Chief of Air Staff provides some early news ahead of Uncrewed Platforms Strategy paper.
UK identifies 3 tiers: Tier 1 being small and sacrificial systems, 2 middle-ground "expendable", 3 as the larger drones we want to see coming back to base.
Focus right now is on Tier 1.
CAS says he expects to have, within a year, an operationally useable Tier 1 adjunct drone capability. In particular, speaking to the Defence Committee, he mentions electronic warfare payloads to suppress enemy air defences and help Typhoon operate in high risk areas.
This sounds very much in tune with the Royal Navy's Project VAMPIRE, which wants to field that kind of adjunct capability through spiral development of the Banshee from a pure threat-simulation target drone to a decoy and ISR platform.
We have just in these last few days received evidence of Banshee popping up in Ukraine, by the way, reportedly carrying explosive making it a strike system. We have limited visibility, for obvious reason, of just how much is going on.
https://t.co/yWmYjF6MRK