Großbritannien zahlt 821.000 US-Dollar pro Drohnenboot, während das kampferprobte Seebaby der Ukraine 200.000 US-Dollar kostet. Großbritannien sollte nach Osten schauen

It has to be noted, just for accuracy’s sake, that PPP conversion factor differs by a factor of almost exactly 3.0 between Ukraine and the UK, that is, UK’s nominal price levels are about 3x higher (with the nominal per capita GDP being 9x higher, this isn’t a surprise). So it doesn’t necessarily mean that British boat producers are incompetent, wasteful, or corrupt – it mostly reflects general cost differences between countries.

Certain equipment may be acceptable in wartime, when higher risks are tolerated, but it is not safe enough for normal operations.

It’s also worth noting that awarding defence contracts to domestic firms can act as an economic stimulus, supporting local jobs, supply chains, and strategic industrial capacity.

I suspect the reluctance to look east isn’t to do with unit costs of a piece of equipment.

It’s a change in thinking the UK electorate, political leadership and military leadership are not prepared to make. Not yet, anyway.

It’s a change in thinking from building a **deterrence** defense force, that has a small number of maximally perfect (and very expensive) things that tick off far too many peacetime-ideated requirements and tick-boxes.. to an **attrition** geared defense force, ideated under the industrial and economic constraints and pressures of war, that does away with half of those tickboxes because they’re not as important (especially for an expendable munition), in favor of being able to produce many of them on the cheap using bespoke production facilities and keep up much more significant magazine size for extended periods of fighting.

Taking nothing away from past UK work in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, more and more the UK has been focusing on a military that helps the American military deter. Or on things like “providing troops that would help Ukraine” but critically – only “after the fighting stops”.

Deterrence force equipment and attrition force equipment are designed, built, manufactured and thought about differently.

Virtually everything Ukraine *actually uses* is attrition geared, through and through. Ukrainian companies may choose to gear their products differently for European export in the coming months, years and decades, to better appeal to European and other buyers and European defense integration. This is more likely to need to happen with places like the UK.

At the same time, the opposite trend is probably far more likely to give Ukraine volume of export – find the European militaries willing to build their own attrition geared forces – Poland, Finland, Sweden immediately come to mind, but then also through Romania and Czechia and _maybe_ Germany or France… there may be a change in how they want to think about warfighting, where such countries start assuming in their plans that they will actually have to settle in and actually have to be fighting for what may possibly be an extended period of time. Those will be very actively looking at maguras and sea babies and all the fire point products.

Dear God, Ukraine needs to be a part of NATO. Hell, make ‚em a part of every organization in the West that fits. They’re resourceful, innovative and they fight like honey badgers. We owe them a seat at the table and everyone gains so much from having them there.

This actually sounds like good value for the money. As others have noted, the purchasing power parity differential automatically ensures that anything built in the UK will cost more than Ukraine. That doesn’t mean the UK should never build anything because it can be done in lower cost countries.

Also, consider that the UK is not placing large quantity orders. Small order volumes will always result in higher per unit prices to cover the costs of bringing up production capacity. There is value in having some domestic nascent drone production on tap so that it is even possible to ramp up production to larger volumes if needed.