Use of Drones in Defence

Gregory Stafford Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Peter Fortune]

It is right that we continue to support Ukraine. Our support of Ukraine is keeping us safe in the west, and we need to redouble our efforts to make sure the brave soldiers and people of Ukraine are well defended.

Drones are now an important part of supply chains and logistics, with Ukraine using ground drones to move ammunition and other supplies to the frontline. Operation Spiderweb saw Ukraine smuggle 117 cheap first-person-view drones to successfully strike a Russian airfield, disabling a third of Russia’s strategic bombers. That is drones worth a couple of hundred dollars inflicting an estimated $7 billion of damage.

Sea drones have changed the balance of power in the Black sea. A third of Russia’s fleet was damaged or destroyed by relatively low-cost sea drones packed with explosives ramming ships. While Russia’s navy has adapted to make these attacks harder, sea drones carrying missiles or other drones are still causing immense damage—a $300,000 sea drone can destroy fighter jets worth $50 billion.

Drones are transforming warfare and levelling the playing field in asymmetric fights, but the change can be seen beyond Ukraine. Israel weakened Iran’s attacks on its territory by covertly transporting drones in suitcases and trucks to destroy Iranian air defences and missiles. Houthi rebels used drones to target HMS Diamond, requiring the ship to use its expensive missiles to stop a relatively cheap attack. Even drug cartels in Mexico are using cheap drones to launch targeted strikes against security services. Terrorist groups are also adapting commercially available drones for reconnaissance and filming propaganda, and they will undoubtedly be used in future attacks.

The pace of change is unbelievably fast, but the direction is clear: drone warfare is the future, and Britian must be the leader in the development, testing and mass deployment of drones. That means three things. First, we must develop an ecosystem of private enterprises that can innovate, test and build drone models—big and small, sophisticated and simple—at a larger scale. Ukraine is armed with many UK-made drones. We have supplied some 70,000 already and have a target of 100,000 by the end of the year, but that pales in comparison with the numbers required for drone warfare. Ukraine aims to produce 4.5 million this year.

It would take relatively little money to kick-start a collection of competing companies, capable of innovating to keep up with battlefield changes, to build inexpensive or sophisticated drones. We must also help commercial drone enterprises to thrive. Although they were not initially intended to, those machines can have military purposes and can provide the industrial-scale drone warfare that we require. It is disappointing and frankly unacceptable that, since the general election, the Government have purchased only three drones for the UK armed forces.

Secondly, if the UK procures many new drones, we will be able to start training our forces and learning the lessons from Ukraine. Although our brave service personnel use drones for many tasks, they are not as widely utilised as modern warfare demands.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, with which I agree. Like him, I have been part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme with the Royal Marines. Over the past year, he and I have seen drones deployed—I will not say where. More importantly, there is innovation in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, but it is compartmentalised and bitty, and it is not at the scale that he is talking about. Is it not time for the Government to use the innovation in the armed forces to expand out into the private sector?

[Peter Fortune]

This is a good point at which to mention the armed forces parliamentary scheme, of which colleagues from across the House are part. That great enterprise enables us to better understand the pressures and the reality that our armed forces personnel face. My hon. Friend is right that we have visited sites where we have seen how drones can be used and how effective they can be for deployment on the battlefield. That drives my request to the Minister to look at how we can procure more drones.

We are steadfast in our support for Ukraine, where we have made the military links we need to learn how drones can make our British forces even more lethal. They can carry out unmanned assaults and provide the support that our personnel need.

Finally, and in equal measure, we need to look at how the armed forces can counter drones—what we can do to fight them off. HMS Diamond is a particular case in point, as it successfully destroyed nine Houthi drones, but at huge expense. We have seen the damage that drones have inflicted on prestigious targets—Russian jets, ships and bombers—so we clearly need to defend ourselves from them. As a nation, we cannot afford to let cheaply purchased drones with a grenade attached wreck a multimillion-pound piece of equipment. We are already developing solutions such as radio frequency directed energy weapons, capable of neutralising swarms of drones, but as we look to ramp up defence spending in a more dangerous world, the threat posed by cheap drones must be answered.

Drones will not make infantry, artillery, ships or aircraft obsolete; they are a new tool that will help to transform warfare. They must be an integral part of our efforts to strengthen the UK’s armed forces and face down the threats our country now faces.