Drones

The Black Hornet became indispensable. Now the UK is ordering more.

Haphazardly stored, the 30 sparrow-sized robots could easily fit into a bucket. Seen inert, the minuscule drone looks like a sophisticated toy, a novelty item from a forgotten sci-fi romp. It is one of the most persistently fascinating little machines of war. And with a new purchase order, the newly FLIR-owned Black Hornet will be back in service with the armed forces of the United Kingdom.

The reintroduction of the Black Hornet into the armed forces of the United Kingdom follows a decision to cut the nano-UAV from its inventory in 2016 and 2017 as part of an overall reduction in unmanned systems. But, as the purchase order suggests, there isn’t quite anything else in the inventory, or even made by another manufacturer, that can do for the UK what the Black Hornet did.

Referring to the drones as PRS, or “Personal Reconnaissance Systems,” the order says that the 30 Hornets are needed to “maximise exploitation within the STRIKE experimentation.” The STRIKE experimentation is a force organization posture adopted by the UK Army in late 2017, with the goal of forming a workable Strike Brigade by 2020. In 2018, observers notedthat the reorganizations for the Strike Brigade concept, combined with the loss of Black Hornets, combined to leave units without any unmanned reconnaissance capabilities.