Chris Cole

Long delays, cost overruns and as yet unable to carry munitions, the Protector drone shows the UK is as bad at military procurement as ever.

03/06/202608/06/2026Chris Cole

While drone warfare continues to rapidly develop and evolve, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed in an FoI response to Drone Wars UK that the UK has received just nine of the 16 Protector drones ordered from US company General Atomics a decade ago.

Originally announced by David Cameron in 2015, the UK ordered 16 of the upgraded version of the Reaper drone in 2016 (with an option to buy ten more).

RAF Protector RG1 on training flight in UK. Credit: MoD.

Called SkyGuardian by the manufacturer and other users, the drone has been renamed ‘Protector’ by the MoD in an apparent crude attempt to manage public concerns about drone warfare. The whole life cost of the 16 drones was initially put at £704m, but by mid-2025 this had risen to £1.46bn. It has no doubt risen since.

The UK’s procurement of the ill-fated Watchkeeper drone – where the British Army spent over £1bn for a drone that saw almost no service and regularly crashed – was a textbook example of poor UK procurement. Ahead of the publication of the Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which we are told will commit billions more on drones and AI warfare, the Protector programme shows that the UK is as bad as ever at procuring these systems.

Missing Milestones

Slated to be in service in the early 2020s, the first Protector drones arrived in the UK in 2024 for testing and training, and a year later, in June 2025, the RAF announced that four Protector drones had entered service with the RAF. However, although ‘in service’, the MoD admitted that Protector had not yet reached ‘Initial Operational Capability’(IOC) and the FoI response shows this remains the case:

“Protector RG Mk1 has yet to reach all Initial Operating Capability (IOC) programme milestones. These milestones are currently under review, and a revised IOC date is expected post release of the Defence Investment Plan. However, Protector has already deployed on operations and is providing valuable Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance support on Operation SHADER.

Failure to reach Initial Operational Capability is likely to do with the number of drones in operation, the number of crews currently trained to operate them and/or the fact that it has not yet been approved to launch munitions (see below). In response to a parliamentary written question in February which sought details of the number of drones needed to be flying for it to pass that IOC milestone, MoD Minister Luke Pollard refused to answer, stating that

“The milestone is clearly defined and the Ministry of Defence is working to ensure the necessary supporting requirements are in place so that it can be met at the earliest opportunity.”

According to the new FoI response, however, the milestones are “currently under review” giving the impression that goalposts may well be moved.

Protector now flying ‘in the Middle East’

In September 2025, the MoD announced that the UK’s MQ-9 Reaper had been withdrawn from service after more than18 years of operations, firstly against the Taliban in Afghanistan (2007-2014) and then ISIS in Iraq and Syria (2014-2025).

In October 2025, two RAF Protector MQ-9B were spotted on flight tracking sites flying from RAF Akrotiri over the Mediterranean on apparent training exercise. This was the first overseas deployment of the new drone. Several weeks later the drones were then spotted flying over Israel and Jordan, apparently on their way to Syria as part of Operation Shader, taking over the role that Reaper had previously undertaken in that never-ending operation.

RAF Protector RG1 flight on May 28 2026. (Transponder is turned off for flight within Syria.)

On 1 March 2026, two days after the US and Israel began attacking Iran, a small drone struck RAF Akrotiri. Following the suggestion that the drone had originated from Lebanon, it was reported that the RAF’s Protector drones were patrolling off the coast of Lebanon to warn of any further incoming drones attacks. The Protector drones were, however, unable to ‘protect’ by shoot down any incoming drones or missiles as they had yet to be cleared to carry weapons. Subsequently, the drones been spotted flying over Lebanon transiting to Syria.

While the UK’s Reapers were known to be based in Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait for Operation Shader (although this was never officially acknowledged), the UK’s Protector drones appear now to be based at RAF Akrotiri for these operations. The FoI response states that the UK’s nine Protector drones “are currently split between RAF Waddington and the RAF forward operating location for Operation SHADER.” RAF Akrotiri is obviously closer to Syria than Kuwait, where the UK steadfastly engages in military operations against ISIS.

Unarmed Protectors

The FoI response also confirms that the Protector drones have still not yet been authorised to carry munitions and are restricted to “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support”.

While the exact reason for this remains unclear due to secrecy, MoD attempts to put in place changes to allow drones to conduct bombing training runs at the Holbeach bombing range near RAF Waddington have run into problems apparently due to the on-going risk of using lasers to guide the bombs.

