‘A new piece on the chessboard’: £200m Ukrainian drone factory opens in Suffolk

The Mildenhall facility, capable of producing 1,000 unmanned aerial vehicles a month, promises to bolster Kyiv’s frontline defences while bringing hundreds of jobs to the region.

A state-of-the-art factory designed to manufacture military drones for the Ukrainian armed forces has opened in the Suffolk town of Mildenhall. Repurposed by Ukrspecsystems, which is described as Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturing firm, the £200m investment is expected to produce up to 1,000 unmanned aircraft each month once fully operational.

The opening of the 11,000 sq metre facility, which is slated to create hundreds of local jobs, marks a significant physical expansion of the UK-Ukraine defence partnership. The site’s inauguration was attended by Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, and Luke Pollard, the UK’s minister for defence readiness and industry.

Speaking at the launch, Pollard stressed that while the UK has supported Ukraine with military training for years, establishing “assured and resilient industrial production is essential” for Kyiv’s survival. The factory, he added, is a crucial step in “making sure we can keep Ukraine in the fight for longer as we get towards what I hope will be peace”.

Beyond the manufacturing plant, the project includes a bespoke test-and-training centre at Elmsett Airfield, near Ipswich. Crucially, the company has secured space to construct a dedicated landing strip for its drones, which will allow developers to conduct hazardous or highly classified experiments without posing risks to British civil aviation. The runway will be used to test autopilots, sensors, and navigation systems, as well as to monitor how the aircraft behave at high altitudes, in high winds, or during communication blackouts. It will also serve as a training ground for drone pilots before they are deployed to the frontline.

Ukrspecsystems currently manufactures eight types of drones that have been used extensively to defend against the Russian invasion since 2022, including the PD-2, SHARK, and Mini Shark reconnaissance models. These aircraft are specifically designed to execute reconnaissance and fire control operations even when subjected to powerful electronic warfare tactics.

For those closely involved, the Suffolk plant represents a necessary evolution in how the war is being fought. Rory Chamberlain, Ukrspecsystems’ UK managing director, noted that supplying troops with modern weaponry remains an urgent priority as Ukraine is as “vulnerable” to attack as ever.

“The war has changed but this keeps soldiers safe and it keeps the nation fighting,” Chamberlain said. “There is your chessboard and another piece has been added – another player has been added to the board that can do different things and that’s drones in modern warfare.”

The rapid proliferation of drones is not only reshaping Ukraine’s battlefield tactics but also the way British forces are training their allies. Col Andy Boardman, commander of Operation Interflex—the British-led military training programme for Ukrainian recruits—said the technological make-up of the battlefield is constantly evolving. While training initially focused on basic soldiering skills such as patrolling, shooting, and first aid, the military is now “integrating unmanned aerial systems in all aspects of our training too”