The UK Ministry of Defence awarded Tekever a contract worth up to £400 million on 16 September for the AR5 surveillance drone, which replaces the British Army's Watchkeeper1. Tekever is a Portuguese drone maker with a factory in Swindon. Six aircraft come first, rising to as many as 24 by 2029. When the ministry tendered the work as Project Corvus in May, it estimated £130m to £156m excluding VAT.
FlightGlobal reported in July that the competition drew no compliant bids, and that the ministry moved to a sole-source award to Tekever worth £336m excluding value added tax (VAT)2. On those figures the sole-source price is more than double the top of the ministry's tender estimate. Lowdown's reading, which the ministry has not confirmed, is that £336m plus 20 per cent VAT gives roughly the ceiling now published. Neither document shows whether the award's scope and options match those tendered in May.
A tender with no compliant bid leaves the ministry negotiating with a single firm. Corvus is one of the programmes folded into Britain's £5bn drone and autonomy plan, which assumes a supplier base deep enough to compete on price, and it closed without a contest.
A separate £16m buy under Project Rapstone brings in 1,025 small drones from three suppliers. The largest share, 670 X10 drones, comes from Skydio, an American maker, through Marlborough Communications; Evolve Dynamics and Brigantes Consulting supply the rest. China sanctioned Skydio on 11 October 2024, cutting it off from Chinese battery cells3, so most of Rapstone's drones come from a maker whose supply chain Beijing has already squeezed.
