing more welfare spend), 2. we need to make good decades of underinvestment in our infrastructure AND 3. the economy has been moribund for nearly two decades.
It’s a nightmare situation for any Government to deal with especially in one Parliamentary term, the last Administration has left a complete mess.
I’m not arguing that Starmer is doing well on defence but I can see where he’s coming from on the positioning side (I love the focus on rebuilding the defence industry and improving military housing, but I want him to raise defence spending immediately, not wait another blasted 5 years).
Cheers.
Hi Ian, no worries it’s the point of places like this, share our thoughts and listen to worries..
Geopolitics and geostrategy especially can be counter intuitive.. until you really drive into the question of “why” .. things can be “right “ and yet “wrong “ when you ask a deeper why.. and much of geopolitics is very very grey.. I always assumed there is a good reason behind things even if on the surface it seems a bad idea.. in geopolitics end it’s always weighing up the risk of the bad vs actualised risk vs benefits.. so building nuclear bombs are the classic. if we use then it will kill the world why have them ? if we don’t have then someone else may use them on us how many do we need to stop them ? if we have then it costs a fortune how many can we afford ? if we build them we have a technology and scientific benefit to humanity how much should we invest? but if we use them we will destroy human culture and technology can we ever justify using them ?
All of those are valid questions.. and in the end we end up with a moral mess of mutual assured destruction, hyper expensive weapons we cannot afford to use, have and yet not have….
after reading your opinions i feel you are absolutely right ..thanks for your input.
Cheers Ian, it’s a wise man that listens to views with an open mind so he can learn but it’s a profoundly mature, balanced one who will freely acknowledge when he has learnt something.. as he gives back at the same time as learning.. so cheers and respect 😀
Sadly the Genie is out of the bottle. Thankfully, it is still relatively hard to build a nuclear weapon, i.e. a fission, fusion or neutron bomb. However, once someone understands how to make the secret sauce of enrichening, then logically they will develop a weapon, regardless of what they say publicly, as the next stages will be relatively simple to manufacture. How they test this is open to debate, as computational simulation can only go so far, especially if you have no background knowledge to base your predictions on. Countries who have or are trying to develop nuclear weapons fall into a number of camps. The first is that with nuclear weapons they won’t be bullied or threatened by another nuclear power, as the risk of escalation leads to Mutual Assured destruction (MAD). The second is that they want to threaten a country to their way of thinking and bring them under their sphere of influence. Even setting off a small tactical nuclear weapon on another Country, would immediately cause that County to rethink its priorities.
I think the scarier option is a dirty radiological bomb. As these are far simpler to manufacture. Especially as the radiological materials are far easier to find and get hold of. Then the production of a “nuclear package” doesn’t require extreme manufacturing tolerances or knowledge. A dirty bomb in some respects is a worse scenario, as the blast radius is relatively small, but its effects outweigh its costs. As the generated radiation has a longer term affect.
Well said a very coherent argument. Much of Russias power and influence and induced fear is indeed building up a myth of power and invincibility. To the point many fail to realise while it is big geographically it is now a relatively lightly populated Country (Slavically declining) with an Economy that is about the size of Italy but is very big on propaganda that creates an influence far beyond its actual standing. Its links to China are its real power, however without those links (again very much PR generated the reality still nebulous) Russia would never have risked its present overt threats.
Hi Spyinthesky,
Your point about the size of the Russian economy got me wondering, so I had a little hunt around.
In terms of GDP they are ranked about 8th or 11th depending on which site you look at – about the size of Canada or Italy as you say. However, their Purchasing power parity (PPP) value puts them much higher up the scale because prices and wages are so much lower in Russia. As such they would sit about 4th in the ranking. PPP might be a better kind to understanding affordability for governments spending within their own economies. This might well explain why Russia is able to maintain a signifcant military machine, even if it poorly led with kit that seems way less effective than advertised.
Out of interest China’s PPP is about $39Trillion with the US at $30 Trillion even though their economy is about 2/3 the size of the US economy.
The UK’s PPP is $4.4 trillion against Russia’s $7.1 Trillion.
Overall, size of the economy obviously counts, especially if you are buy raw materials on global markets, but the point is affordability for governments is way more complicated than just the GDP headline number. Things are different again when you look at GDP per capita!
Cheers CR
Difficult to sell rearmament if you don’t bring the public onboard as far as possible with the necessity of the decision, otherwise you just get idiots throwing petty ignorant insults (sound familiar?) at them for not investing the money elsewhere, because Putin is never going to threaten Britain without any real understanding of the fragility of modern democratic, economic and trade systems…. You know a bit like the apologists for the Nazis did in the thirties. Unlike back then of course it’s rather difficult for the Govt to do rearmament on the qt. So yes you can debate the precise nature of what he was saying and the details but it’s right that the public are effectively shocked out of their complacency about the threats we face, we have been allowed to luxuriate in that increasingly dangerous myth for far too long.
The Peace Dividend delusion has allowed politicians to safeguard their electoral prospects by shifting Defence spending to social provision and even war in Europe hasn’t enabled them to pivot back to Defence, the first responsibility of the nation state.
When the Chief of Defence Staff said that “we are in the pre-war phase and conscription will be required” he meant that we can pay now, or pay much more blood and treasure later as the terrorist state expands into Europe.
We bailed out the bankers in 2008, now it’s their turn to invest in UK Defence since their business depends on peace and stability. Since investment in Defence lowers risk, the price will be lower than standard gilts.
UK Defence Bonds now!
Over to you, Rachel from Accounts!
Work to integrate Defence Bonds with the Defence Industrial Strategy (how) that follows the Strategic Defence Review (what) for extra credit…
Dropping a nuclear missile on London? damn the casualties may include a few British people! but the aftermath may not be noticed and in fact Sadiq Khan will claim credit for sorting out the reduced traffic.
This is really good news as it shows that UK industry can respond pretty quickly when needed. The fact that it is mostly SME companies is also an important point. I bet some of those companies got a surprise when they found out just how many they were being asked to produce – the kind of surprise every business dreams of!
Good to see we are sending fiber optic drones to Ukraine, they have been suffering under Russian equivalents. Having their own will allow them to develop the mean to hunt the Russian drone pilots.
Now we need to send the same kind of signal to the big primes and get the naval escorts, fighters, IFV’s, etc. rolling of the production lines… Also, get them to set export targets!
Cheers CR
I think you’re assuming that all of these drones are UK built. But the wording doesn’t explicitly imply this. Many may have been bought with UK money but produced elsewhere. Ideally we’d have large scale drone manufacturing capacity ourselves, and I’m sure it’s being developed, but it would surprise me if many or most of these drones are not UK built.
Yeh, you are right, re-read it. Although to be fair it does say that “many are British made” implying that the UK production is also rising if we are being optimistic.
Cheers CR
AFU already demonstrated the capability to follow the fibre optic cable back to the pilot operators so strike the non-attritable resource in the battle.
New Drones, easy, train new pilots, hard.
Slava Magyars Birds 🇺🇦
Slava Heroyam 🇺🇦
#vpdfo
I did wonder about the vibre optic cables.
Thanks Lonpfrb…
Cheers CR