Legacy surveillance platform will be retired next March, although a replacement has yet to be chosen.
UK defence procurement officials face a race against time to acquire and field a new uncrewed surveillance platform for the British Army before the Thales Watchkeeper WK450 is withdrawn from service early next year.
However, the budget to replace the Watchkeeper – which was supposed to have been retired in March 2025 – appears to have almost doubled from its original figure of £156 million ($208 million).
While a tender for the acquisition of a new uncrewed air vehicle (UAV) to replace the army’s Watchkeeper fleet was launched last year, the Project Corvus effort is running behind schedule.
Tender documents published in August 2025 set an estimated timeline for the selection of a platform by the end of March this year, leading to a contract that would start on 1 May, running for an initial five-year period.
But with little information released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) – and prior to the publication of the UK government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) on 30 June – there had been speculation that the procurement had been quietly shelved.
However, the DIP makes explicit reference to Corvus, describing it as “£310m of new investment in the Army’s long-range surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, including the next generation of uncrewed aerial systems to replace legacy Watchkeeper drones”.
Under that programme, 24 new UAVs will be delivered by 2029, the DIP states. Indeed, the MoD says the Corvus procurement remains active.
Even though there is more clarity around the status of the programme, the MoD must move quickly if it is to avoid a capability gap.
Thales has a contract to keep the Elbit Systems Hermes 450-based Watchkeeper in service until March 2027 and the MoD says a further extension is “not currently being considered”.
Currently, the inter-service Joint Aviation Command is sustaining two “units of action [UoA]” – a mix of an unspecified number of air vehicles and ground control stations – until September this year, when it will be reduced to a single UoA until the Watchkeeper is withdrawn in March 2027.
Despite the tightening timeline, the MoD insists there will be no delay in fielding a replacement.
“All dates in the [invitation to tender] were indicative only. The competitive process remains active and MoD will announce the results when that process has concluded,” it states.
“The current expectation is that Corvus will deliver [a] minimum deployable capability before Watchkeeper goes out of service.”
In a preliminary market engagement notice published in May last year, the MoD said the British Army was seeking “a modern, deployable, easily supportable and cost-effective capability” to meet the service’s
“land tactical deep-find 24h persistent surveillance requirement”.
“The solution must be of a high readiness level, be technologically agile, and capable of undergoing spiral development in future years to meet continuously evolving requirements,” the notice says.
The Watchkeeper system was earmarked for early retirement last year following an announcement made in November 2024.
At that time, the 46 operational Watchkeeper air vehicles were described by the MoD as “14-year-old army drones that technology has overtaken”.
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