Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the decision by the United States to establish an Autonomous Warfare Command; and what consideration they have given to establishing an equivalent integrated capability within UK defence.

Given the importance of autonomous systems to the future of warfare, we will continue to engage closely with our US counterparts as they establish an Autonomous Warfare Command and see what lessons apply to the UK Defence system.

The UK’s approach reflects our own operating model and structure. Defence is developing an integrated approach to optimise the balance between crewed, uncrewed and autonomous systems across the Armed Forces. This includes the establishment of the Uncrewed Systems Centre as a Defence centre of excellence alongside Defence’s Rapid AI Delivery (RAID) taskforce, to accelerate the development, integration and adoption of these capabilities. This is backed by a defence investment plan commitment of over £5 billion by 2030 in autonomous systems across the Integrated Force. This investment will support capabilities including the Hybrid Navy, uncrewed ground vehicles and Collaborative Combat Aircraft, increasing the mass, lethality and readiness of the Armed Forces while retaining appropriate human responsibility and accountability. We will continue to assess the most effective organisational arrangements for delivering these capabilities.