UK Drones – Future plans

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

02/02/202322/02/2023Chris 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 →

Public consultation on allowing armed drones to fly from RAF Waddington opened – have your say!

13/09/202210/10/2022Chris Cole

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has formally opened a public consultation on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) proposal to change airspace regulations around RAF Waddington to allow armed Protector drones to operate from the base from 2023. In short, these changes will put in place a ‘danger area’ around Waddington to allow the drones to take-off and land.

Currently the UK’s fleet of armed Reaper drones are not permitted to fly within the UK as they were not built to appropriate standards. However the MoD argues that its new drone – called SkyGuardian by the manufacturer but labelled ‘Protector’ by the MoD – has been built to stricter construction standards that should allow it to be certified to fly within UK airspace. Separate from the construction issue is the very significant question as to whether large drones (military or otherwise) can fly safely in airspace alongside other aircraft. Drone advocates argue this can be done though using electronic ‘Detect and Avoid’ (DAA) equipment but this is as yet largely untried and untested.

Map of potentially affected area from CAA website

While this consultation is therefore limited in that it is focuses only on specific airspace changes around Waddington rather than wider questions about the safety of opening UK airspace to large drones, we would urge those concerned about these developments to respond via the dedicated webpage. All members of the public are invited to respond and it should only take a few minutes. The consultation is open until 30 November. Read more →

MoD to hold ‘duel of drones’ to choose new armed unmanned system

05/09/202213/09/2022Chris Cole

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will launch a series of competitions this autumn to progress the selection of an armed loyal wingman drone culminating in a duel between the two finalist – “an operational fly-off” as Sir Mike Wigston, Chief of Air Staff described it. The initiative comes after the abrupt cancellation of Project Mosquito (to develop a loyal wingman drone technology demonstrator for the RAF) earlier this summer. The RAF’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) will run the new process, open to both UK and international industry , and aimed at acquiring a “Mosquito type autonomous combat vehicle” after the Mosquito project itself was cancelled as it was not thought able to achieve an operational drone within the desired timeframe.

Loyal Wingman

The concept of loyal wingman drones is for one or more to fly alongside, or in the vicinity of, a piloted military aircraft – currently for the UK that would be Typhoon and F-35, but in the future, Tempest – with the drones carrying out specific tasks such as surveillance, electronic warfare (i.e. radar jamming), laser guiding weapons onto targets, or air-to-air or air-to-ground strikes. Rather than being directly controlled by an individual pilot on the ground as the UK’s current fleet of Reaper drones are, these drone fly autonomously, sharing data and information with commanders on the ground via the main aircraft.

In addition, loyal wingman drones are supposed to be cheap enough that they can be either entirely expendable or ‘attritable’ (that is not quite expendable, but cheap enough so that it is not a significant event if it is shot down or crashes). However, Aviation International News, who spoke to an RCO insider, said that the focus would now centre on exploring a drone that fits somewhere between Category 1 (expendable airframes) and Category 2 (attritable airframes). According to the source, there is also a Category 3, which is survivable, indicating a larger airframe with stealth and other advanced technology and no doubt much more expensive.

Which drones will win out to take part in the ‘fly-off’ and come out on top as the UK’s loyal wingman drone is hard to predict, not least because the MoD’s criteria appears yet to be fixed. However a few of the likely competitors are already emerging: Read more →

Smoke and mirrors: FoI shows there appears little substance to the RAF’s drone swarm squadron

04/07/202218/07/2022Chris Cole

Artist’s impression of aircraft launching swarming drones

14 July 2022 – updated below

A Freedom of Information (FoI) investigation has found that an RAF Squadron set up more than two years ago to take the lead on developing the UK’s swarming drones capability has yet to undertake any testing or trialling of drones and currently has just four personnel assigned to it. The revelation raises serious questions about Ministry of Defence (MoD) statements that it is rapidly progressing towards operational use of swarming drones.

While the MoD initially refused to answer any questions about 216 Squadron’s inventory or testing/trialling of drones, arguing the commercial confidentially mean that such details could not be released, this was overturned after an appeal and the MoD admitted that “216 Squadron has not conducted any UAV tests since it was reactivated on 1 April 2020.”

Background

Early in 2019, as part of his ‘Defence in Global Britain’ speech, then Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced plans to develop a new capability of swarming drones. “I have decided to use the Transformation Fund [ring-fenced funds to develop new military technology] to develop swarm squadrons of network enabled drones capable of confusing and overwhelming enemy air defences.” Rather rashly, the Secretary of State went on to declare “we expect to see these ready to be deployed by the end of the year.” Read more →

Drone Wars Select Committee submission on use of the military drones in countering migrant crossings

07/02/202206/09/2022Peter Burt

In Sept 2021 the prototype of the UK’s new armed drone flew from Scotland to undertake a mission involving a search pattern over the Channel.

Boris Johnson announced in mid-January that the armed forces was to take charge of limiting migrants crossing the English Channel. The announcement was described by The Times as one of a series of populist announcements by the embattled PM to save his premiership.

Soon after, the Defence Select Committee announced that it was to scrutinize the decision and sought submissions from interested parties:

“The Government’s decision that the Royal Navy should take over operations in the Channel has taken Parliament (and it seems the MOD) by surprise. There are significant strategic and operational implications surrounding this commitment which need to be explored.”

Shockingly, both the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office refused to submit evidence or send ministers to answer questions from the Committee.

Our full submission to the Committee on this issue – looking in particular at how drones are often seen as a ‘solution’ – is available on their website, while here we offer a short summary.

Drone Wars argues that the military should not be involved in day-to-day border control operations in the absence of any threat of military invasion. This role is primarily a policing and enforcement role centred on dealing with civilians which should be conducted by civilian agencies. Military forces are not principally trained or equipped to deal with humanitarian or policing situations. The UK borders are not a war zone, and civilians attempting to enter and leave the country are not armed combatants.

None too clever? Military applications of artificial intelligence

07/12/202109/09/2022Peter Burt

Drone Wars UK’s latest briefing looks at where and how artificial intelligence is currently being applied in the military context and considers the legal and ethical, operational and strategic risks posed.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), automated decision making, and autonomous technologies have already become common in everyday life and offer immense opportunities to dramatically improve society. Smartphones, internet search engines, AI personal assistants, and self-driving cars are among the many products and services that rely on AI to function. However, like all technologies, AI also poses risks if it is poorly understood, unregulated, or used in inappropriate or dangerous ways.

In current AI applications, machines perform a specific task for a specific purpose. The umbrella term ‘computational methods’ may be a better way of describing such systems, which fall far short of human intelligence but have wider problem-solving capabilities than conventional software. Hypothetically, AI may eventually be able to perform a range of cognitive functions, respond to a wide variety of input data, and understand and solve any problem that a human brain can. Although this is a goal of some AI research programmes, it remains a distant prospect.

AI does not operate in isolation, but functions as a ‘backbone’ in a broader system to help the system achieve its purpose. Users do not ‘buy’ the AI itself; they buy products and services that use AI or upgrade a legacy system with new AI technology. Autonomous systems, which are machines able to execute a task without human input, rely on artificial intelligence computing systems to interpret information from sensors and then signal actuators, such as motors, pumps, or weapons, to cause an impact on the environment around the machine. Read more →