Britain is using money already earmarked for Ukraine to fund a fresh order of 150,000 Ukrainian-made drones, in a move that underlines both the growing importance of Kyiv’s domestic defence industry and the central role unmanned systems now play in the war against Russia.
Defence secretary Dan Jarvis used his first major international appearance since taking office to announce a £752 million military support package at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels on Wednesday, including 150,000 drones and more than 350 air defence missiles and radar systems.
“This package of drones, air defence missiles and radars … will help to protect innocent Ukrainian people from Putin’s barrage of drones and missiles,” Jarvis said.
While the drone numbers are new, the funding itself is not. The package is being financed through the UK’s £2.26 billion G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loan to Ukraine. The UK government originally announced the ERA loan in March 2025 as part of a broader international support effort from the G7, and it has said that the loan will be paid back through extraordinary profits generated from frozen Russian sovereign assets.
In all, the UK has committed £21.8 billion in support to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. That figure includes the £2.26 billion ERA loan, which forms part of the £13 billion in military support alone.
What’s actually new here is where some of that funding is being spent. Rather than supplying British-built systems, the UK is effectively placing a large order with Ukraine’s rapidly expanding defence sector.
The Ministry of Defence did not identify which manufacturers will receive contracts, but the beneficiaries are likely to come from Ukraine’s sprawling drone ecosystem, which has grown from a handful of producers at the start of the war to hundreds of companies building everything from cheap first-person-view attack drones to long-range strike systems.
Ukraine’s drone industry is now operating at a scale that would have seemed fanciful only a few years ago.
Ukrainian officials have said the country produced more than four million drones in 2025 and is aiming for output exceeding seven million this year.
Against those numbers, 150,000 drones represent only a small fraction of Ukraine’s annual production capacity.
The announcement also gives Jarvis something concrete to take into his first major international engagement as Defence Secretary.
Jarvis took over the defence brief less than a week ago, amid political turmoil surrounding delays to the Defence Investment Plan and wider debate over UK defence spending.
While the MoD’s statement makes only a passing reference to the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan, officials said lessons from Ukraine and European security would be central to the document when it is finally published.
As Ukraine’s war increasingly becomes a contest of industrial capacity as much as military manoeuvre, Britain’s latest contribution appears designed as much to support Kyiv’s production lines as its front line.
