Britain will supply Ukraine’s military with “over 10,000 drones” this year, including attack drones, and the government in London has committed an extra £125m to the effort on top of the £200m previously promised, UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said. Kyiv on Thursday, which called on Ukraine’s allies in the war with Russia to do the same, France Presse and DPA reported, according to Agerpres.

• “We continue our commitment to arming Ukraine with new, state-of-the-art drones that come directly from British defense equipment manufacturers, world leaders” in this sector, Grant Shapps said.

This new delivery, which comes after others, includes around a thousand disposable attack drones, as well as maritime surveillance and attack drones for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, but the bulk of the package will consist of FPV (first-person view) drones, the latter being pilot-controlled drones. who sees in the headset or on the computer screen an image of the area over which the drone is flying.

Last month, the United Kingdom announced cooperation with Latvia to organize a coalition for the production and delivery of drones to Ukraine “on a large scale and at affordable prices.”

“I am adding to our commitment to arm Ukraine with new modern drones, which are supplied directly from the world’s leading defense industry of Great Britain, from the factory directly to the front line. I encourage international partners to join the UK in this endeavour,” said Minister Grant. Shapps after a meeting with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi in Kyiv.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries make extensive use of drones for reconnaissance, to adjust artillery fire, and to attack infantry and military equipment, including tanks, armored vehicles, and howitzers.

Ukrainian forces are also trying to use drones to compensate for the shortage of artillery ammunition they are facing. But to neutralize drones, the Russian army uses highly effective means of electronic warfare, and the Russian military industry has developed several types of attack and reconnaissance drones since the beginning of the war. For example, last week Russia showed off a previously unknown FPV drone called Vampire, which it used to destroy one of the American Abrams tanks supplied to Ukraine by the United States.