You might have seen the article in the Guardian a few days ago about the Joint Doctrine Note ‘The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ issued by the MoD. It acknowledges that there are serious legal and moral issues arising from the growing use of armed drones or ‘Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems’ (they don’t like the term ‘drones’) and it recognises that the role of humans in deciding if and when missiles are launched from drones is being eroded. A major concern is that by lowering the threshold when attacks might be considered, drones make war more likely.  However, the MoD argues that drone attacks are “morally justified” because of the saving of aircrew lives - straight out of their “humanitarian intervention” dictionary! They dodge the fact that the chances of launching an attack are increased because it is the lives of the aggressors that are protected, at the expense of those of the victims. Last December David Cameron boasted to journalists that more than 124 ‘insurgents’ had been killed in British drone attacks. However, questions by Chris Cole of Drone Wars UK about who these ‘insurgents’ are and if there are any other civilian casualties remain unanswered.

Just a few days before the Guardian article, the MoD announced that UK armed Reaper drones had notched up over 20,000 hours flying over Afghanistan since they were first deployed in October 2007 and it looks as if the UK’s use of drones will continue to increase - made easier by the RAF’s Project Daedalus which has just concluded that UK drone pilots should no longer need to have experience of flying fast-jets, or any other aeroplane. Indeed, Britain is about to more than double its drone armoury by purchasing 5 more Reaper drones at a cost of some £135 million. Perhaps this is linked to General Atomics, the makers of the Predator and Reaper drone, announcing on April 1^st that they were opening a new London office to be managed by Dr. Jonny King. Dr King has worked on Autonomous Systems and Intelligent Vehicles at QinetiQ and was also responsible for developing Cobham’s Unmanned Systems business (Cobham has been a longtime partner with General Atomics on the Reaper programme).

Last summer General Atomics announced that it was looking for a UK partner for its bid on the future replacement for the Reaper to compete with BAE’s Mantis combat drone. A combat drone is an experimental class of drone designed to attack targets with a high level of autonomy and BAE Systems announced in March that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French aircraft manufacturer, Dassault, to work on one of the first products of the new Anglo-French defence treaty signed last November – an armed drone based on the Mantis. BAE Systems are also developing another combat drone at a cost of £143 million – Taranis, an unmanned warplane designed to fly between continents and carry a variety of weapons to enable it to attack other planes as well as targets on the ground. The project also involves Rolls-Royce, GE Aviation Systems and QinetiQ.

Research into a range of unmanned military systems is also increasing in British universities. Newcastle University are part of a team working on ‘Solar Eagle’, a giant solar powered surveillance drone for the US military. Engineers from the Centre for Advanced Electrical Drives in Newcastle have previously worked with QinetiQ on the Zephyr drone. Solar Eagle drone is being built by US arms giant Boeing and funded by the Pentagon’s research agency, DARPA.

Southampton University is running a new post-graduate course for designing drones and Cranfield University's National Flying Laboratory Centre is collaborating with the Autonomous Decision-Making Software group AOS as part of the £32 million aerospace programme Project ASTRAEA (Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation & Assessment). Other partners include BAE Systems, Cassidian, Cobham, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce and Thales UK. In addition, the MoD has issued a pre ‘invitation to tender’ notice to the military industrial academic companles for a new ‘nano’ drone to be used in Afghanistan. They want a drone weighing less than 7oz capable of flying for between 20 and 40 minutes at a range of 1km and the contract is estimated to be worth between £10 and £20m.

In January Britain entered into a $1.5 billion dollar deal to add to its existing, and soon to be armed, Israeli Watchkeeper drones by buying 30 drones. These are based on the Israeli Elbit Hermes 450 which, according to Amnesty International, were "field-tested on Palestinians" when Israel invaded Gaza in 2009. British soldiers go to Israel to be trained on their use and UAV Engines Ltd (or UEL, owned by the Israel drone specialists Silver Arrow,  a subsidiary of Elbit Systems) in Lichfield, Staffs, manufacture the engines for them.  

until 2012. Another delay has occurred at the drone testing ground at Parc Aberporth in west Wales. ’Pause 11?, an exhibition and flying display of UAVs, which was due to be held in July, has been cancelled. Local protests have been put on hold and, as many of the office units at Parc Aberporth are lying empty, may no longer be required at all. As the Welsh Bro Emlyn for Peace and Justice (BEPJ) web site says, the dream of this being a “UAV centre of excellence” seems to have turned into an expensive nightmare.

Is there any drones research going on in your area? Check the research at your local universities. Keep local industry under surveillance, they are usually very keen to show how they are at the cutting edge of research and development – even if it is into ingenious ways of killing people.

CND is a member of the national anti drones network, keep up to date through Chris Cole’s excellent web site - http://dronewarsuk.wordpress.com/.