After more than a decade of development, the U.K. Ministry of Defense has acknowledged that its Watchkeeper WK450 drones have yet to receive a full “release to service” certification. This means that officials have not yet deemed the aircraft safe enough to operate regularly in training exercises, let alone actual operations, and it’s not clear when they might be ready routine duties. On Jan. 29, 2018, Permanent Secretary Stephen Lovegrove, the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s chief civilian administrator, revealed the latest setbacks in a letter to the head of the Public Accounts Committee within the country’s parliament. The memo appeared online earlier in March 2018 and a report by Jane’s 360 called it an “unprecedented move” on the part of the Secretary. The United Kingdom first announced the project in 2005 and the British Army now has a fleet of approximately 52 of the unmanned aircraft, which carry a sensor turret with electro-optical and infrared full motion video cameras and synthetic aperture imaging radar with a ground moving target indicator function.

“Any impact on value for money caused by the delay … has been mitigated by the ability of WK [Watchkeeper] to meet operational need in the intervening period,” Lovegrove insisted in his letter in defense of the project. “In relation to the balance between propriety and regularity, and value for money, existing controls, and their cost, are appropriate in relation to the potential for achieving value for money benefits.” “Watchkeeper has flown thousands of hours, supported British troops in Afghanistan and could be sent on operations now if required,” a Ministry of Defense Spokesperson told Jane’s, echoing those sentiments, in a statement earlier in March 2018. “The release to service safety certificate is expected later this year.”

Crown Copyright A British Army Watchkeeper WK450.

But these comments clearly downplay what otherwise appear to be serious issues that have plagued the program from the start. And though it is technically true that British Army, which operates the existing drones, could deploy them if necessary, they would need to secure an “Operational Emergency Clearance” waiver in order to do so. According to Lovegrove’s missive, the most recent delay was the result of the crash of one of the unmanned aircraft, with the serial number WK003, into Cardigan Bay off the coast of Wales in March 2017. The U.K. Ministry of Defense has not yet released the cause of that mishap, which occurred while a team of British Army and contractor personnel were training a new pilot. This incident, which was the second crash in as many months, grounded the entire Watchkeeper fleet until June 2017. The “subsequent development of relevant evidence” allowed flights to resume, but a under an experimental flight testing permit, Lovegrove explained. It is not entirely clear why the program has been so troublesome and the U.K. Ministry of Defense has been historically tight-lipped about the aircraft in general. The U.K.-based subsidiary of French defense contractor Thales and Elbit formed a joint venture company, UAV Tactical Systems, to build Watchkeeper in the United Kingdom.

Crown Copyright An underside view showing some of Watchkeeper's sensors.

Watchkeeper at its core is a derivative of Israeli manufacturer Elbit Systems’ Hermes 450, which first flew in 1998 and remains in military and civilian use around the world. Setbacks with the project even prompted the U.K. Ministry of Defense to lease nine of those drones from Elbit directly for combat operations. Part of the issue could be in Watchkeeper’s navigation system. The Hermes 450s that the British Army obtained from Elbit featured a unique inertial navigation system using laser gyroscopes, which may have carried over to the WK450.

Elbit Systems The earlier Hermes 450.