Great Britain is first to gain access to Ukraine’s military combat AI database

Great Britain and Ukraine signed a defense partnership agreement on artificial intelligence in Kyiv on Monday.

Great Britain became the first international partner to gain access to Ukraine’s Avengers AI Labs platform — a military database built on millions of combat images for training AI systems under real battlefield conditions.

The agreement was signed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Volodymyr Zelensky during Burnham’s first overseas visit since taking office as head of government, according to a statement from the British government. The deal opens up access for Great Britain to a vast array of Ukrainian combat data for developing new military capabilities, Bloomberg reports.

At the core of Avengers AI Labs is an annotated dataset of 5 million battlefield images. A significant portion of them were obtained from Ukraine’s DELTA combat system — a domestically developed battlefield management and situational awareness platform, Reuters reports. The platform collects data from thousands of daytime cameras and infrared sensors deployed in combat zones, capturing information on tanks, artillery systems, drones, and other military equipment.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense stated that AI models trained on this data are already being used in an automated target detection system. The system analyzes more than 100,000 drone video feeds per month and is capable of identifying approximately 70% of enemy targets in real time.

Pilot projects with British startups

Under the agreement, both countries will cooperate on pilot projects with three British startups: Bristol-based Sintela, Oxford-based Mind Foundry, and London-based Skyral.

The first project involves turning underground fiber-optic cables into AI-enabled sensors for protecting military bases. The British government said the technology is about to be deployed at a British defense facility. The second project is aimed at developing energy-efficient AI chips to power drones, robotic systems, and autonomous vehicles.

The British government described the partnership as “AI sovereignty in practice,” noting that it forms part of the 100-Year Partnership between the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

During the same visit, it was announced that Great Britain had agreed to allow missile manufacturer MBDA to disclose classified information about British components of the SCALP long-range cruise missile in order to set up assembly lines in Ukraine. Burnham also co-chaired a meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” in Kyiv alongside Zelensky.