Based on Ukraine’s experience: Great Britain will allocate five billion pounds for the development of military drones

The UK Armed Forces have announced the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Task Force as part of a major army reform. The government plans to allocate £5 billion to the development of the program to accelerate the integration of drones into all branches of the service.

This is reported by The Telegraph .

The new structure is being created as part of the Defence Investment Plan, a programme to modernise the army, initiated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The plan includes funding of £5 billion to expand the use of unmanned systems in the UK Armed Forces.

According to journalists, the basis for the reform was the combat experience of the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine , which were the first in the world to be formed as a separate branch of the military and demonstrated effectiveness in defeating enemy strategic targets.

At the same time, the British model will differ from the Ukrainian one. The new task force will not become a separate branch of the army, but will unite specialists from different components of the army, in particular:

• ground forces;
• naval forces;
• air force;
• Royal Marines.

The official mission of the new structure is to combine human potential, digital technologies, and modern unmanned systems for the operational and cost-effective performance of combat missions. According to journalists, the reform takes into account the lessons of the war in Ukraine and should reduce the time for implementing new technologies from years to a few weeks.

The UK currently has around 10,000 drones . However, military analysts say that in the event of a large-scale conventional conflict, such a stockpile could last only a few days, while the Ukrainian Defence Forces use hundreds of thousands of drones every month.

The UK Ministry of Defense notes that the newly created structure will also develop long-range reconnaissance equipment, precision strike systems, and technologies to counter enemy unmanned aerial vehicles.

It was previously reported that Ukraine has significantly shortened the cycle of development and improvement of weapons by testing new models directly at the front. NATO said that this approach has become an important lesson for Western armies and the defense industry.

By the way, American drone manufacturer Powerus has started cooperation with Ukrainian company Swarmer , which created software for controlling a swarm of FPV drones. This technology could help the company gain an advantage in the Pentagon’s competition for the supply of strike drones.

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