With Formula 1 blueprint, MGI Engineering says it’s revving up to scale drone production

BELFAST — Leveraging vast experience in Formula 1 racing car designs, UK firm MGI Engineering is switching lanes and prioritizing a ramp up of its SkyShark one-way attack drone, after launching the military aircraft earlier this month.

The self-funded uncrewed aerial vehicle was formally unveiled during a demonstration event hosted by the company at Enstone Airfield in Oxfordshire, England, two weeks ago and comes in two variants: a turbine engine or electric-powered propulsion.

“Compact, cost-effective and rapidly manufactured at scale, SkyShark is engineered to conduct ISR, strike, and decoy operations in GPS-denied or highly contested environments, making it a strategic asset in an era of asymmetric warfare,” MGI stated in a company statement at the time.

Primarily famed as a Formula 1 design authority and consultancy, MGI has collaborated with a number of teams from the elite sport based off its expertise in composite, mechanical, systems, and stress engineering, according to the company’s website.

“Our drive is to support the UK MoD and the Strategic Defence Review,” Mike Gascoyne, CEO at MGI Engineering, told Breaking Defense on Thursday.

The MoD has still to place a firm order for SkyShark, but Gascoyne is attempting to position the company to take the military up on what he called a “very clear” requirement for “7,000 drones, one-way effectors … to bring the UK up to speed with its modern requirements.”

Gascoyne added that the company is focused on meeting British requirements by exclusively utilizing “sovereign” parts for SkyShark, while strong influences of “rapidly prototyping and testing high performance vehicles” for Formula One races will play a leading role in how the drone is produced and delivered.

“You’ve got to be able to constantly iterate and develop and put new payloads, new avionics packages, [integrate] new whatever … exactly like F1 teams have to do, because every two weeks you race it somewhere, a different track, so different configurations” are required, said Gascoyne. “[W]orking on multiple versions of the same vehicle and iterations for one month and two months and three months time is entirely normal for us.”

MGI manufactures SkyShark out of its Oxford facility but is in the process of weighing up how to best scale production, with consideration specifically given to expanding to a second site or producing additional aircraft under license with an industry partner, according to Gascoyne. Any decision will be made depending on requirements, he added.

“The requirements for these types of things … could easily be in the high tens to hundreds [of aircraft] per month, which obviously is a large scale production facility,” explained Gascoyne. “[O]ne of the key things that I haven’t really mentioned is low cost, because the big driver on these is cost effectiveness.

“You don’t want a pristine missile, a sort of [MBDA-produced] Storm Shadow, that’s £2 million pounds ($2.7 million USD) each. What you want is 10 of them [one-way attack drones costing] £100,000 each, and that’s very much the requirement” we are working toward.

Those type of inexpensive systems, like the Iranian Shahed family of UAVs, have played a prominent role in Russian attacks against Ukraine, and despite Gascoyne sharing that MGI does not have any personnel directly placed in Ukraine, he said the company works with avionics suppliers from the Eastern European nation.

Those suppliers “are working directly with operational equipment, so what they’re talking to us about is based on their experiences that are very much current [in terms of system capabilities and vulnerabilities] and looking forward,” added Gascoyne.