Drones are no longer a niche capability. Ukraine plans to manufacture about 10 million drones by the end of 2026 and has the capacity to double that figure. These systems are not just weapons but include robotic ground platforms to carry ammunition and evacuate wounded servicemen under fire. Nor is this purely a wartime phenomenon; in Singapore, companies operate 24‑hour beyond‑visual‑line‑of‑sight drone deliveries to ships in the port, making it one of a small number of places worldwide with live commercial BVLOS delivery services today.
The publication of the Defence Investment Plan, with £5 billion of new funding directed at unmanned capability, recognises that this is now a permanent feature of how Britain defends itself. It also presents a real opportunity for the UK to become a leading player in the wider drone economy, military and civilian alike.
What’s less visible is that this is also, in large part, an investment in space. The DIP commits to £2.3 billion in spending on satellite communications by 2030, recognising that space is “the central nervous system of modern, high-intensity warfare, rather than just a supporting domain.”
Future operations are increasingly being built around networks that link autonomous systems on land, at sea and in the air with satellites, ships and aircraft – turning individual drones into part of a coordinated, intelligent system. As former defence minister Tobias Ellwood observed this week, drones and space aren’t really two separate technologies; they’re two ends of the same one.
That networked, autonomous future depends on infrastructure most people rarely think about. Satellite communications are what let drones operate beyond visual line of sight and stay connected to the wider network; precision navigation and timing (PNT) is what allows the system to know exactly where every asset is at any given moment. And because adversaries are increasingly targeting satellite navigation signals through jamming and spoofing, resilience isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s what determines whether networked drone capability works when it’s needed most.
That has two practical implications as the DIP’s ambitions are put into practice.
First, defence planners and industry need to treat resilient SatComs and PNT as a core design requirement for networked and BVLOS-capable drone capability, not a secondary consideration.
Second, the UK’s high-potential businesses – the SMEs building sensors, autonomy software, communications payloads and navigation systems – will need to be ready to meet a demand signal that is set to grow significantly, much as has happened in Germany. That cuts both ways: the MoD will also need to show it can procure and contract at the pace this funding implies, and be clear with SMEs about how to engage with it.
Delivering resilient SatComs and PNT at this pace and scale requires rapid testing and development, which means access to state-of-the-art facilities. This is an area the Satellite Applications Catapult has worked in for several years, through our Drone Testing and Development Centre at Westcott and across the wider autonomy and space ecosystem, helping convert promising technology into evidence that regulators and primes can trust.
We’ve watched the testing landscape evolve, welcoming the arrival of new defence-focused infrastructure such as the drone testing centre that opened in Swindon earlier this month. The challenge now is pace as much as breadth: innovators and purchasers need to move quickly, and that means testing capacity built around real-world use cases, across defence, dual-use and commercial applications, not just hangar space.
We’re already developing what comes next at Westcott, building on capability shaped with industry and regulators in mind, and we’ll have more to say on that in the coming months.
What today’s announcement underlines is that the UK’s drone ambitions and its space capability need to move in step. Without strong foundations in SatComs and PNT, the rest of what the DIP sets out to achieve will be far harder to deliver.
