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).
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.
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?
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