Western ally coalition pledges one million drones for Ukraine
The UK and Latvia took the lead in a seven-country strong Western industry coalition to manufacture drones for Kyiv to bolster military support in the long term, they announced on Thursday (15 February).
Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany have also signalled their intention to join the group, with the latest drone coalition joining other several ‘capability coalitions’ for Ukraine announced over the past few months.
“We will work towards the goal of delivering one million drones to Ukraine,” Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds announced on X.
Western countries vowed last autumn to organise weapons production for Kyiv around several ‘coalitions’ in a bid to keep up and increase military aid to the war-torn country after almost two years of fighting and its stockpiles running low.
Kyiv’s allies already send drones to the battlefield, but no timeline has been communicated for the first deliveries of the drones under this framework.
Each coalition is focused on a specific type of combat capability; for instance, France leads an artillery-focused coalition, while the Netherlands and Denmark take the helm of the fighter jets coalition and Estonia and Luxembourg focus on IT.
Other coalitions work on enhancing Ukraine’s maritime security and demining.
Kyiv has been requesting “first person view” (FPV) drones from its Western allies, someone with knowledge of the discussion said, adding they see them as key capacities on the battlefield.
On the Ukrainian battlefield, the “really new part, which was much of a feature of the scale [of the war], is drones”, Shapps also said.
The coalition will involve industries chosen by the participating countries, including their own, and will positively impact the development of new technologies too.
“Obviously, what we want to do is both benefit Ukraine and also benefit British R&D,” Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told reporters after the signing.
The first-person view drones have proven their effectiveness at targeting position and equipment, as they “are the ones that you’ve seen sinking [ships] in the Black Sea”, Shapps said. And I think that we’re probably only at the start of what you’ll see from drones in future warfare.
“FPV drones have proven highly effective on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing their operators with situational awareness to target enemy positions, armoured vehicles, and ships with explosive ordnance,” the UK Defence Ministry wrote in a press release.
The UK itself aims to supply Ukraine with “thousands” of drones, the ministry added.
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