UK drone companies ‘starved of oxygen’ after successful trials, warns Evolve Dynamics

The UK has no shortage of promising drone technology, but turning successful trials into sustained production remains a major weakness, according to Evolve Dynamics.

The British manufacturer of portable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones has operated in Ukraine for years, giving its engineers direct exposure to a battlefield where systems must be adapted constantly as countermeasures evolve.

“Our presence in Ukraine gives us the ability to shorten the distance between the operators and our engineers,” CEO Tom Redman told ADS Advance. He said that constant feedback has forced the company to think in terms of rapid iteration rather than fixed products expected to remain effective for years.

But Redman argues that the UK has yet to build the industrial model needed to support the same pace of development at scale.

“In the UK, once you get to a successful trial, you think, brilliant, shall we crack on and start iterating this at scale? But the orders are not there, so you end up being starved of oxygen just at the point where there’s a capability that could be iterated upon,” he said.

The company has also experienced the fragility of international supply chains first-hand. For around six months, Evolve had drones sitting on its production line waiting for thermal cameras after rising US domestic demand led its American supplier to restrict availability to customers in Europe and the UK.

Redman believes relatively modest multi-year orders could make a significant difference to smaller manufacturers. Contracts worth £5 million or £10 million would be “rounding errors in the context of the overall defence budget”, he said, but could provide the confidence and cash flow needed to invest in production and supply chains.

Without that support, he fears the UK could miss the opportunity to build enduring domestic capability.

“Fast forward three or five years, and I don’t think we are on a pathway to build many drones at all,” Redman said.

Read the full investigation into what Britain can learn from Ukraine’s drone industry in the Autumn 2026 edition of ADS Advance.