Ministry of Defence – Drone Wars UK

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

19/05/202619/05/2026Chris 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.

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

28/05/202417/07/2025Chris 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.

Proceed in Harmony: The Government replies to the Lords on AI in Weapon Systems

28/02/202409/04/2024Peter Burt

Last December a select committee of the House of Lords published ‘Proceed with Caution’: a report setting out the findings of a year-long investigation into the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in weapon systems.

Members of the Lords committee were drawn entirely from the core of the UK’s political and security establishment, and their report was hardly radical in its conclusions. Nevertheless, their report made a number of useful recommendations and concluded that the risks from autonomous weapons are such that the government “must ensure that human control is consistently embedded at all stages of a system’s lifecycle, from design to deployment”. The Lords found that Ministry of Defence (MoD) claims to be “ambitious, safe, responsible” in its use of AI had “not lived up to reality”.

The government subsequently pledged to reply to the Lords report, and on 21 February published its formal response. Perhaps the best way of summarising the tone of the response is to quote from its concluding paragraph: ““Proceed with caution”, the overall message of this [Lords] report, mirrors the MoD’s approach to AI adoption.” There is little new in the government response and nothing in it will be of any surprise to observers and analysts of UK government policy on AI and autonomous technologies. The response merely outlines how the government intends to follow the course of action it had already planned to take, reiterating the substance of past policy statements such as the Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy and puffing up recent MoD activity and achievements in the military AI field.

As might be imagined, the response takes a supportive approach to recommendations from the Lords which are aligned to its own agenda, such as developing high-quality data sets, improving MoD’s AI procurement arrangements, and undertaking research into potential future AI capabilities. On the positive side, it is encouraging to see that in some areas concerns over the risks and limitations of AI technologies are highlighted, for example in the need for review and rigorous testing of new systems. MoD acknowledges that rigorous testing would be required before an operator could be confident in an AI system’s use and effect, that current procedures, including the Article 36 weapons review process, will need to be adapted and updated, and that changes in operational environment may require weapon systems to be retested.

The response also reveals that the government is working on a Joint Service Publication covering all the armed forces to give more concrete directions and guidance on implementing MoD’s AI ethical principles. The document, ‘Dependable AI in Defence’, will set out the governance, accountabilities, processes and reporting mechanisms needed to translate ethical policies into tangible actions and procedures. Drone Wars UK and other civil society organisations have long called for MoD to formulate such guidance as a priority.

In some areas the MoD has relatively little power to meet the committee’s recommendations, such as in adjusting government pay scales to match market rates and attract qualified staff to work on MoD AI projects. Here the rejoinder is little more than flannel, mentioning that “a range of steps” are being taken “to make Defence AI an attractive and aspirational choice.”

In other respects the Lords have challenged MoD’s approach more substantially, and in such cases these challenges are rejected in the government response. This is so in relation to the Lords’ recommendation that the government should adopt a definition for autonomous weapons systems (AWS). The section of the response dealing with this point lays bare the fact that the government’s priority “is to maximise our military capability in the face of growing threats”. A rather unconvincing assertion that “the irresponsible and unethical behaviours and outcomes about which the Committee is rightly concerned are already prohibited under existing legal mechanisms” is followed by the real reason for the government’s opposition: “there is a strong tendency in the ongoing debate about autonomous weapons to assert that any official AWS definition should serve as the starting point for a new legal instrument prohibiting certain types of systems”. Any international treaty which would outlaw autonomous weapon systems “represents a threat to UK Defence interests” the government argues. The argument ends with a side-swipe at Russia and an attempt to shut down further debate by claiming that the debate is taking place “at the worst possible time, given Russia’s action in Ukraine and a general increase in bellicosity from potential adversaries.” This basically seems to be saying that in adopting a definition for autonomous weapon systems the UK would be making itself more vulnerable to Russian military action. Really? Read more →

Military AI: MoD’s timid approach to challenging ethical issues will not be enough to prevent harm

21/08/202316/07/2025Peter Burt

Papers released to Drone Wars UK by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that progress in preparing ethical guidance for Ministry of Defence (MoD) staff working on military artificial intelligence (AI) projects is proceeding at a snail’s pace. As a result, MoD’s much vaunted AI strategy and ethical principles are at risk of failing as the department races ahead to develop AI as a key military technology.

Minutes of meetings of MoD’s Ethical Advisory Panel show that although officials have repeatedly stressed the need to focus on implementation of AI programmes, the ethical framework and guidelines needed to ensure that AI systems are safe and responsible are still only in draft form and there is “not yet a distinct sense of a clear direction” as to how they will be developed.

The FOI papers also highlight concerns about the transparency of the panel’s work. Independent members of the panel have repeatedly stressed the need for the panel to work in an open and transparent manner, yet MoD refuses to publish the terms of membership, meeting minutes, and reports prepared for the panel. With the aim of remedying this situation, Drone Wars UK is publishing the panel documents released in response to our FOI request as part of this blog article (see pdf files at the end of the article).

The Ministry of Defence AI Ethics Advisory Panel

One of the aims of the Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy, published in June 2022, was to set out MoD’s “clear commitment to lawful and ethical AI use in line with our core values”. To help meet this aim MoD published a companion document, entitled ‘Ambitious, safe, responsible‘ alongside the strategy to represent “a positive blueprint for effective, innovative and responsible AI adoption”.

‘Ambitious, safe, responsible’ had two main foundations: a set of ethical principles to guide MoD’s use of AI and an Ethics Advisory Panel, described as “an informal advisory board” to assist with policy relating to the safe and responsible development and use of AI. The document stated that the panel had assisted in formulating the ethical principles and listed the members of the panel, who are drawn from within Ministry of Defence and the military, industry, and universities and civil society.

