The UK will provide another £1 billion of military support to Ukraine, the Prime Minister announced at the NATO Leaders’ Summit on Thursday 30th June.
Support so far includes rapid design and production of short to medium range persistent loitering munitions by a UK start-up company.
UK defence companies are stepping up to provide the vital support Ukraine needs. We have provided £100 million worth of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles through a company* based in Berkshire. These orders have allowed the company to significantly upscale their production and have used the lessons from the conflict in Ukraine to inform development of their products, advancing several years of development which will directly benefit both the UK and the defence industry.
Source: UK Government Press Release
[The *company in question is probably ISS Aerospace , which is based in Newbury, Berkshire.
According to their website:
ISS Aerospace designs, builds and operates cutting edge unmanned aerial systems for a wide-range of international clients. Our systems are designed to collect meaningful information or to work as autonomous or semi—autonomous effectors under challenging conditions. We take pride in working closely with our clients to provide an end-to-end service from specification to operational service
Since we use our systems ourselves, we understand the value that they can bring to our clients but we also understand the challenges of operating them in difficult environments and over large areas. In particular, we understand the challenge of working with the limited endurance / range of most systems currently on offer. We have addressed this critical issue by partnering with Intelligent Energy, who have developed unique, light weight hydrogen fuel cells. Many of our platforms benefit from the huge endurance advantage that these provide, allowing missions that would have been unachievable using conventional systems.
ISS Aerospace was established in 2015 to build on a decade of experience with professional UAV platforms by the company’s founder. Since that time, we have designed, built and operated UAS systems for missions all over the world. Our systems have mapped potential unexploded ordnance in the Middle East, dropped biodegradable wireless seismic geophones into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, measured trace gasses in Kurdistan, surveyed power lines in Saudi Arabia and demonstrated rapid deployment of defensive systems at sea and land to name but a few.
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Despite this, the company remains discreet in its public statements – the last Twitter posts dates from June 2019 and the last Facebook post dates from October 202. – Ed.]