Recently published documents on the Civil Aviation Authority’s website appears to show little progress being made.

Revealed: What became of the Reaper

Finally, the FoI response reveals what became of the UK’s Reaper drones. There had been speculation that the drones would be handed over to Ukraine for use in the ongoing conflict with Russia. While initially the MoD would only say that the drones were no longer in service and had been disposed of, the FoI response gave some more details:

When taken out of service the air vehicles were deregistered, de-militarised and dismantled into their ground transportation packing cases and were handed over for disposal by the contractor GA-ASI. One deregistered and de-militarised Reaper has been returned to the UK and is held in storage by the RAF in its packing case while it is considered for future preservation in a museum.

Rather than good money after bad…

The government strongly argues that we need to spend ever increasing amounts on ‘defence’. In 2020/21 UK military spending was £42.4bn but by 2024/25 had increased to £60.2bn (around 2.4% of GDP). In February 2025 Starmer committed to further increase military spending by around an extra £6bn per year – roughly the amount he cut from the UK’s Aid budget – with ‘an ambition’ to reach 3% by the next parliament. Just months later, at the NATO summit in June 2025, he upped the ante, with a pledge to reach a ‘goal’ of 5%, estimated to be an extra £30bn per year.

Drone Wars UK fundamentally disagrees with the concept of military security arguing that we should instead be investing in human and sustainable security. Rather than divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’ – good states and bad states – we need to focus on building global co-operation and common security and accept that no state can be truly secure unless all feel secure.

Rather than cutting our diplomatic and aid infrastructures, we should be investing much more in diplomacy, aid and conflict prevention structures. Rather than squandering billions on new weapons technology we should be investing in health and social care; investing in greening the economy and tackling climate change.

Many will no doubt suggest this is naïve, the record of UK drone development and procurement programmes – on which the UK has spend vast sums and in which it is placing its security – is littered with failures from Telemos to Watchkeeper to Taranis to Mosquito and many others.

As the UK’s Protector drone programme limps into service and while the UK is about to spend yet more vast sums on drone and AI warfare, is it not time to try something else?

Killing By Code: New Briefing and Dataset on UK Military AI Programmes

19/05/202603/06/2026Chris Cole

Drone Wars UK is today publishing the first of a series of short briefings on the new military companies who are pushing the use of AI in warfare in the UK. Alongside this, we are publishing a list of 26 key MoD programmes developing the use of AI for warfighting.

The Datafication of War: Palantir, AI and Algorithmic Violence

The first of our ‘Killing by Code’ briefings, The Datafication of War, examines Palantir and its involvement in UK military programmes.

Military AI firms such as Palantir are exerting significant influence over domestic defence programmes. These for-profit corporations are increasingly playing a key role in military ecosystems, mobilising R&D and facilitating the transfer of civilian technology to military applications. This interdependency with the state, indicates the growing militarisation of digital technologies, as well as their importance as military contractors.

With algorithms, Large Language Models, and autonomous systems permeating throughout the military domain, modern warfare is becoming increasingly reliant on data sets. Military advantage need not only rely on industrial output and hardware but on high-quality data and software. Whether that is to train military AI models that assist in the planning, or the use of data to execute combat missions with AI-assistance, warfare in the age of AI is experiencing a datafication.

Palantir is integral to this story. The company has been embedded within US national security structures since its founding in 2003 and is one of the most opaque yet influential corporations today. Put simply, Palantir is a private company which builds software for the military, intelligence agencies and transnational corporations to understand masses of data (data analytics).

This short briefing explores Palantir and their algorithmic and data systems. It examines the company’s origin and leadership; their footprint in different institutions within the UK and elsewhere; its key software and data analytic platforms and ends by looking at their involvement with the Israeli and Ukrainian governments during times of profound violence and war.

With AI software becoming more embedded in military and civilian decision-making chains, (military) AI companies stand to wield a significant amount of domestic and international power. It is only right that these companies are subjected to proper scrutiny.

Key UK Military AI Development Programmes

Drone Wars UK is also today publishing a list of key UK MoD military AI development programmes, together with brief details and current state of each programme.

While there are almost certainly other classified programmes ongoing in this area, this is the first time, to our knowledge, that a list of such programmes has been published.

