Doubling down on drones
While the release of the much-delayed DIP meets a key demand from allies and the U.K.’s military-industrial complex, the implementation will rely on Andy Burnham, who is expected to take over as prime minister later this summer.
Under the plan, the U.K. will get some of the way to meeting NATO’s new target of spending 3.5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035, but Britain’s spending is off the pace of other allies like Germany, France and Poland and it has yet to set out a clear funding pathway to hitting that target. The new investment plan is set to add about £15 billion, the Financial Times reported, over the £270 billion defense budget over this parliament.
That includes £5 billion the government announced it is spending on a drone transformation, with the Ministry of Defence pointing to the 200,000 drones which are used each month by Ukraine as an example of the approach that needs to be copied.
“Technology on the battlefield is changing at lightning speed. The clear lesson from Ukraine tells us that drones have changed the character of warfare,” said Ross Exley, vice president of defense strategy at Hadean, a U.K.-based tech company which sits on the government’s Defence Industrial Joint Council.
The DIP will now fund Europe’s biggest drone testing center, which will work alongside a new task force to “continuously scale production” to get drones into the hands of British forces.
Willasey-Wilsey said it was “slightly ironic that Britain started training the Ukrainians back in 2022, and now they could be very much training us — they are showing us how war should be fought these days.”
“It’s warfare we couldn’t do. We wouldn’t last more than a few weeks,” he said.