Britain and Ukraine have signed a partnership to jointly develop artificial intelligence tools for defence and national security, making the UK the first foreign partner to gain access to Ukraine's Avengers AI Labs. Prime Minister Andy Burnham and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the agreement in Kyiv on August 24, according to the British government and Reuters.
Avengers Labs uses operational data gathered by daylight cameras and infrared sensors across the Ukrainian battlefield. Ukraine's Defence Ministry says the platform is built around five million annotated frames, mostly supplied by the domestically developed DELTA battlefield-management system, covering tanks, artillery, air-defence systems, infantry and aerial targets including drones.
The ministry says models trained with the dataset already support an automated target-detection system that processes more than 100,000 drone video streams each month and identifies about 70 percent of enemy targets in real time, by day and night. Those figures are official Ukrainian assessments and have not been independently verified.
The first pilots involve British companies Sintela, Mind Foundry and Skyral. One trial due at a UK defence site will combine Ukrainian data with British technology to turn buried fibre-optic cables into AI-enabled sensors able to distinguish movement around sensitive facilities. Officials say the approach could later be tested at airports, prisons, railways and energy plants.
A second project will explore low-power AI chips for drones, robotics and autonomous systems, aiming to let machines operate longer and respond faster in difficult environments. The partnership brings government, industry and academia together around co-developed models, secure data and computing pathways, autonomy, cyber security, synthetic data and joint assurance.
The declaration says both countries will retain sovereignty over their data and assets while applying safeguards for intellectual property, export controls and national law. It is a statement of political intent rather than a legally binding treaty. Further implementation arrangements are expected within months, and any wider access for companies or trusted allies will depend on approval and security controls.
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