Programmes to integrate AI into UK warfighting include Project Asgard (see here) which aims to develop AI-enabled strike capability for the British Army; Project Startle and SyCoiEA for the Royal Navy and programmes to develop an ‘Intelligent Virtual Assistant’ for the RAF’s future combat aircraft (Tempest) as well as Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP). In addition Project Spotter and Project Odyssey are being developed to support UK Defence Intelligence. Alongside these are cross-service projects including the Digital Targeting Web, Sapient, adopted for counter-drone systems and Project Castle, using AI for cyber warfare.

The MoD has refused to give any details about three other RAF programmes involving AI on our list – Deep Thought, Omnia and Organon, either to us or national media.

A joint Royal Navy/RAF series of trials to validate AI algorithms is named Wintermute and may be named after one of the AI’s in William Gibson’s famed Neuromancer novel.

Drone Wars UK will continue to scrutinise developments in this area as part of our work to challenge the push towards the development of autonomous weapon systems.

UK MoD awards 26 companies contracts to develop AI targeting system for UK armed forces

12/03/202619/05/2026Chris Cole

While public concern about the use of AI for war-fighting continues to grow, the UK is quietly pressing ahead with development of new AI-based military targeting systems.

In a little-noticed post in January, the MoD named a group of 26 companies who have been awarded a four year deal to develop what it calls “advanced digital decision-supporting capabilities” as part of the ASGARD programme.

AI integration into military targeting system is developing rapidly. Image: Shutterstock

The group includes specialised US military AI company Anduril and Germany-based Helsing, traditional military tech companies like QinetiQ and Leonardo and a host of smaller niche companies focused on the use of AI. A full list of companies is below.

ASGARD

First announced in October 2024, the MoD says ASGARD will “exploit AI and novel communications networks” to provide “rapid targeting and decision-support to personnel.” While militaries are keen to use AI to speed up decision making around lethal strikes, there are serious ethical and legal concerns about these developments.

Use of AI by Israel to develop targets for strikes by Israeli during its war on Gaza and more recently by the US for strikes on Iran indicates that these developments are rapidly outstripping political and legal debate about whether these systems should be deployed at all. This week an investigation by Airwars and the Independent newspaper revealed that the US had accepted that a civilian had been killed in a series of US strikes carried out in February 2024, which at the time, the US said had been carried out with the assistance of Project Maven, a US programme to integrate AI/machine learning into military operations.

While continuing to argue in public that the UK has ‘no intention of developing a fully autonomous weapon’ the MoD also states that when “incorporating AI within weapon systems… there must be context-appropriate human involvement in [systems] which identify, select and attack targets.” This is vague to the point of meaninglessness and is impossible to know how such a policy will operate in practise.

ASGARD-image-1200x800 — A mock HQ utilising ASGARD at MoD press briefing, July 2025. Crown Copyright.

Accelerating Digital Decisions

The 26 companies have been awarded contracts in relation to a tender notice published by the MoD in July 2025, seeking companies to take part in an ‘Open Framework’ (that is, an ongoing development work) to develop AI/Machine Learning software to support decision making in military targeting for the British Army. As the tender notice stated:

“This Open Framework will focus on the ‘Decide’ element of the target acquisition cycle (Sense-Decide-Effect); supporting ASGARD’s goal of reinventing, and transforming, how land forces deliver operational decision-support and decision-making software via the use of modern Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML) technologies.”

The Framework contains five separate ‘lots’ and the winning companies may be focusing on one or more of the different lots covering different aspects of the work. While some messaging around this Framework indicates the total amount to be awarded is between £180m and £216m, other indications are that this is the amount available for each lot. The MoD has said that ASGARD has been “backed by more than £1 billion in funding.”

The lots are as follows:

Lot 1: Data Integration

Work under this lot covers “higher-level functions like data validation, cataloguing, and lineage tracking. It will form the backbone for delivering trusted datasets supporting critical operations.” The tender notes that “basic cloud storage and compute will be covered elsewhere.”

Lot 2: Accelerators

Work under this area seeks software “to enhance data-driven decision-making… The focus is on reducing time-to-insight and improving operational efficiency… This lot targets intelligent capabilities such as automated workflows, pre-trained models, and integration with operational systems.”

Lot 3: Applications

The tender notice states that this lot “addresses platforms and services enabling mission-critical software to operate efficiently and securely across the enterprise… Focus areas include fast delivery, scalability, and continuous innovation.”

