Ukraine is set to receive thousands more drones as defence secretary Grant Shapps announces today that the UK will co-lead a major drone capability coalition with Latvia for Ukraine.

As part of the coalition, the UK will scale up and streamline the West’s provision of ‘first person view’ (FPV) drones to Ukraine.

FPV drones have proven highly effective on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing their operators with situational awareness to target enemy positions, armoured vehicles, and ships with explosive ordnance.

By creating a competition to produce these drones at scale and at an affordable price point, the UK will try to leverage its industrial strength.

This is the first project to be launched from the £200 million drone package announced by the Prime Minister in January this year. It will see the UK order thousands of FPV drones for Ukraine, including from UK manufacturers, providing a boost to the industry and delivering on the Prime Minister’s priority to grow the economy.

“The UK continues to do all we can to give Ukraine what it needs – upping our aid to £2.5bn this year and committing £200m to manufacture drones, making us Ukraine’s largest drone supplier,” defence secretary Grant Shapps said.

“Today, we’re going even further. I’m proud to announce that the UK and Latvia will co-lead an international coalition to build Ukraine’s vital drone capabilities. Together, we will give Ukraine the capabilities it needs to defend itself and win this war, to ensure that Putin fails in his illegal and barbaric ambitions.”

Further to this, the defence secretary will bring together 13 NATO allies and Sweden to sign an agreement on two new multinational procurement initiatives focusing on munitions and missiles.

Spearheaded by the UK, these initiatives aim to increase defence industrial capacity across the Euro-Atlantic area, replenish stockpiles at pace and continue support to Ukraine.

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This multinational approach offers a scalable solution for nations to jointly procure more of the missile and munition types that NATO and Ukraine need.

The UK is also working with NATO Allies Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States to deliver priority air defence equipment to Ukraine. This partnership, which Canada recently joined, has so far delivered hundreds of short and medium air defence missiles and systems to keep Ukraine’s cities safe from Russian bombardment.

So far, the UK has committed £2.5bn in military aid to Ukraine in 2024/25, an increase of £200m on the previous two years.

The UK has also officially entered into a recession.