Britain needs a national drone company

Forget GB Railways and GB Energy... how about GB Drones?

NEW PODCAST: Introducing The Abundance Agenda.

I’ve teamed up with my pal Martin Robbins to launch a new podcast about growth and progress. Each week we’ll be talking about news and ideas from the emerging “abundance” movement.

In our first episode, we talk about our radicalisation stories, explore the maddening decision by the Department for Transport to pull funding for a new parking app, and we get real about defence, explaining why the political reaction so far has been too timid.

You can find the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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NEXT EVENT: How the YIMBYs won

Don’t forget to grab your ticket for my next live event on 25th March, where I’ll be speaking to housing hero Anya Martin about how the YIMBY moment has transformed British politics. It’s more timely than ever, given the publication of the planning bill this week. So come along and find out how the YIMBY crew changed the conversation!

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Finally, Europe has woken up to the new reality.

Like it or not, Britain and our European allies are now participants in a new Cold War – and this time around, we can’t be certain that America will always be on our side.

However, it isn’t just the prospect of Donald Trump withdrawing support for Ukraine that keeps me awake at night – it’s China doing the same.

Obviously, Beijing is not on our side in this fight. Ideologically, China is a part of the emerging authoritarian axis, and in practical terms it is by some distance our most powerful strategic adversary. If Xi Jinping ever sends his troops into Taiwan, it will make events in Ukraine look like little more than a minor skirmish.

But since the beginning of Putin’s full-scale invasion, China hasn’t been entirely helpful to Russia. Instead, it has followed the classic Iran-Iraq war playbook of effectively selling its most valuable weapons to both sides: drones.

I say “effectively”, because on paper, Beijing has imposed restrictions that prevent Chinese companies like DJI, the world’s largest drone maker, selling their gear for use in war. But in practice, both Ukraine and Russia have continued to acquire drones through third-party and grey-market channels.

That’s why today Chinese drones are utterly dominant on the battlefield. For example, in 2023, Ukraine reportedly bought 60% of DJI’s entire global supply of its flagship Mavic drones, and though hard numbers are hard to find, there are clearly thousands in use on the frontlines today.

And this is why I worry. The reliance on Chinese drones puts Ukraine, and the rest of Europe, in a precarious position.

It means that if China were to choose to clamp down on grey-market drone sales to Ukraine, or were to impose broader restrictions on sales to Europe – as it has reportedly tried to do – then Ukraine will lose access to this critical battlefield technology.

And what makes this situation worse is that even if drones can be sourced from other countries, then we might still be at a disadvantage – because China, and DJI specifically, make arguably the best drones in the world.

So what can we do about it?

I think it is time for Britain to take the drone gap seriously, just as we would if we didn’t have the best fighter jets or missiles. That’s why we should establish a new company in the mold of the forthcoming state-backed Great British Railways and Great British Energy.

It’s time for us to create Great British Drones.

The drone paradigm

It’s hard to overstate the impact drones have had on how wars are fought. Crucially, this is not just large “military” drones that look like small planes and are designed to fire missiles or drop bombs. As Ukraine has demonstrated over the last three years small, commercial-grade drones have also proven decisive, for several reasons.