LONDON—The British military says it is doubling the size of its armed drone fleet in Afghanistan to 10 with the purchase of a batch of new Reapers.

The Ministry of Defense said late Monday that five recently-purchased unmanned aerial vehicles would be remotely operated from the Royal Air Force base at Waddington, in central England.

Up until now Royal Air Force crews had operated the drones from the United States' Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The Guardian newspaper, which first reported the news, said that the British pilots would gradually be moved to Waddington.