Lot 4: Edge Storage and Compute

‘Edge computing’ in this context means that processing and analysis is done ‘locally’ i.e within the surveillance or weapon systems and that video or other electronic information is not transmitted to a central control. The idea is that the drone, for example, processes the information it has captured itself rather than transmit it over networks to a central base for processing there. The tender says this lot “focuses on edge computing and local storage for real-time, low-latency data processing… Emphasis is on supporting distributed environments with limited or intermittent connectivity. This lot is essential for scalable, autonomous operations at the edge.”

Lot 5: Services

The tender states that this lot “includes expert services to support technology adoption and integration across all other lots. Offerings may include technical training, architecture consulting, synthetic data support, and proof-of-concept development.”

AI: speed eroding oversight and accountability

As we have said before, the grave dangers of introducing AI into warfare and in particular for the use of force are well known. While arguments have been made for and against these systems for more than a decade, increasing we are moving from a theoretical, future possibility to the real world: here, now, today.

Advocates of ASGARD and similar systems argue that the ‘need’ for speed in targeting decisions means that the use of AI brings enormous benefits. But while computer algorithms can process data much faster than humans, speeding up targeting decisions significantly erodes human oversight and accountability and will inevitably mean more civilian casualties.

While some argue almost irrationally in the powers and benefits of AI, in the real world AI-enabled systems remain error prone and unreliable. AI is far from fallible and relies on training data which time and time again have led to serious mistakes through bias. Most armed conflicts do not take place in remote battlefields but in complex and complicated urban environments. Relying on AI to choose military targets in such a scenario is fraught with danger.

The Companies Involved:

Trump attacks Venezuela: How drone warfare has opened a crack through which the darkness is flooding in

07/01/202607/01/2026Chris Cole

Venezuela’s largest military complex, Fuerte Tiuna, on fire following US attack on January 3, 2026. Credit: LUIS JAIMES / AFP

The intrinsic connection between the increasing use of drones and the erosion of international law has been laid bare once again in the Trump administration’s lethal campaign to destabilize Venezuela, culminating with the shocking attack on the country and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in early January.

Build up

Since early September, US forces have been using armed drones and other systems to strike boats allegedly carrying drugs across the Caribbean sea and the eastern pacific to the US. As we reported at the time of the first strike, multiple legal scholars described the attack as ‘manifestly unlawful’. It later emerged that US special forces had also deliberately killed survivors of that first strike clinging to wreckage. Since then, around 35 individual boats have been bombed with over 100 people killed. According to unnamed US sources most of the strikes have been carried out by US Reaper drones. It should be stressed that despite US officials claiming they are in ‘an armed conflict’ with drug cartels and that therefore such strikes are lawful, no such armed conflict exists. Senior US and international legal experts insist that “the strikes constitute murder under US. domestic law and extrajudicial killings under international human rights law.”

US strikes on small boats, at mid-Dec 2025. Credit: Reuters.

In mid-November 2025, US Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth formally announced Joint Task Force Operation Southern Spear as the name of US military operations ‘to synchronize counter-narcotics efforts across the Western Hemisphere’. The Task Force was given the name previously used by US Navy to emphasis its use of drones and related technology to combat narcotics trafficking. According to a US Navy press release:

“Southern Spear will operationalize a heterogeneous mix of Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) to support the detection and monitoring of illicit trafficking while learning lessons for other theaters ”

As part of the build up of forces in the region, the US opened a previously mothballed base in Puerto Rico and deployed a wide range of aircraft there, including F-35s and Reaper drones. According to specialised press, at least nine Reaper drones were spotted at the base, with some carrying heavy loads of weaponry before personnel restricted plane spotters’ views

In a further significant escalation, in late December Trump revealed that the US had ‘knocked out’ a big facility in the first direct US attack on Venezuelan soil. A short while later, US officials confirmed that a CIA-operated drone had attacked a port facility in the country. While the exact location of the strike has not been released, locals in the north east of the country reported loud explosions and recovered fragments of what appear to be a Hellfire missile

Shocking Attack

On 2 January, US forces invaded Venezuela, bombing a number of facilities in and around the capital, Caracas, and taking Maduro and his wife captive. US officials said that as part of the operation – named Absolute Resolve – at least 150 aircraft including bombers, fighter jets, drones and surveillance aircraft were deployed.

