Screenshot from the camera of a Ukrainian FPV UAV during an attack on a Russian convoy in Russia's Kursk region on 2 June 2024. (53rd Mechanized Brigade/103rd Territorial Defense Brigade, AFU)
The UK and Latvia-led group called the Drone Coalition, set up to support Ukraine with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, commonly known as drones), after Russia's 2022 invasion, has announced that the initial contracts from a first-person view (FPV) UAV competition will be issued in August.
This will mean the first successful bids, out of the 265 made by companies since the competition was launched on 3 June 2024, will proceed to testing. Those moving on to the next stage will already have been through assessment by a panel of experts from Drone Coalition countries.
The contracts will allow companies to supply the necessary batches of test UAVs and associated equipment such as ground-control stations. Up to three months of testing will follow. This will inform potential future mass production contracts, said by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) in June to be for up to approximately 1,000 UAVs per month. The coalition's stated overall aim as a result of this competition is to supply one million FPV UAVs to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
Latvia's MoD told Janes on 11 July that at the beginning of June it had opened a UAV training and testing range at its Selonia Military Training Area. This will be used to assess the FPV UAVs during the competition's testing phase. Allied and Drone Coalition member states will regularly gather there to continuously improve drone and electronic warfare (EW) technology, and to ensure their compliance with the requirements of the AFU.
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