The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has plans to purchase a batch of FPV drones intended for supply to the Defense Forces of Ukraine as part of an international initiative known as the Drone Capability Coalition.
In particular, Great Britain, within the framework of the coalition, announced the Large First Person View Drone ITT tender, as part of which they plan to purchase up to 15 batches of first person view drones, consisting of 20 drones each (a total of up to 300 UAVs) for the amount of 2 million pounds (about 2.67 million US dollars). According to the UK Defence Journal, the drones will be used for both reconnaissance and strike missions.
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It is known that the FPV drones that Great Britain wants to buy must carry a payload of up to 5 kg. For comparison, one of the largest Ukrainian FPV drones "Queen of Hornets" can carry up to 9.5 kg and plans to increase this figure to 18 kg - while standard FPV drones can carry up to 1.5-2 kg.
It is noted that the purchase should take place by October 14 this year, then production and shipment for testing, which will take place in Latvia, will continue for four weeks. The tests will be held for three months. Delivery of drones directly to the Ukrainian military is planned for November-December of this year. If the weapons pass the test, the British want to scale production up to 500 drones per month.
We will remind that Latvia was the initiator of the creation of the Drone Capability Coalition. Officially, this coalition was formed in February of this year, and in April it entered the coalition support office. As of now, about one and a half dozen countries are participating in the coalition.
As Defense Express reported earlier, Drone Coalition members boosted Ukrainian drone power with SkyRanger UAVs from Canada, Heidrun RQ-35 Drones from Germany and more.
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