This article doesn't provide enough information to be useful. Is "thousands" a lot? It depends on what kind of drones we're talking about. Ukraine produces on the order of ten thousand military drones per day, as does Russia. So the UK sending "thousands" one time might be insignificant. On the other hand, thousands of properly equipped Reapers would be enough to allow Ukraine to defeat and possibly conquer Russia—but nobody has or will ever have thousands of Reapers, which would cost on the order of 3% of the GDP of the UK.
So the description in the article is so ambiguous that it covers the full range from "insignificantly small" to "implausibly large".
dmix · 9m ago
~~deleted, misread the article, I thought this was about a different drone program~~
kragen · 5m ago
Are you guessing at random, or do you have more information about Project Octopus than the article contains?
eimrine · 4m ago
Interception drone can't be similar to Shaheed.
poszlem · 14m ago
Only by taking annual production (4 million) and averaging it daily, but that's not daily actual production and includes all drones (many small FPVs).
kragen · 3m ago
You mean, because maybe most drone production stops on Sundays or something?
Under these circumstances, if the UK is sending thousands of small FPVs it would be insignificant.
fpoling · 30m ago
Given that Russia produces around 100 heavy drones per day and plan to increase production multiple times NATO countries are essentially defenseless against that as NATO will quickly run out of missiles to shot those drones.
Any country needs to stockpile interceptor drones and have production facilities to quickly ramp up production.
poszlem · 15m ago
> "UK defence secretary John Healey has outlined new plans to send thousands of interceptor missiles to Ukraine every month, with the Ukrainian-developed UAV to be shared with the UK to help in the fight against Russia."
The UK isn’t just being generous, it’s paying for access to Ukrainian drone know-how. Too many in the West still cling to the fantasy that Ukraine is some backward state, when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers.
pmarreck · 8m ago
> when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers
It's amazing what you can do when your choices are, in essence, "be destroyed" or "become an expert"
FrustratedMonky · 8m ago
question "NATO will quickly run out of missiles to shot those drones."
Is there not cheaper auto-shotgun type devices around? To spray the sky. It doesn't take an entire missile or even bullet to damage a drone does it?
jl6 · 10m ago
> cost less than 10% of the Russian systems destroyed
One wonders how they have managed that, or how they know.
tim333 · 1h ago
Probably a step forward to deal with the hundreds of shahed drones that Russia is sending to Ukraine and now it seems occasionally Poland. I'm curious what design they are going for. There is one possibility here https://youtu.be/Otyn_tXP0Uo
So the description in the article is so ambiguous that it covers the full range from "insignificantly small" to "implausibly large".
Under these circumstances, if the UK is sending thousands of small FPVs it would be insignificant.
Any country needs to stockpile interceptor drones and have production facilities to quickly ramp up production.
The UK isn’t just being generous, it’s paying for access to Ukrainian drone know-how. Too many in the West still cling to the fantasy that Ukraine is some backward state, when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers.
It's amazing what you can do when your choices are, in essence, "be destroyed" or "become an expert"
Is there not cheaper auto-shotgun type devices around? To spray the sky. It doesn't take an entire missile or even bullet to damage a drone does it?
One wonders how they have managed that, or how they know.