Tekever will replace the British Army's Watchkeeper drones in a deal worth up to £400m
The UK Ministry of Defence picked the Portuguese company's AR5 for CORVUS, its new surveillance capability, on a ten-year contract. Production goes to Swindon, engineering to Bristol and Southampton.
The UK Ministry of Defence has selected Tekever to deliver CORVUS, the British Army’s new surveillance capability. The contract could reach £400 million, roughly €460 million, over the next ten years.
At its heart is the AR5, the Portuguese company’s autonomous platform. It replaces Watchkeeper, the drone the British Army has flown for more than a decade, and should start entering service later this year, subject to contract signature and final approvals.
What the AR5 actually carries
The AR5 takes up to 50 kilograms of surveillance payload, cameras and sensors included. It is built to stay up for long stretches, gather intelligence around the clock and push data back in real time to the people making decisions on the ground.
Tekever frames CORVUS as a continuously evolving programme, designed to absorb new technology and operational lessons across the whole life of the system while keeping sovereign UK control of the capability. Chief executive Ricardo Mendes put it as bringing together operational experience, AI-based autonomy and sovereign industrial capacity in one programme.
Ukraine is most of the explanation
This did not come out of nowhere. Tekever’s autonomous systems have logged more than 50,000 operational flight hours in Ukraine since 2022, and the company points to that record as the reason it can adapt its kit at the speed the battlefield changes.
UK defence secretary Wes Streeting singled out exactly that Ukrainian track record, alongside the fact that the AR5 is built in Britain, arguing the investment backs troops on operations while driving reindustrialisation at home.
Where the work lands
Production will be concentrated at Tekever’s new site in Swindon. Bristol and Southampton take the engineering; West Wales handles training, test and evaluation. The deal is expected to create and sustain hundreds of highly skilled jobs, and Tekever will lead a consortium of British small and medium-sized firms.
The initial term runs at least five years with an option to extend, and it sits inside OVERMATCH, a £400 million investment programme of its own. It caps a busy year for a company that had already bought CloudSweep to deepen its artificial intelligence stack. Official statements are published by the UK Ministry of Defence.
By Oliver Grant
Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
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