{"id":1352904,"date":"2026-02-03T11:26:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T09:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/britain-refused-to-transfer-watchkeeper-drones-to-ukraine-they-will-be-disposed-of\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T11:26:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T09:26:22","slug":"britain-refused-to-transfer-watchkeeper-drones-to-ukraine-they-will-be-disposed-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/britain-refused-to-transfer-watchkeeper-drones-to-ukraine-they-will-be-disposed-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain refused to transfer Watchkeeper drones to Ukraine: they will be disposed of"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK Ministry of Defense has decided to dispose of the Watchkeeper reconnaissance drones and not transfer them to Ukraine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is reported<\/a> by Militarny with reference to the UK Defence Journal.<\/p>\n

In a written response to Conservative MP Marc Francois, Defence Minister Luke Pollard explained that the government is betting on new, more cost-effective unmanned systems to replace Watchkeeper. Despite the drones being decommissioned, there are no plans to transfer them to Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Pollard stressed that the UK would continue to support Ukraine by providing it with modern weapons to protect its sovereignty and prepare for possible peace talks. He added that the Watchkeeper, which entered service in 2010, is now considered obsolete due to the rapid development of unmanned technology.<\/p>\n

Also, according to a similar scheme, British MQ-9 Reapers are being disposed of instead of being transferred or sold to other countries.<\/p>\n

The minister confirmed that the budget for the Watchkeeper program for the period from November 2024 to March 2027 is \u00a3115.886 million, which will ensure a controlled process of decommissioning drones while the army transitions to new systems.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, the UK plans to develop new Nightfall ballistic missiles for Ukraine with warheads weighing 200 kilograms<\/a> . The range of these missiles allows them to hit Russian targets at a distance of over 300 miles, including in the Moscow area.<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK Ministry of Defense has decided to dispose of the Watchkeeper reconnaissance drones and not transfer them to Ukraine. This is reported by Militarny with reference to the UK Defence Journal. In a written response to Conservative MP Marc Francois, Defence Minister Luke Pollard explained that the government is betting on new, more cost-effective […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1352897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76874],"class_list":["post-1352904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1352897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}