Check my understanding. Iran is supplying Russia with drones Yes/No. The UK supply Ukraine (Which i have no problem with BTW). Our drones are then against Iranian drones by proxy? just seems like Odd timing for al of a sudden load of equipment for Ukraine given the timelines on the war(s). or am i reading to much into this.

I hope its just a case of "We know Iran is going on but we haven't forgotten about you, even though the orange buffoon seems to have"

Russia is manufacturing its drones based on Iranian designs. Russia is now also supplying Iran. Nothing odd, comrade.

The US is also manufacturing drones based on Iranian designs. Seems to be a popular pastime these days.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/02/us_iran_clone_drones/

Sharing is caring. Seems like Putin/vova/bubba really loves Krasnov.

The US is manufacturing drones based on a Russian design based on an Iranian design based on an South African design based on a German design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_DAR).

No, it's still an anti-Russian aggression against Ukraine thing. Otherwise, as soon as you start considering where the weapons systems originated, as opposed to who they were sold/donated to and put to use by, then you open up a big old can of worms regarding who's fighting who.

Iran have supplied Russia with actual drones plus the IP needed to allow Russia to build their own versions, but Iran themselves are not attacking Ukraine, therefore anything we and other allied nations might do to support Ukraine here is similarly at the level of supplier rather than active participant in the war.

I'd suggest the timing of this announcement might have more to do with the corresponding news from Ukraine of Russia appearing to be getting more reliant on drones rather than cruise/ballistic/hypersonic/unstoppable wonderweapon types of missiles more often used earlier in the war.

In the beginnings though, Iranian personnel was using these drones against Ukraine. Until of course they got eliminated.

"I'd suggest the timing of this announcement might have more to do with the corresponding news from Ukraine of Russia appearing to be getting more reliant on drones rather than cruise/ballistic/hypersonic/unstoppable wonderweapon types of missiles more often used earlier in the war."

This could be down to drones being relatively cheap and those 'super' weapons being rather expensive. That 'policing action' of Putin's is likely proving exceedingly expensive and they're not really getting their money back - even more so with the sanctions and frozen assets.

You could also consider that the war in Ukraine is giving various 'interested parties' a chance to test their kit to see how effective it is. And that drones look to be a more cost effective approach to warfare. Well, until AI gets involved, but thankfully it looks like the various militaries have paid attention to that little fiasco...

This could be down to drones being relatively cheap and those 'super' weapons being rather expensive. That 'policing action' of Putin's is likely proving exceedingly expensive and they're not really getting their money back - even more so with the sanctions and frozen assets.

The unprovoked, full-scale military invasion of Iran caused an inevitable spike in oil & gas prices, which obviously provided a big boost to Russia's treasury. The sanctions the EU imposed on itself have also provided a big drain on the EU's economy. Russia isn't getting cash from the EU, the EU isn't getting oil, gas, fertiliser, ammonium nitrate to produce explosives etc etc. And now that there's been regime change in Hungary, the EU will be able to 'loan' €90bn to Ukraine. So Hungarians will take on some part of that debt, German defence companies will get some part of the €60bn that's going to provide weapons to Ukraine, and €30bn will go to Ukraine to buy gold toilets.

You could also consider that the war in Ukraine is giving various 'interested parties' a chance to test their kit to see how effective it is

Yep. Russia, Iran, China, the Houthis, Hezbollah etc etc have all discovered how efffective their kit is, and how effective our kit is at countering that. So there's been videos out of Lebanon showing FPV and other drones attacking Israel's Merkava tanks and IFVs.. Which despite all the videos that came out of Ukraine with Russia & Ukraine using 'cope' cages to defend against drones, Israel doesn't seem to have learned from, because Israel hasn't been fitting them to their vehicles. Their Merkavas don't even seem to have been fitted with ERA, so perhaps Israel assumed their Trophy active defence systems would work to stop drones, which may have been a faulty assumption.

But yep, all the conflicts we've started have been great for defence companies. Order books for Patriots are full for years, even though some customers might be questioning the effectiveness of that system now. Especially cost-effectiveness. Which also gets interesting for countries like S.Korea and orders for their M-SAM / Skybolt system, which started life as a joint Russia-S.Korean version of Russia's S-400..

DYLONS,

Our drones are then against Iranian drones by proxy? just seems like Odd timing for al of a sudden load of equipment for Ukraine given the timelines on the war(s). or am i reading to much into this.

You're reading too much into this. Almost all this drone stuff has been pre-announced. The government just like to package it all up to show they're doing a lot to help Ukraine. Which is totally fair enough, as they actually are doing a hell of a lot to help Ukraine.

We've been heavily involved in helping Ukraine design new kit, designing new kit for them, helping modify ex-Soviet kit to take NATO weapons (FrankenSAM program) and buying grey market ex-Soviet kit on the global arms market for them, since they can't get new from Russia any more.

