Defence Investment Plan

On 30 June 2026 the UK Government published the Defence Investment Plan, committing more than GBP5bn to drones and autonomous systems and naming, for the first time, four uncrewed Royal Navy classes: Type 91 (missiles), Type 92 (anti-submarine sensing), Type 93 (an extra-large underwater vehicle) and Type 94 (air-threat sensing).

The GBP5bn sits inside a wider GBP15bn settlement for the Ministry of Defence, roughly GBP13bn short of a reported GBP28bn ask. The plan set no unit numbers, contractors or delivery dates, pushing expansion into "the 2030s", so the naming is a procurement gate rather than a purchase order.

The same settlement rewrote the planned Type 83 destroyer as the Common Combat Vessel, a drone-control hub. Weapons for two of the named classes sit under the AUKUS Pillar II programme that European bidders are now contesting, tying this plan into a wider transatlantic autonomy race. Britain's first money under the plan's counter-drone strand landed on 13 July, when the LEAP programme's LCADE award, GBP3.16m split across three SMEs (Frankenberg Technologies, Greenjets and Cambridge Aerospace), became the first of five LEAP partner nations to release funding, a small but concrete step from naming to spending.