Tag: UK Drones

Their drones bad! Our drones good! Defence Secretary announces drones to be shot down

Chris Cole

Media reports today (20 October 2025) indicate that the Defence Secretary, John Healey, will announce new powers that will allow military personnel to shoot down drones threatening military bases and possibly other sites.

Over the past year there has been a number of sightings of unidentified drones in the vicinity of military bases both within the UK and across Europe. 

UK troops engaged in counter-drone exercise. Credit: MoD

While its perfectly possible that these are drones flown carelessly by hobby pilots as their numbers rapidly increase, there has been speculation by some that these sightings are connected to a co-ordinated campaign by adversaries seeking intelligence or to simply to test military and security responses. No evidence for such a claim, however, has been presented.

The sightings, along with a number of cases of drones straying across borders from the war in Ukraine, have been taken up but those arguing that the UK is facing grave security threats now from state adversaries rather than terrorist groups and that the UK needs to rapidly increase military spending and accept that it is in a ‘pre-war situation’. However, calm heads need to prevail.

Campaigners have been arguing for 15 years that the advent of drone technology makes the world a much less safe place.  Remote and autonomous drones enable the use of lethal force with virtual impunity and create real and genuine fear.

While ordinary people living under drones around  the world constantly feel threated and suffer real physical and psychological harm from military drones flying overhead, British politicians have regularly dismissed such fears, arguing that the drones are there in fact to create peace for the people on the ground.

It is ironic then, not to say hypocritical, that fear and apprehension about possible drone incursions within the UK is met with strong government response including ordering the military to shoot such drones down.

Next month, the UK will release its Defence Investment Plan which is likely to see further spending on drones and counter-drone technology.  Rather than spending vast sums on new military technology which will simply proliferate and make the world – and ourselves – much less safe, we need to be investing in building global co-operation and common security, accepting that no nation can be truly secure unless all feel secure. 

Rather than squandering billions developing drones and then have to spend more on counter-drone technology, we should be investing much more in diplomacy and conflict prevention structures; we should be investing in our health and social care; investing in greening the economy and focusing our extremely talented engineers and scientists on help to tackle climate changes rather than developing new war technology.

FoI challenge shows MoD claim of “thousands of cutting edge” drones in service to be nonsense

Chris Cole

In response to questions raised by the Financial Times regarding the number of drones in service, the MoD insisted in December 2023 that “we have invested heavily in over 30 such programmes over the last several years and have thousands of cutting edge aerial vehicles that are designed to make our armed forces more lethal and effective.”

List of UAV programmes MoD says it has funded “over last several years”.

Following a long-running Freedom of Information (FoI) wrangle with the MoD, in which the Information Commissioner threated legal proceeding against the Department,  Drone Wars UK finally received a list of the 32 UAV programmes which the MoD said it has funded.

However, of the 32 programmes listed only seven have resulted in drones which are currently in service (one of which is a naval target/training drone), while another four relate to drones which are planned to be in service in the future.

Of the remaining programmes, seven relate to drones that have been retired or are due to be retired this year, five are for trials (two of which have ended), two are funding broad research and two are funding for programmes not related to the development of military UAVs. The names of five other programmes have been redacted.

In total these programmes add up to around 250 military drones currently in service, with another 250 due to be in service in the next year or two – far from the ‘thousands’ claimed by the MoD in December.

While it is unfortunately no longer surprising that MoD reporting on its programmes is questionable, the extent of smoke and mirrors around UK’s drone programme in particular is disturbing.  Cost overruns seem endemic, an RAF Squadron specifically set up four years ago to trial new drones has yet to undertake any such tests and now we find that we are being misled about basic inventory figures.

Analysis of drone programmes listed by MoD in its FoI response

We believe that there is a real debate to be had about the efficacy, legality and ethics of drone warfare – even more so given the increasing autonomy of these systems.  While some insist that that the UK must invest even more heavily in drones and autonomous weapons arguing they are transforming warfare, serious questions remain.  However neither Parliament nor the public cannot properly debate and discuss these issues without appropriately factual information. While we have seen increased secrecy from the UK government around the deployment and use of drones – ostensibly due to what is described as the ‘geopolitical situation’ – we now have misleading information about UK drone numbers and development programmes given to the UK media.

Around the world we are increasingly seeing new and emerging technology being adopted by militaries in order to  ‘increase lethality’.  The UK has argued that it should be at the forefront of this new way of warfare – “all the warfare of the future” as Boris Johnson described it when discussing the Integrated Review.  However it is crucial that there is proper accountability and oversight of these developments, something that is simply not possible without proper transparency.  Misinformation here, whatever some may say, is simply wrong and unhelpful.

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MoD publish new UK ‘Drone Strategy’ and its embarrassing, superficial nonsense.

Chris Cole

Click to open

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) finally published its long-promised strategy on UK plans to be “a world leader in defence uncrewed systems’ and to say its underwhelming would be an understatement.  The document – stripping out graphics, self-promotional photographs and the glossary –  runs to around four pages, much of which is filled with management speak that would make David Brent wince.   Apparently, through “Pan-Defence Excellence” the MoD will be “enshrining the principle of iterative – or spiral – capability development” to create a more “predictable demand signal.”

In a nutshell, the (ahem) ‘strategy’ seems to be: ‘learning from the war in Ukraine we will work even closer with the defence industry’.  The Minister for Defence Procurement James Cartlidge and the Commander of Strategic Command, General Sir Jim Hockenhull announced the strategy at a press event at Malloy Systems, the drone company recently taken over by BAE Systems.

