The United Kingdom seeks to strengthen its partnership with the unmanned aerial system industry as part of its new strategy to provide its armed forces with drone capabilities in an accelerated manner.
Under the U.K. Defence Drone Strategy, the British government will invest $5.71 billion over the next decade to speed up the experimentation, testing and evaluation of uncrewed systems for the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
The rapid development effort comes amid the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Moscow has been using UAS units to attack infrastructures in various Ukrainian regions. According to a Reuters report, Russia recently deployed dozens of Shahed drones to Kyiv and targeted residential and commercial buildings resulting in the death of four people.
Citing lessons learned from Russia’s military aggression, U.K. officials emphasized the need to integrate uncrewed systems into British military forces to enhance intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, strike and logistical capabilities, deter adversaries, and maintain readiness to respond to similar attacks.
The U.K. government said it will conduct regular engagements with the industry to meet the strategy’s UAS deployment goals.