The figures are startling, the UK pledging to provide 100,000 drones to Ukraine the coming year instead of the 10,000 prior. The recent defence review unlike previous does not highlight China as a threat, not least am guessing because the drones used in Ukraine are primarily Chinese... because nobody else mass-produces them.
Reason being, private enterprise is more easily pursued in China and the US than it is in the UK, for all its good intentions.
A case in point is Malloy Aeronautics, which we touched on before. Started by a man from New Zealand decamped to Reading in the UK, it raised crowd-funding toward a flying motorcycle, which US company Survice co-developed at Maryland's university with view to selling it to the US military.
Along the way ~ as most of us have discovered ~ they decided developing drones to fly people was a fools errand compared to using them to drop supplies. Since then Malloy has become a part of BAE Systems, though there is barely a clue in the website.
Developing ideas in Britain to be taken elsewhere to be converted into a commercial product is, however, what we do best.
Purchasing product from 'enemies' with which to battle them has always been a part of Kipling's great game... the West provides more funds to Russia through oil and gas purchases than it does to its opponent in the shape of Ukraine.