While unconfirmed at the time of writing, The War Zone also suggests that there is strong evidence that the US also used one-way attack drones (often dubbed ‘suicide drones’) during the operation. If so, these are likely to have been the first operational use of the US’ new LUCAS (Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System) drones, said to be modelled on Iran’s Shahed-136 drones.

Following the attack on Caracas, there was also a rare sighting of one of the secret US RQ-170 Sentinel drone apparently returning to the Puerto Rico base from over Venezuela.

VERY RARE: Footage shows a U.S. RQ-170 stealth drone returning to Puerto Rico after reportedly supporting last night’s U.S. strikes on Venezuela.

The RQ-170 Sentinel is a stealthy, high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. pic.twitter.com/R2qQI3TyvK

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 3, 2026

This type of drone has reportedly been deployed in numerous covert operations from Pakistan to Iran to North Korea and is unofficially known as the Beast of Kandahar after where it was first publicly sighted. Whilst it is a surveillance rather than attack drone, its presence underscores the crucial role that drones play in such operations.

Drones have made the world more dangerous

Many continue to insist that the advent and increasing use of armed drones is in no way responsible for the unlawful and destabilizing warfare that we have witnessed over the past twenty years. While officials and commentators acknowledge that the world is now a much more dangerous place (often as part of a call for more spending on military drones and related equipment) it is argued that to blame weapons technology itself is simply naïve. Drones, it is insisted, are merely a tool of the policymaker. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand how weapons technology opens up new options for the policymaker.

The reality is that drones have opened a crack through which the darkness has flooded in. Armed Predator drones enabled the US to conduct large-scale so-called ‘targeted killing’ operations in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere from the early 2000s setting a dangerous and terrible precedent. Drones have lowered the threshold for the use of force and enabled policymakers to ignore state sovereignty with impunity. The lesson was quickly learned and copied by others, not least by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trumps war against Venezuela is prising that crack further open still.

This is not, of course, to lay all the ills of the world at the feet of drones. Fundamental political and economic inequalities underlie the world’s geopolitical problems and many of its armed conflicts. Yet drones have encouraged and enabled some political leaders to gravely undermine fundamental legal structures governing international conduct and that puts us all in danger.

Lucky Dip: Drone companies await spending bonanza as Defence Investment Plan (DIP) to be revealed.

18/11/202518/11/2025Chris Cole

Following the government’s commitment to increase military spending and the publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in early June, the military industry has been keenly awaiting the release of the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) which will layout military spending plans and other details for the rest of this parliament. Numerous reports have indicated that many planned projects are ‘on hold’ until the plan is finalised and published.

UK Military Spending 2010/11 – 2024/25 – Statista

Defence minister Luke Pollard told MPs in June that the DIP will “cover the full scope of the defence programme, from people and operations to equipment and infrastructure”. Time and again ministers have promised that the plan will be unveiled in the autumn and so this now seems likely to be soon after the Budget of 26 November (although such promises are of course routinely broken).

How much?!

UK military spending was £60.2bn in 24/25 (around 2.4% of GDP), up from £42.4bn in 2020/21. In February 2025, the Starmer government committed to further increase military spending raising the budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 (estimated at around an extra £6bn per year – roughly the amount cut from the UK’s Aid budget) with ‘an ambition’ to reach 3% by the next parliament. At the NATO summit in June 2025, however, Starmer upped the ante, with a pledge to reach a ‘goal’ of 5% (3.5% on ‘core defence’ (estimated to be an extra £30bn per year) with 1.5% (around £40bn per year) on ‘defence-related areas such as resilience and security’) by 2029. Subsequently the government said it “expected to reach at least 4.1% of GDP in 2027”.

‘Whole of Society’

Importantly, alongside the increase in military spending, the Strategic Defence Review argued that ‘defence’ is now to be seen as a ‘whole of society’ effort and this may well be re-emphasised when DIP is published.

The plan is being billed as enabling the UK to be at ‘warfighting readiness’ and alongside equipment and weapons programmes, the public is being urged to be ”prepared for conflict and ready to volunteer, support the military, and endure challenges”.

Plans already announced to ‘reconnect society with the military’ include the expansion of youth cadet forces, education work in schools to develop understanding among young people of the armed forces, and broader public outreach events to outline the threats and the need for greater military spending despite increased social challenges.

