1 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit RAF in 1937, using de Havilland DH.82 Queen Bee unmanned radio-controlled target drone.

[2] The range comes under Defence Training Estate Pembrokeshire, and was formed out of merging the anti-aircraft school of Artillery at Larkhill and the field at Manorbier in 1972.

1 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit RAF (1 AACU) was equipped with the de Havilland DH.82 Queen Bee a pilotless radio-controlled target drone variant of the Tiger Moth aircraft, used from RAF Manorbier for training artillery gunners, at the nearby Royal Artillery Camp, with their Anti-aircraft target practice.

[8] It provided anti-aircraft co-operation for the School of Artillery, helping to calibrate their equipment by flying at a fixed course and speed and target tugs.

[3] While Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Welsh Office, Nicholas Bennett, Member of Parliament for Pembrokeshire, confirmed for 1989 that the range at Manorbier was used by Royal Artillery units for practice firings of Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) including Javelin and Blowpipe.

This was met with opposition from the locals who claimed that should the plan be approved, tourism will suffer and air pollution in the area will increase.

[14] The Royal Marines Air Defence Troop, from 30 Commando (IX) Group, specialise in using the High Velocity Missile (HVM), known as Starstreak.

In order to live fire a HVM, an operator must do hundreds of simulator shots and target drone tracking with a laser.

Designed to survive the missile engagement, the drones have a radar which enables estimation if the HVM would have successfully hit an aircraft.

[15] In 2019 the Royal Marines tested the Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) system, known as Martlet, to take out airborne targets at Air Defence Range Manorbier.

Banshee target drones were used in the exercise, with Royal Artillery instructors and Thales Air Defence technicians to gauge the success of the engagement.

[16] During March 2019, Thales Air Defence undertook ground firing trials of 6 x Lightweight Multirole Missiles fired from the Thales designed launcher system, at a small boat target at sea a distance of 4.5 km (2.8 mi) away, at Air Defence Range Manorbier.

This formed part of the Integration testing phase of the Future Anti Surface Guided Weapon (Light), FASGW(L) programme.