Video: Britain's Drone-Proven Martlet Missile Is Headed to Ukraine. 6,000 of Them

In case you missed the video today on YouTube

Britain just bought more Martlet missiles RAF Regiment servicemen used them in real Middle East operations against real Iranian drones and ran through their stock.

More than 100 drone shootdowns later, two new contracts worth £36 million were signed in April and May 2026 for hundreds more. Ukraine has 6,000 of the same missile headed its way, for exactly the same reason Britain bought more.

In this video: how Martlet’s laser beam-riding guidance makes it specifically suited to the drone threat, why Britain’s combat record matters more than any range test, and what 6,000 missiles actually add to Ukraine’s layered air defense stack. Deliveries are already underway, RapidRanger is already visible in Ukrainian service, and the additional 1,000 announced in February 2026 appears intended for delivery to Ukraine on an urgent 2026 timeline.

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In case video is not your thing, here’s the transcript. But trust me, the video version is better:

Britain just validated one of its most useful weapons of the drone age, not in a test range in Wales, not in a simulation run by someone in VR goggles, but in the Middle East, under real Iranian drones, in real operations.

More than 100 drone shootdowns. A thirteen-kilogram missile built in Belfast by a company most people have never heard of. Two fresh contracts worth £36 million signed in April and May of this year for hundreds more.

The missile is called the Lightweight Multirole Missile. The Royal Navy calls it Martlet. And Ukrainian forces have 6,000 of them coming their way, for the exact same reason Britain just ran out and bought more.

Because when the enemy stops sending fighter jets and starts sending flying mario carts with warheads, the weapon that matters isn’t the most expensive thing in your inventory. It’s the red turtle shell that actually hits the mario cart.

So, on June 1st, 2026, the UK Ministry of Defense announced two new contracts with Thales for hundreds of additional Lightweight Multirole Missiles. One signed in April, one in May, combined value £36 million. Deliveries start in the coming months and continue throughout the year. The contracts support around 700 skilled jobs at Thales in Belfast, where the missiles are built. Defense Secretary John Healey put it simply: the missiles are “battle-proven,” used in action by RAF Regiment gunners over recent months.

The context for those contracts: Britain had been using LMMs in Middle East operations and ran the stockpile down. More than 100 drones shot down. The UK bought more because the UK ran through what it had. In procurement terms, that’s about as clean a validation story as you ever get.

Now, if you’ve been following the Starstreak video on this channel, you know that Thales is also behind the RapidRanger launcher system, which is the vehicle-mounted launcher family being sent to Ukraine. And you might have seen reporting mixing up RapidRanger and Rapid Sentry and come away confused, which is an entirely reasonable response because defense naming conventions are complete lunacy.

Is it the A-10 Warthog or A-10 Thunderbolt II. Who knows?

Here’s the clean distinction.

Rapid Sentry is what the RAF Regiment used in the Middle East. It’s a ground-based counter-drone system that pairs LMMs with early-warning sensors and electronic warfare equipment, operated by RAF Regiment gunners who have apparently been doing well enough that some of them have shot down five or more drones each. The British military has apparently decided this makes them “drone aces,” which is both impressive and extremely 2026 as a career milestone.

RapidRanger is the vehicle-mounted launcher family tied to the Ukraine pipeline. Ukraine has been linked to RapidRanger systems and Martlet missiles through UK-backed funding, with around £1.7 billion in UK-backed commitments announced in June 2025 for that combination.

Same missile. Different system architecture. The common thread is the LMM itself, the little Belfast-built problem solver now ruining drone operators’ evenings on multiple fronts simultaneously.

The Lightweight Multirole Missile weighs 13 kilograms. For reference, that’s roughly the weight of a medium-sized dog, or a very well-equipped backpack, or an amount that will surprise you when you learn what it can do. It has a range of more than 6 kilometers and can be fired from land, sea, and air platforms.

Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters carry up to 20 of them on external pylons. The RAF Regiment fires them from ground-based systems. Stormer armored vehicles can carry them. The Wildcat-Martlet combination was declared fully operationally capable in October 2025, meaning it’s not developmental, it’s a current-readiness system being used right now by 815 Naval Air Squadron out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.

The guidance system is laser beam-riding. The launcher projects a laser beam onto the target’s flight path, and the missile follows that beam to impact. This is meaningfully different from an infrared homing missile, which chases heat. Most cheap one-way attack drones don’t have a nice hot jet engine to chase. They have small electric motors, quiet propellers, and the heat signature of a slightly warm snack. A laser beam-riding missile doesn’t need the target to look like a MiG. It needs the operator to keep the aim point on the target long enough for the missile to do its rude little British thing.

Martlet is also genuinely light and cheap enough to fire at threats that wouldn’t justify burning a premium interceptor. That matters more than the spec sheet makes it look.

What Britain has been building, and what Ukraine is waiting on, is a missile specifically sized and priced to plug part of that seam. Not all of it. Part of it. And in drone warfare, “part of it” is what buys you the night.

