Since the beginning of the summer we have had the release of the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP), the resignation of Defence Secretary John Healey and the replacement of his successor (Dan Jarvis lest you forget) with the appointment of Wes Streeting and of course, the ousting of PM Keir Starmer for Andy Burnham. In addition there have been a number of military spending announcements related to UK military drone and AI programmes so its worth setting out where we are at the moment in this area.
Military spending increased, other budgets cut
Firstly, despite noisy complaints from the usual suspects that not enough is being spent on ‘defence’, the government has committed eye-watering amounts to increase funding for the military as well as for military equipment development programmes. The DIP outlined how the UK will spend £298bn over the next four years, with annual UK military spending set to rise to £80bn a year in 2029 – that’s up from £54bn in 2024, a 27% increase.
Included in this spending is
- £5bn for military drones
- Over £5bn for military AI systems
- £1.8bn to a new Digital Targeting Web
- £3.2bn for military space capabilities
- £11bn for munitions and weapons.
This increase in military spending is, of course, at the cost of other budgets. In 2025, the government announced £6 billion of cuts to UK’s aid budget with the money to be spent instead on the development of “cutting-edge capabilities” for the military. Alongside the publication of the Defence Investment Plan, the government announced further cuts to all government departments plus deeper cuts to Energy and Transport budgets. According to analysis by Transition Security Project, cuts at the Energy department will total around £3.9bn, Transport will be cut by £2.4bn with the Department of Health by about £1 billion.
Most media coverage of these announcements though included a host of talking heads arguing that it simply wasn’t enough and that much more military spending was needed. As parliament returns for the autumn we are likely to see more lobbying in this vein.
Swindon: The New Home of Drone Warfare
Swindon has become the UK’s home of drone warfare with the establishment of the MoD’s new Uncrewed Systems Centre (USC) at its DroneTEX facility at Panattoni Park in the town. The term ‘DroneTEX’ come apparently for somebody’s neat idea to amalgamate ‘drone’, ‘technology’ and ‘testing’. It will be the focal point for the development and testing of UK military drones and technology in collaboration with industry. At 545,000sq ft, DroneTEX, we are told, is the size of more than 10 football pitches.
According to the DIP, the Uncrewed Systems Centre will be the MoD’s “centre of excellence for uncrewed systems and the digital exploitation of that capability, supporting the Digital Targeting Web.” Whether the MoD’s Defence Uncrewed Design Authority (DUxDA) [latest FoI on DUxDA here] will be relocated to Swindon is as yet unclear.
Alongside these new MoD facilities, a growing number of private companies involved in the development of military AI drones have established facilities in the town including Tekever, Stark, Munin and Neros.
New UK Land War Doctrine: Drones, Drone Drones
The DIP makes clear that Army commanders now see the development of drone technology as having a profound impact on how it conducts ground warfare, both in terms of needing to exploit the use of drones for ‘recce-strike’ but also in how it needs to defence personnel and equipment. According to the DIP,
“The British Army’s is transforming… founded on the Army’s new doctrine of fighting by ‘recce-strike’ at every level – from corps down to platoon – and underpinned by the widespread adoption of autonomous systems and AI.”
In other words, the Army intends to thoroughly integrate drones and AI capabilities into its fighting. As the DIP puts it, “it is a complete reimagination of British land warfare.”
A number of programmes to train and equip British soldiers to use small to medium size drones are being funded, including a £2bn contract with Omnia to train 60,000 soldiers annually. The UK has also funded Project NYX aimed at developing autonomous drones to accompany the army’s Apache helicopters and £400m to replace the army’s disasterous Watchkeeper drones with new Tekever AR5 drones. But significant funding is also being allocated to ASGARD.
Project ASGARD is a British Army communications and control system which uses AI to connect a variety of sensors with weapons such as artillery, tanks, rockets and soldiers on the ground to enable commanders to find targets and strike faster than ever before. The aim is to make the Army “ten times more lethal” than before. ASGARD is the army’s part of the MoD’s new Digital Targeting Web.
The Digital Targeting Web
While drones have had a huge impact on warfare, the rapid develop and integration of AI into warfare is likely to be profound. While in part this will come through the integration of AI into weapon systems themselves, AI is also being used to process information and data to rapidly produce potential targets and to help strike those targets far more rapidly. We have seen this in the Israeli use of systems such as ‘Lavender’, Habsora’ and Where’s Daddy?’ The UK is developing what it calls the Digital Targeting Web (DTW) in order to utilise AI for targeting and strikes.
Giving evidence to the Defence Select Committee, General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the authors of the Strategic Defence Review said in relation to the Digital Targeting Web
“I regret that we had to settle on the word “targeting”, which implies that it just does targeting. Actually, the digital kill web—a word I prefer—is the architecture of command and control now.”
