After a decade in service, the UK is calling time on the Watchkeeper programme as part of a wider raft of cost-saving cuts to be announced in the Strategic Defence Review in 2025. (Thales)
The United Kingdom is to scrap its Thales WK 450 Watchkeeper unmanned aircraft system (UAS) as part of a wider raft of retirements geared at plugging a multimillion-pound spending gap at the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Speaking in the House of Commons on 20 November, Defence Secretary John Healey said that the British Army's unarmed intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) platform will be one casualty of the upcoming spending review due to be published in mid-2025.
The Watchkeeper is operated by 47 Regiment Royal Artillery. The UK acquired 54 air vehicles, of which 11 are used, with the remainder (minus seven airframe losses that have been reported/acknowledged to date) held in the sustainment fleet in storage or used in test and evaluation.
Following a delayed entry into service in 2014, the Watchkeeper saw brief operational service at the end of the war in Afghanistan, and was also used to identify and track illegal boats in the English Channel in 2020. Other than on those two occasions, it has been used only for training purposes.
Further to the loss of the Watchkeeper, the Royal Air Force (RAF) is to lose its 17 remaining Airbus Puma HC2 medium-lift helicopters and 14 of its older-model Boeing Chinook HC6A heavy-lift helicopters with immediate effect from the publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in 2025. The MoD said that the Puma would be replaced by the Airbus H145, while the older Chinooks would be replaced by 14 new CH-47F Chinook extended-range helicopters.
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