The 100-drone figure deserves attention because it isn’t a range result. It’s a combat result, under real conditions, against real threats, with real operators, in an environment where Iranian drones and one-way attack platforms have been testing allied air defenses repeatedly.

That’s the difference between a system that looks good in a demonstration and a system that British gunners trust under operational conditions. Thales has now quadrupled its LMM production capacity since 2022, which is another way of saying that demand has grown fast enough to require a production ramp that most missiles never see. When a manufacturer quadruples capacity, something real is happening in the customer base.

The Wildcat angle is worth highlighting too, because it connects directly to something we covered recently about helicopters finding a new role in the drone age. Royal Navy Wildcats deploying to Cyprus in two-aircraft formations to hunt drones approaching naval vessels and bases, using the same missile as the RAF Regiment gunners on the ground. A helicopter-born Martlet crew can reposition, search with sensors, and reach threats in places ground teams can’t cover. Drones may have given helicopters a problem near the front. They may also have given helicopters a job behind the front.

The UK announced a £1.6 billion deal in March 2025 to procure 5,000 LMMs for Ukraine, manufactured by Thales and covering the full range-of-platforms employment concept. In February 2026, London added another 1,000 rounds. That’s 6,000 missiles, headed toward a country facing a drone threat that makes Britain’s Middle East experience look like a warm-up act.

Ukraine deals with Shaheds, Gerberas, Orlans, Zalas, Lancets, and decoys on a nightly basis. The same problem, at nightmare volume, with Russian industry feeding the production line and no sign of abating. Britain’s 100-drone kill record in the Middle East is proof-of-concept. Ukraine is the full-scale stress test.

The tactical fit is real. Patriot is too valuable and too expensive to burn on every Shahed. Gepards and mobile guns are excellent but need geometry and range and proximity. Electronic warfare jams what it can jam but doesn’t stop everything. Martlet gives Ukraine another mobile, short-range layer, particularly for protecting infrastructure, power plants, logistics hubs, bridges, airfields, and rear-area command posts. The ugly middle zone where a threat is too dangerous to ignore, too far away for guns, and too cheap to justify a premium intercept.

Honest caveat section, because we do this.

The exact volume under the £36 million contracts hasn’t been disclosed. “Hundreds” is the public figure, which is a number large enough to tell you it’s serious and small enough to tell you the MoD PR team did its job. The per-unit cost implied by £36 million across “hundreds” puts each missile somewhere in the range of tens of thousands of pounds, which is quite cheap for a guided missile but still not free.

Ukrainian production localization is the bigger question. The March 2025 deal included language about localizing production, which would help both Ukraine’s supply situation and Britain’s, since both now need more missiles than peacetime planners ever anticipated. The public reporting doesn’t give a clean answer on how far that’s progressed. If Ukraine can eventually produce components or assemblies in-country, that shifts from military aid to war production, which is the sustainable version. The current status is unknown.

And LMM has real limits. It’s a short-range weapon. It requires line of sight. The beam-riding guidance means the engagement has to be maintained. Bad weather, terrain, saturation attacks, and simultaneous multiple threats can all stress the system. It won’t replace Patriot, IRIS-T, NASAMS, Gepard, or EW. It’s part of a stack, not a replacement for one.

And the stack is the point.

The drone war doesn’t care how impressive your missile is if you only have twelve of them and a production line that moves with the urgency of a county planning board. Britain spent three years building a production base, quadrupling capacity, proving the weapon in combat, and now buying hundreds more. That’s what serious stockpile building looks like when the lesson has been fully absorbed.

Drone defense isn’t won by finding one perfect interceptor. It’s won by building enough layers that the attacker runs out of drones before the defender runs out of answers. Guns for what gets close. EW for what can be jammed. Martlet for the middle zone. Patriots and IRIS-T for the high-end threats. And enough production feeding every layer to still be shooting at month four.

Martlet is not the answer to the drone problem. It’s one answer in the stack. And in 2026, the stack is the strategy.

Britain didn’t buy more Martlets because the missile looked good in a brochure. Although, as far as missiles go, it’s is an 8 out of 10.

It bought more because RAF Regiment gunners used them, under real attacks, against real drones, and the drones stopped flying. That’s the kind of battlefield review that procurement officers actually understand.

Ukraine has been saying this for four years: if drones are the new artillery, then short-range air defense is the new body armor. You don’t buy one exquisite system and declare the problem solved. You buy layers. You buy depth. You buy production. And then you buy more, because the enemy gets a vote and Russia and Iran voted for mass production a long time ago.

Six thousand Martlets are headed toward a country that knows what to do with them. Britain proved in the Middle East that they work. Now Ukraine gets to find out what 6,000 of them do to the math.

That’s it for today my friends, subscribing is the best free way to support what I do here.

And as always, Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes, Crimea is Ukraine.