We need to keep an eye on what the NPCC is upto, there is plainly a power struggle between them and the CAA at the moment. The CAA clearly has a mandate to ensure the safety of all airspace users.
The NPCC seem to be using DJI Docks and Matrice, so there’s a data privacy flag right out of the box! (See what I did there). Chinese comms in the heart of control rooms. Paging Huawei, paging Huawei.
It was really Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Wiltshire, Philip Wilkinson who last week caught my attention, saying “Some of the most advanced drone systems are going to be built in Swindon, and that’s why I’m determined to have British drones for British police forces.”
He said that in the week of the canned Islington DFR trial. Perhaps Mr Wilkinson has news of a DJI factory opening up in Swindon?
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Drones as First Responder (DFR) programme is an initiative within the wider NPCC Drones Portfolio, focusing on leveraging technology to enhance public safety and police response. The DFR concept is essentially the deployment of remotely operated ‘drones in boxes’ from strategically located stations, primarily on rooftops, to arrive swiftly at the scene of an incident.
Superintendent Taryn Evans serves as the Strategic Lead for the NPCC Drones team and the Strategic Lead for UK Policing’s BVLOS Pathway Programme. She has been responsible for the national Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) programme for policing for just over a year as of June 2025.
The DFR concept was initially supported by a multi-million-pound scheme, announced by the former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, which proposed spending £230M rolling out time and money saving technology, including using drones as first responders.
The core objective of DFR is to provide near-immediate situational awareness directly into police control rooms, which can help commanders determine the best tools, tactics, and resources needed, often before officers arrive.
• Initial Simulation (Summer 2023): The first trial was led by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary (HIOWC) and Thames Valley Police (TVP) at the Isle of Wight Festival, where a simulated DFR capability was deployed alongside routine police drones.
This looks like a Herotech8 box, I am happy to be corrected.
• Project Eagle X (2024): This was cited as the first wide scale DFR trial in the UK, undertaken by Norfolk Police. Norwich was selected as an ideal test site because it currently has limited access to the National Police Air Service (NPAS) helicopters due to ‘proximity’.
• Norwich Demonstration (July/August 2024): A demonstration was held at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, where a drone housed in a rooftop box was deployed to search for a man playing the role of a missing person, beaming back real-time imagery to an officer in a nearby police van. Norfolk Police initially planned for up to five drone sites to cover the entire city.
• Expanding Trial Sites: The trials have explored “every combination and innovation in Drone in a Box technology” across four pioneering trial sites. These locations include Norwich, Southampton, the West Midlands, and Gravesend.
◦ Norwich focused primarily on drone safety, connectivity, and integrating drone parachutes.
◦ Southampton focused on integration with the Department for Transport’s Solent Future Transport Zone project, testing feeds from radar and other detection equipment to facilitate safe BVLOS use.
◦ Gravesend and the West Midlands focused on feeding DFR video into control rooms, linking it with systems like number plate recognition, and using DFR in motorway, public order, and firearms incidents.
• Operational Integration (2025): The British Transport Police (BTP) became the first police force to operationalise remote ‘drone in a box’ technology in May 2025. By July 2025, Cleveland Constabulary had become the fifth force to adopt DFR technology, building on the success of earlier sites in Norwich, Southampton, London, and Coventry.
The widespread expectation is that DFR drones will “assist with area searches, road incidents, issues in town centres, public order incidents and the night-time economy”. However, the project is expected to undergo another two or three years of trials and analysis before becoming an operational part of police kit across the country.
One of the four pioneering DFR trial sites, Southampton, focused specifically on testing radar and other detection equipment.
• The trials in Southampton were integrated with the Department for Transport’s Solent Future Transport Zone project.
• These trials involved testing feeds from radar and other aircraft and drone detection equipment that facilitate the safe use of BVLOS drones.
• The Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary (HIOWC) and Thames Valley Police (TVP) collaboration utilized a mobile radar station.
• This mobile radar station involved the latest Sparrowhawk radar system installation, supported by the Sparrowhawk team and Chris Stagg.
Superintendent Taryn Evans has provided clarity on the DFR programme’s objectives and progress, emphasising its role in augmenting, rather than replacing, human officers.
On the purpose of DFR, Supt Evans stated:
“We don’t anticipate this replacing officers or the response they give to emergency calls in anyway whatsoever. What we do hope to see is that gives them enhanced advantage in working out how to respond to those same calls. It might be that there’s a risk there that wasn’t reported to us by the people that called in that we need to be aware of and we would send different units there to deal with that accordingly”.
Reflecting on the progress of the trials, she noted:
“The Norfolk trial is an important showcase of just how effective DFR can be at supporting our response to 999 calls, arriving on scene quickly and giving invaluable ‘eyes in the sky’”.
She further detailed the benefit of running multiple trials:
“Each trial enables us to test how DFR could work in different environments and support different operational purposes, enhancing both public and officer safety”.
In a June 2025 update, Supt Evans highlighted the advancements made, particularly how the DFR trials are becoming integrated into routine policing:
“Our DFR trials have gathered significant pace over the last year with each one testing out how we can best exploit the potential of drones to support policing and improve the safety of our communities. This latest trial shows how DFR integrates with ‘business as usual’ policing. The drone can be remotely deployed from the control room as a key resource in responding to incidents, supporting both community and officer safety”.
She also acknowledged the significant contributions of drone pilots to the programme’s success:
“None of it would be possible without our extended network of professional pilots who give their time and expertise freely, often in between long and tiring shifts, all because they want to see this technology embedded in policing with the purpose of protecting their communities and their colleagues”.
The use of drones by dedicated pilots resulted in high deployment numbers for a recent six-month period
(October 1, 2024 – March 31, 2025), which Supt Evans noted included:
• 26,584 deployments over 8,953 minutes.
• 721 suspects located.
• 649 missing people located.
• 163 vehicles located.
Supt Evans is focused on ensuring the adoption of this technology is safe, stating that the project is “working very closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office to make sure that we have a safe operating model for beyond line of sight drone as a drone responder”
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