Government keen to ‘reconnect’ young people with the armed forces

And to top this off, the government is deploying the hoary old chestnut that military spending is good for the economy (despite such claims being persistently and thoroughly debunked).

Trailed Plans

While specific spending details remain under wraps, government announcements since the publication of the SDR have indicated some of the broad areas which will receive more funding:

Drones, Drones, Drones. In the Spring Statement, Chancellor Rachel Reeves stated that “a minimum of 10% of the MoD’s equipment budget is to be spent on novel technologies including drones and AI enabled technology.” Defence Minister Alistair Cairns indicated in July that there would be around £4bn spending on uncrewed systems – ‘Drones, drones and drones‘ as he put it on twitter.

To the ever-expanding list of UK drone development programmes, many of which are seeking funding decisions as part of the DIP, we can add Project Nyx which seeks to pair a new drone with the British Army’s Apache Helicopter.

Perhaps most significantly in this area, publication of the Defence Investment Plan may illuminate UK plans for a ‘loyal wingman’ type drone – now described by the MoD as an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) – to accompany the UK’s planned new fighter aircraft, Tempest. While some funding has already been allocated to develop smaller Tier 1 and 2 ACP’s, plans for the more strategic and no doubt costlier level Tier 3 drone have been placed on the back burner pending funding decisions. Will the UK go it alone and build a new armed drone (as no doubt BAE Systems hopes) or will it buy Australia’s Ghost Bat or one of the two drones currently competing for the US contract?

Integrated targeting web. Alongside new drones, the UK is developing a ‘digital targeting web’ to link, as MoD-speak puts it, ‘sensors’, ‘deciders’ and ‘effectors’. In other words commanders supported by AI will be networked with ‘next generation’ drones, satellites and other systems to identify targets to be destroyed by a variety of novel and traditional military systems. The aim is to rapidly speed up the time between target identification and attack. As Drone Wars has reported, several tests of various elements of this system (such as ASGARD) have been tested and it is likely that further funding for this programme will be part of the DIP.

New munition and drone factories. The government is keen to bolster the UK’s munitions stocks after supplying huge amounts to Ukraine. The MoD accidentally released details of 12 potential sites for new munitions factories to The Ferret in a Freedom of Information mix-up. The government has plans to open 6 new factories at a cost of £6bn,

Alongside this, there is also a desire to persuade some of the newer drone companies to open factories here in the UK. While Tekever has announced it will open a new site in Swindon, Anduril and Helsing seem to be keeping their power dry while awaiting news that they have secured government contracts before committing to setting up premises. Both companies have, however, set up UK subsidiaries and have launched PR campaigns to persuade ministers and officials of the efficacy of their products.

While drones are key for these companies, a huge increase in UK spending on military AI systems is also in their sights.

An AI ‘Manhattan Project’ endeavour. Despite continued and significant concerns about the military use of AI, particularly in ‘the kill chain’, ministers, officials and commanders seem convinced that a rapid integration of AI into all areas of the armed forces is urgent and vital. Just before stepping down as Chief of the Defence Staff in September, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin put his weight behind calls from Helsing co-founder Gundbert Scherf for a “Manhattan-Project for AI defence”. Arguing such a plan “would not cost the earth” (but putting it at around $90bn!) Scherf suggested four areas to concentrate on: a) masses of AI-enabled defensive drones deployed on NATO’s eastern flank; b) deploying AI-enabled combat drones to dominate airspace; c) large scale deployment of ai-enabled underwater drones/sensors; and finally, d) replacing Europe’s ageing satellites with (you guessed it) ai-enabled surveillance and targeting satellites.

Anduril is also not shy of lobbying in its own interests. Anduril UK CEO Richard Drake told The House, Parliament’s in-house magazine, that Anduril US was “very much happy with the direction [the SDR is] taking” but went on to publicly push to reduce regulation on the use of drones in UK airspace:

“For UK PLC to get better and better and better in drones and autonomous systems, they have to always look at their regulatory rules as well. Companies like ours and other UK companies can design and build these really cool things, but if we can’t test them well enough in the UK, that’s going to be a problem.”

Winners and Losers

While wholesale adoption of Helsing’s plan seems unlikely, there seems little doubt that the new AI-focused military companies will be among the various military companies who will be the lucky beneficiaries of the UK’s DIP. Meanwhile, the rest of us seem assured of spending cuts and tax rises.

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

20/10/202518/11/2025Chris 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.