The terms of reference for the panel were not published in the ‘Ambitious, safe, responsible’ document, but the FOI papers provided to Drone Wars UK show that it is tasked with advising on:

“The development, maintenance and application of a set of ethical principles for AI in Defence, which will demonstrate the MOD’s position and guide our approach to responsible AI across the department.
“A framework for implementing these principles and related policies / processes across Defence.
“Appropriate governance and decision-making processes to assure ethical outcomes in line with the department’s principles and policies”.

The ethical principles were published alongside the Defence AI Strategy, but more than two years after the panel first met – and despite a constant refrain at panel meetings on the need to focus on implementation – it has yet to make substantial progress on the second and third of these objectives. An implementation framework and associated policies and governance and decision-making processes have yet to appear. This appears in no way to be due to shortcomings on behalf of the panel, who seem to have a keen appetite for their work, but rather is the result of slow progress by MoD. In the meantime work is proceeding at full speed ahead on the development of AI systems in the absence of these key ethical tools.

The work of the panel

The first meeting of the panel, held in March 2021, was chaired by Stephen Lovegrove, the then Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence. The panel discussed the MoD’s work to date on developing an AI Ethics framework and the panel’s role and objectives. The panel was to be a “permanent and ongoing source of scrutiny” and “should provide expert advice and challenge” to MoD, working through a regular quarterly meeting cycle. Read more →

MoD AI projects list shows UK is developing technology that allows autonomous drones to kill

29/07/202316/07/2025Peter Burt and Chris Cole

Omniscient graphic: ‘High Level Decision Making Module’ which integrates sensor information using deep probabilistic algorithms to detect, classify, and identify targets, threats, and their behaviours. Source: Roke

Artificial intelligence (AI) projects that could help to unleash new lethal weapons systems requiring little or no human control are being undertaken by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), according to information released to Drone Wars UK through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The development of lethal autonomous military systems – sometimes described as ‘killer robots’ – is deeply contentious and raises major ethical and human rights issues. Last year the MoD published its Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy setting out how it intends to adopt AI technology in its activities.

Drone Wars UK asked the MoD to provide it with the list of “over 200 AI-related R&D programmes” which the Strategy document stated the MoD was working on. Details of these programmes were not given in the Strategy itself, and MoD evaded questions from Parliamentarians who have asked for more details of its AI activities.

Although the Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy claimed that over 200 programmes are underway, only 73 are shown on the list provided to Drone Wars. Release of the names of some projects were refused on defence, security and /or national security grounds.

However, MoD conceded that a list of “over 200” projects was never held when the strategy document was prepared in 2022, explaining that “our assessment of AI-related projects and programmes drew on a data collection exercise that was undertaken in 2019 that identified approximately 140 activities underway across the Front-Line Commands, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) and other organisations”. The assessment that there were at least 200 programmes in total “was based on our understanding of the totality of activity underway across the department at the time”.

The list released includes programmes for all three armed forces, including a number of projects related to intelligence analysis systems and to drone swarms, as well as more mundane ‘back office’ projects. It covers major multi-billion pound projects stretching over several decades, such as the Future Combat Air System (which includes the proposed new Tempest aircraft), new spy satellites, uncrewed submarines, and applications for using AI in everyday tasks such as predictive equipment maintenance, a repository of research reports, and a ‘virtual agent’ for administration.

However, the core of the list is a scheme to advance the development of AI-powered autonomous systems for use on the battlefield. Many of these are based around the use of drones as a platform – usually aerial systems, but also maritime drones and autonomous ground vehicles. A number of the projects on the list relate to the computerised identification of military targets by analysis of data from video feeds, satellite imagery, radar, and other sources. Using artificial intelligence / machine learning for target identification is an important step towards the development of autonomous weapon systems – ‘killer robots’ – which are able to operate without human control. Even when they are under nominal human control, computer-directed weapons pose a high risk of civilian casualties for a number of reasons including the rapid speed at which they operate and difficulties in understanding the often un-transparent ways in which they make decisions.

The government claims it “does not possess fully autonomous weapons and has no intention of developing them”. However, the UK has consistently declined to support proposals put forward at the United Nations to ban them.

Among the initiatives on the list are the following projects. All of them are focused on developing technologies that have potential for use in autonomous weapon systems. Read more →

Cyborg Dawn? Human-machine fusion and the future of warfighting

22/05/202302/06/2023Peter Burt

Soldiers who see in the dark, communicate telepathically, or fly a drone by thought alone all sound like characters from in a science fiction film. Yet research projects investigating all these possibilities are under way in laboratories and research centres around the globe as part of an upsurge of interest in the possibilities of human enhancement enabled largely by expanding knowledge in the field of neuroscience: the study of the human brain and nervous system.

In order to help in understanding the possibilities and hazards posed by human enhancement technology, Drone Wars UK is publishing ‘Cyborg Dawn?‘, a new study investigating the military use of human augmentation.

Human enhancement – a medical or biological intervention to the body designed to improve performance, appearance, or capability beyond what is necessary to achieve, sustain or restore health – may lead to fundamentally new concepts of warfare and can be expected to play a role in enabling the increased use of remotely operated and uncrewed systems in war.

Although military planners are eager to create ‘super soldiers’, the idea of artificially modifying humans to give them capabilities beyond their natural abilities presents significant moral, legal, and health risks. The field of human augmentation is fraught with danger, and without stringent regulation, neurotechnologies and genetic modification will lead us to an increasingly dangerous future where technology encourages and accelerates warfare. The difficulties are compounded by the dual use nature of human augmentation, where applications with legitimate medical uses could equally be used to further the use of remote lethal military force. There is currently considerable discussion about the dangers of ‘killer robot’ autonomous weapon systems, but it is also time to start discussing how to control human enhancement and cyborg technologies which military planners intend to develop. Read more →