UK border tech budget swells by £100M as Home Office targets small boat crossings

January 24, 2026 TH Author

The UK Home Office is spending up to £100 million on intelligence tech in part to tackle the so-called “small boats” issue of refugees and irregular immigrants coming across the English Channel.

The Whitehall department’s Border Security Command (BSC) is on the hunt for a “maritime situational awareness system” it says should “autonomously detect, track, and identify small boats and non-cooperative vessels at range.”

The official prior information notice marks engagement with vendors for a system set to fuse “data from land-based and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS)” drones with existing platforms.

The continued flow of refugees, asylum seekers, and irregular immigrants has become a major focus of UK politics in recent years, with successive governments keen to be seen to act in response to adverse publicity.

The Home Office notice said it had decided to combine its requirement for a real-time view from land-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) with the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC) of the Maritime Domain Awareness service, which provides security and regulatory enforcement data and was already the subject of a separate procurement.

It now plans to merge the two into a single procurement: the Coastal Maritime ISR Service.

The Home Office said that under the deal, suppliers would “strengthen the UK’s response to clandestine entry and wider maritime security by delivering a scalable, managed service that provides enhanced domain awareness and supports operational decision-making.”

“The solution will autonomously detect, track, and identify small boats and non-cooperative vessels at range, fusing data from land-based and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) sources with existing platforms,” it said. BVLOS is shorthand for piloting drones without being able to directly see them.

The winning bidder will be expected to integrate data from satellite-based automatic identification, radar, and drone-based sensors to create a “Tracks as a Service” in near real-time via an API to the Royal Navy Maritime Domain Awareness Programme (MDAP) and connect to the Home Office, a “common operating picture accessible to key decision-makers and first responders.”

“A supplier portal will provide camera feeds, alternative track displays, and alerts, ensuring flexibility to meet short-notice operational requirements across the UK, Crown Dependencies, and British Overseas Territories,” the notice said.

The contract is set to last between three and five years, including any extension periods, and could be worth £100 million for the full five-year term.

Research from campaign group Progressive International claims private companies won around £3.5 billion in contracts for UK border security since 2017, including “contracts specifically related to the regulation of people moving across the English Channel in small boats.” ®