We used stored Tornado parts to bodge Storm Shadow onto Ukraine's Su-24s for example. Admittedly targetting had to be pre-programmed on the ground - it couldn't be made compatible enough to fully operate the missile from the aircraft. We've also been helping them with various drone projects - Octopus is a short-range anti-drone drone that's Ukraine designed but British build and funded. Of which we're planning to send them tens of thousands this year, and maybe up to 100,000 next year.

Then there's Skyhammer - which is UK designed and built, longer ranged anti-drone drone, and the MoD just ordered a few thousand of, for delivery over the next 6 months.

There's no real connection to Iran. However we have been directly shooting down Iranian drones in the Middle East. As we have bases and allies out there, and it turns out the MoD had deployed Rapid Sentry - a system they hadn't even admitted existed. Which is a launcher for Martlet and Star Streak (the short ranged SAM) missiles as well as anti-drone electronic warfare.

I'm not military and I don't know much about drones but I'm curious about the line:

Sending British-made drones to Ukraine may seem redundant in light of the country's hard-won pre-eminence in battlefield drone technology

Is there an open standard for a) control systems b) sensor integration that means drones built now can later be upgraded to use different tactics or locate other targets?

I would imagine the drones come with their own control / maintenance infrastructure equipment.

The line is referring to the fact that Ukraine has pretty much invented (or at least heavily progressed) drone technology on the battlefield. So it's akin to teaching Grandma to suck eggs.

Not so much teaching granny to suck eggs as delivering a chicken farm for her.

As I have posted before, If a European military purchases a stockpile of 100.000 modern combat drones, in half a year they will have a stockpile of 100.000 obsolete combat drones.

The best thing to do today is to build up an industrial base that can churn out combat drones at a high pace, send these to Ukraine in exchange for feedback and continuously improve the combat drones that the national industrial base can produce. Should the nation itself then have s sudden need for combat drones beyond what is used in training and exersizes, then the production can be increased and redirected.

At some later point, when the technology has matured and the evolution is slowing down, one can concider stockpiles. Now is not the time.

Just to echo LogicGate's point.

Even now, there are some drones that were built ten years ago, that are still in use - with relatively little modification. But they're the expensive ones. Particularly with the tactical drones - everything is changing all the time. So we need an industrial base, not a stockpile. A stockpile is just going to be so much junk, in quite short order. A factory, if the supply-chain has been carefully set-up - plus an iterative design process - gives you useable drones when you need them.

This is particularly going to be true for the air defence and counter-drone ones - because that's only really been a thing for 12-18 months. And everything changes incredibly fast.

Some of the drones we're giving Ukraine are designed by Ukraine, and we're just making them, and paying for them. That's Octopus. But means we have access to good short range anti-drone drones. Bugger! That's hard to type. Tthe term of art is C-UAS (counter-unmanned aerial systems), which is even longer...

Then there's Skyhammer. Which is a UK start-up - which is a hybrid drone / surface to air missile. It's using a jet engine, but has a range of 20km. And once that's in production, they're going to double (or treble) the range by building a bigger rocket-powered version called Starhammer - which really is just going to be a short to medium range SAM - but the idea is to make it much cheaper.

Then there's the Malloy drones - which are supposed to be medium lift semi-autonomous cargo drones. We're planning to use them for front-line casualty evacuation and transport of stuff between ships. I presume Ukraine are also using them for casualties - but 2 weeks ago they shot down a Russian helicopter with one that they'd strapped a bunch of explosives to.

As I have posted before, If a European military purchases a stockpile of 100.000 modern combat drones, in half a year they will have a stockpile of 100.000 obsolete combat drones

Or Ukraine will have fewer warehouses. Announcements like Starmers are usually delayed, ie the stuff announced has probably already been shipped. Then Russia's intelligence agencies will be trying to find where they're being stored, and destroy those stockpiles. Ukraine had an Easter ceasefire, that ended and has spent the last 36hrs fending off the unwanted attentions of over 1,000 Russian drones and missiles. Those came in 3 main waves, with the usual Russian tactic of swarms to overwhelm Ukraine's air defences.

The best thing to do today is to build up an industrial base that can churn out combat drones at a high pace, send these to Ukraine in exchange for feedback and continuously improve the combat drones that the national industrial base can produce.

Yep. With some risks.. So Rheinmetal announced it'd build factories in Ukraine to give Russia more targets. Then if announcements of UK-Ukraine JVs to offshore drone production means those factories could also be considered targets, or the UK edging ever closer to being a formal party to the conflict.. Which we & the EU have been for years now, and Russia has been trying to sabotage & destroy those JVs.

It would depend on if we're making the drones to Ukraine design, or of they're our own design.

Plus, there's a lot of different roles that Drones can be used for, so if we supply one type, it could free up Ukraine's factories to focus on other types.

Plus I doubt Ukraine will turn away more weapons to deploy against Russia. They've accepted supplies of weapons, artillery, missiles and armoured vehicles after all.

@keng

Yes, kinda.

Ukraine has a layered defence made up of multiple semi compatible systems. What Ukraine is very good at it integrating these.

There is a NATO standard Comms system where different systems can talk to each other, but Ukraine is not part of NATO, they use a lot of old Soviet kit and equipment from (some formally) non NATO countries.