The strategy document contains no details about timescales, programmes, spending or even categories of uncrewed systems that the MoD will be focusing on.  The closest the document comes to any information on future plans is a bullet point that says “the RAF is testing cost-effective expendable Autonomous Collaborative Platforms.”  Another bullet point argues that “the army has a long history of uncrewed systems and development.”  Pretty sure someone should have at least added the word ‘chequered’ in there.

Drone Strategy launched at Malloy Systems. Credit: BAE Systems

Sifting through this thin gruel we can pick out one or two points.

  • In his Introduction, Minister for Defence Procurement James Cartlidge argues “it is in the uncrewed space that we will increasingly drive the mass of our forces…” Drones, in other words, are seen as a way of increasing the size and lethality of UK armed forces as personnel recruitment slumps and spending on big-ticket items eats up the budget.
  • There is a recognition that drone warfare is “not only here to stay but likely to increase as technology expands opportunities for [drone] employment.” This is due to the fact, argues the document, that “inexpensive commercial and military technologies have democratised [drone] employment.”  Drone warfare, it is acknowledged,  is no longer the preserve of larger Western states.
  • The strategy suggests that the “initial priority is the successful delivery of the Ukraine-UK uncrewed systems initiative.” Given that the current use of drones in this conflict is primarily small, first person view (FPV) drones or one-way attack drones, it is likely that funding of  new UK developments will be in this area.   Whether that will be effective for UK security needs is questionable to say the least.
  • The decline in transparency and debate about the development, use, legality and efficacy of drone warfare from the government is likely to continue. While,  the document pays lip-service  to “the importance of public engagement” on these issues and insists it is  “committed … to keeping the public informed of our progress and developments”  these lofty aims are caveated with need to protect “necessary operational sensitivity” and the requirement to “balance transparency with security.”

All in all, it is likely this strategy document will be put on a shelf and quickly forgotten.

Latest update shows UK drones spreading across air, land and sea

Chris Cole

We’ve updated our directory of current UK aerial drones and drone development programmes and wanted to highlight that, while drones have been mainly the preserve of the Air Force, they are now increasingly being acquired and used by the British Army and the Royal Navy.  Meanwhile, although the MoD is keen to point to the imminent arrival of its new armed drone, which they have dubbed ‘The Protector’, problems lie ahead.

Protector problems ahead

The replacement for the UK’s Reaper drone – dubbed ‘the Protector’ by the UK but called SkyGuardian by the manufacturer (and everyone else really) –  is supposed to be in service by mid-2024.  While the first aircraft from the production line has been delivered to the RAF it remains in the US for on-going testing and training.  However, two significant problems need to be addressed over the next 18 months before these drones become operational.

Firstly, recruitment and retention of personnel to operate the drones has been an on-going problem as Sir Stephen Lovegrove, then MoD permanent secretary, told the Commons public accounts committee in 2020.  This is likely to be even more so now as crews will be based permanently in Lincoln rather than having the option of being deployed to the sunnier climes of Las Vegas, after the UK shut down its US-based drone operations.

General Atomics promotional graphic visualising Protector flying over London

The RAF partly overcame recruitment issues by drafting in Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilots.  As the RAAF  was set to purchase SkyGuardian drones it made sense to the RAAF to send pilots to operate UK armed drones as they would then get training and experience of using these systems before their drones arrived in Australia.  However in April 2022, Australia abruptly cancelled its planned purchase of SkyGuardian drones due to budget problems following the setting up of AUKUS alliance and the plan to build new nuclear submarines.  Given this, it seems likely the RAAF will not be so keen to provide personnel for the UK’s drone programme for much longer. Read more →

Drone Wars continues to pursue details of secret UK drone operations

Chris Cole

Drone Wars is undertaking legal action in an attempt to gain details of secret British Reaper drone operations that has been taking place since at least 2019.  Appealing against the MoD’s refusal to answer both FoI requests and parliamentary questions about these missions, Drone Wars is seeking answers before an Information Tribunal.

Drone Wars discovered in early 2020 that the UK was flying Reaper missions outside of ‘Operation Shader’, the name of the UK’s military operation against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  Although the MoD acknowledged that such missions were taking place, it flatly refused to detail their location or the number of sorties that had been undertaken.  According to the latest FoI response from the MoD (Jan 2021) it appears these secret sorties are continuing.

After an internal appeal to the MoD was rejected in early 2020, Drone Wars appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in April 2020 with a response received in January 2021. Although the Commissioner accepted that there is “significant and weighty public interest in disclosure of the withheld information,” she ultimately upheld the refusal to release the information following undisclosed submissions made to the ICO by the Ministry of Defence. Read more →

Intervention ‘without the need to consider the human cost’: MoD thinking on UK’s new drone revealed

Tim Street

Documents obtained by Drone Wars using the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) reveal how British military officials view the UK’s next generation armed drone, known as Protector, and the types of advanced capabilities the aircraft will have. Protector, which is set to replace the UK’s current fleet of armed Reaper drones in the mid-2020s, is essentially SkyGuardian—the latest version of the Predator drone being produced by General Atomics—plus UK modifications. The modifications revealed in the FOI documents (comprising presentations given by UK military personnel at a drone technology conference held last September) are significant because they provide an insight into how the Ministry of Defence (MOD) plan to utilise Protector.  Looking more widely, Protector epitomises the second drone age, characterised by a global expansion in both the type of drones being used by states and the scale of operations, including in the domestic sphere. Read more →