{"id":154877,"date":"2025-06-03T13:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T13:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/154877\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T13:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T13:18:10","slug":"british-army-revamp-puts-lasers-and-drone-swarms-on-the-front-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/154877\/","title":{"rendered":"British Army revamp puts lasers and drone swarms on the front line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoBodyText\"><strong>The British Army is ramping up its investment in modern weaponry such as drones and lasers as part of a broad revamp of the UK\u2019s defence capabilities.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) aims to make the Army \u201c10x more lethal\u201d by combining more people and armoured capability with air defence, communications, AI, software, long-range weapons and land drone swarms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">The major funding package includes more than \u00a34bn for autonomous systems and a further investment of nearly \u00a31bn for Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) this parliament. The DEW investment will include the DragonFire laser, which is expected to enter service onboard Royal Navy ships in 2027. The laser can track and potentially destroy targets including drones, missiles and aircraft with exceptionally high accuracy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">Meanwhile, a new Drone Centre will be established to accelerate exploitation of small, uncrewed air systems across all three military services, helping to deliver them to the front line faster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">The SDR also emphasises a major shift towards greater use of autonomy and AI within conventional forces to boost the accuracy and lethality of armed forces while reducing some of the upfront costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">The Royal Navy plans to move towards a dynamic mix of crewed, uncrewed and increasingly autonomous surface and sub-surface vessels and aircraft. It will also develop \u2018hybrid\u2019 carrier airwings where crewed combat aircraft (F-35B) are complemented by expendable, single-use drones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">The Royal Air Force will invest in a sixth-generation jet as part of the Future Combat Air System, which will include a combination of crewed, uncrewed and autonomous aircraft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">\u201cThese investments will mean the most significant advance in UK defence technology in decades,\u201d said defence secretary John Healey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">\u201cWe will ensure our Armed Forces have the cutting-edge capabilities they need to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world. We are delivering the SDR\u2019s vision to put the UK at the leading edge of innovation in Nato by backing British industry and fast-tracking the kit of the future into the hands of frontline troops.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBodyText\">The Ministry of Defence said it will invest \u00a36bn in munitions this parliament. This will include \u00a31.5bn in an \u2018always on\u2019 pipeline and building at least six new energetics and munitions factories in the UK, creating over 1,000 jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British Army is ramping up its investment in modern weaponry such as drones and lasers as part&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,2993,393,4884,18399,12,1144,712,65817,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-154877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-defence","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-laser","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uavs-and-drones","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114619633473895765","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}