Ukraine: Russian Drone Attacks

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I have observed before in this Chamber that drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—are part of the UK’s defence capability. My noble friend makes an interesting point. The war in Ukraine has been instructive as to how current warfare is developing and what new stratagems and forms of equipment are necessary to conduct it. He is quite right that unmanned aerial vehicles have a role to perform.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, last Wednesday’s defence intelligence update on Ukraine stated that no one-way attack UAVs sourced from Iran have been used “since around 17 November” and that the supply is “likely very nearly exhausted”. The same report also stated that the quicker method of resupply is procuring more from overseas. Can the Minister update us on how the Government are acting to prevent or delay this? How will we support Ukraine to take advantage of the Russians’ supply seemingly running out?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord is focusing on something very pertinent. Russia has increasingly struggled to secure critical inputs and technologies needed for its war against Ukraine because of unprecedented sanctions and export controls. We are committed to doing everything we can to isolate Russia further, and we are continuing to monitor whether it will extend its procurements from Iran to other suppliers of foreign weapons systems. That would be a very unwelcome development, but one that we would need to be aware of.