He went on:
“Essentially, what the web does is to take in every form of thing or capability that senses the operating environment—whether it is satellite, aircraft, drone, mobile phone, ship, vehicle or database, it does not matter; everything that allows you to understand your operating environment—and networks that into a database and secure cloud managed by AI—without AI, you cannot manage it—supervised by clever people. That capability allows you to assemble an understanding of your operating environment to support decision making, including ranking targets and allocating them to weapons systems, whether they are kinetic, from any service, or non-kinetic, like a cyber-attack.
While the DIP committed £1.8bn in funding for the Digital Targeting web up until 2030, it also said it expected to spend £17bn on it and the wider MoD ‘digital backbone’ between 2030 and 2035.
Digital Warfighter Group and the Military Use of Agentic AI
The MoD says that work is underway to establish a Digital Warfighter Group with the aim of “deploying digital and conventional war fighters on operations side-by-side”. In part this is about “creating a new type of operator, whose education, training and equipment supports digital operations”.
However, alongside this, the plan is also to deploy Agentic AI. Unlike traditional generative AI (such as ChatGPT) that can only respond to single prompts, Agentic AI uses a variety of tools and programmes to independently plan and execute multi-step actions to achieve a broader goal. Increasing we have seen Agentic AIs go rogue in tests and it is extremely worrying that the UK is already planning to deploy these systems for warfighting.
Collaborative Combat Aircraft: A Drone By Any Other Name
While the UK has already funded some smaller Autonomous Collaborative Platforms such as StormShroud (ACP are drones designed to accompany crewed aircraft to undertake various tasks such as jamming or lethal attacks) the DIP, commits funding to develop a larger armed ‘Collaborative Combat Aircraft Programme’ for the RAF with initial funding of £300m. The DIP states that CCA “will expand sensor coverage, carry extra missiles, and push far ahead of the crewed air component, to enhance survivability and lethality.”
Defence Minister Luke Pollard announced in July that the new jet-powered CCA would be called StormFighter. Both BAE Systems and Boeing have already thrown their hats into the ring with systems they have already developed. The DIP makes clear that the UK aims to spend “at least £70bn in new capabilities for the air domain” between 2030 and 2035. Interestingly, the DIP also says that “our CCAs will exploit a sovereign, world-leading propulsion system.”
Maritime Drones to create a ‘Hybrid Navy’
The DIP aims to push the Navy towards developing large number of uncrewed systems, with at least £1.3bn aimed at creating ‘a hybrid fleet’ (crewed and uncrewed naval systems). The Hybrid fleet will
“ultimately comprised of uncrewed missile platforms (Type 91), uncrewed underwater sense platforms (Type 92), extra-large uncrewed underwater vessels (XLUUV) (Type 93), uncrewed radar platforms (Type 94) and a future class of Common Combat Vessels (CCV).”
These systems will be connected by a ‘Maritime Fighting Web’ – the navy element of the Digital Targeting Web. Alongside these developments, £240m will fund Project Pantheon, the development of autonomous systems to start building a autonomous Carrier Air Wing, In addition, various programmes aimed at bringing AI into the anti-submarine warfare arena are also being funded.
In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (about space warfare)
In the same way that the UK denies it is actively working to develop lethal autonomous weapons, the UK insists that it opposes military action in space. Yet at the very same time it is actively developing plans for what it calls ‘space control’, a euphemism for offensive military action in space. The DIP states that the MoD will “be more ambitious in delivering the space capabilities necessary to fight and win.”
The DIP allocated over £3bn to military space activities over the next four years alone, with plans to spend a further £9bn between 2030 and 2035.
Plans include
- A UK space-based ‘sovereign’ operational Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance capability
- Working with the US and Australia on a Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability. The UK element will be based at Cawdor Barracks in Pembrokeshire. This new network of ground-based space radars is aimed at surveillance of other states space assets.
- Developing various classified capabilities to enhance UK Space Control.
- A new centralised Air, Space and Missile Defence Operations Centre (IASMDOC)
- Extending thee life of the SKYNET 5 military communications satellites until SKYNET 6 is operational.
Unfortunately, armed conflict in space can no longer be seen as unlikely or far-fetched but increasingly possible. Any such conflict will have severe consequences for all of us below as space-based systems play an essential role in critical civilian infrastructure and are indispensable to the provision of essential services
Alongside these key developments the UK is spending over £11bn on new munitions and weapons stockpiles; developing a ‘Deep Precision Strike’ missile; spending almost £500m on what used to be called lasers but are now called Direct Energy Weapons; an unknown amount on the development of a new Biological Warfare Laboratory at Porton Down to be named after Ernest Bevin; and £750m funding counter-drone systems for deployed and UK based forces.
Drone Wars will continue to scrutinise and enable critical public debate about all these developments.