UK could spend £5bn on drones that cannot survive the battlefield, MyDefence warns

The UK’s Defence Investment Plan commits £5 billion to advanced uncrewed systems over the remainder of this Parliament, including new capability for the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

But Liam Hutcheson, UK director at counter-UAS specialist MyDefence, argues that the success of that investment should not be measured by the number of platforms acquired.

“The risk is that Britain measures its uncrewed ambition by the number of platforms it buys, rather than by how many can complete a mission in a drone-saturated battlespace,” he told ADS Advance.

Ukraine has demonstrated the growing value of uncrewed ground vehicles for logistics, engineering and reducing soldiers’ exposure. It has also shown how quickly movement can attract surveillance and attack.

A ground robot carrying ammunition remains vulnerable to reconnaissance drones, first-person-view attacks and electronic disruption.

“Britain could spend billions building an uncrewed fleet only to discover it cannot operate inside the threat environment it was designed for,” Hutcheson said. “Without counter-UAS protection, these assets risk becoming expensive equipment that cannot safely leave the operating base.”

Survivability must be designed in

Interceptor drones may form part of the solution, but MyDefence argues they are only one element of a wider system involving detection, classification, command and control and the decision to engage.

The risk is that uncrewed vehicles, counter-UAS sensors and effectors are developed through separate programmes and only integrated later, leaving the Armed Forces with systems that were never designed to operate together.

Hutcheson believes survivability should therefore form part of every uncrewed requirement from the start.

Each programme, he said, should answer one basic question:

“How will this system continue operating when the sky above it is full of enemy drones?”

The warning forms part of a wider examination in the latest ADS Advance of whether Britain’s £5 billion investment will create an integrated uncrewed force or simply a larger collection of platforms.

Read the full analysis in the Autumn 2026 edition of ADS Advance.