Italy meanwhile is getting frustrated with a lack of response from the US to its request to arm the unarmed Reaper that it currently operates.  According to the Aviation News article,  Italy says that it is “looking for alternatives” including supporting a European black (secret) armed drone project.  There are already a number of known drone programmes  under  development within Europe including BAE System’s Taranis, Dassault’s Neuron and EADS’ Talarion (although the future of the latter is far from clear).  However these are all at an early stage of development with possible in-service dates being many years off and hence the desire of European countries to purchase Reaper and Predator drones.

This week Germany also announced it was cancelling the Euro Hawk project.  Unveiled with such fanfare in 2011, Euro Hawk was a German version of the Northrop Grumman’s surveillance drone, the Global Hawk.  Various reasons were given this week to the press for its cancellation but German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière simply called the project “a horror without end” in his Bundestag statement.  Cancellation of this project, even though it has already cost Germany 500 million Euros, apparently ‘saves’ a further 500 million Euros which can now be spent on alternative drone developments.

Meanwhile the UK continues to operate its armed Reapers acquired from the US in 2007.  The UK is now testing the British-made Brimstone missile on its Reapers as an alternative to the US-made Hellfire missile.  This will  no doubt make it easier for the UK to continue operating its Reaper drones  after the Afghanistan ‘drawdown’.

X47b takes off from US aircraft carrier

New figures from SIPRI show that Israel has been the biggest proliferator of drone technology over the past decade with just over 40% of drone exports  originating from Israel.  Many of these small to medium unarmed drones have gone to European countries but also to Latin America and Africa. YnetNews also reported that sales of drones now nets Israel $400 million per year.

While other countries seek to catch up with the drone wars, the US this week undertook a significant test of its new autonomous X-47B drone.  For the first time an unmanned drone has taken off from an aircraft carrier, flown a pre-programmed mission and landed all by itself.  As many commentators reported, this is a major step forward.

Ominously, in the same week senior Pentagon officials told a Senate hearing on drone strikes that the war on terror is one without end or boundaries and that it is expected it to continue for another ten to twenty years.

An editorial in the LA Times this week summarised what can be seen as mainstream US opposition to US drone strikes, calling for the Obama administration to “reconsider the scope and utility of the [drones] policy.”  The key demand of this challenge is for the elimination of so-called signature strikes and for the CIA’s drones to be shifted back under military control.

Possibly in response to this call, unnamed sources told Defense News this week – incidentally giving some new interesting tit bits on CIA drone operations – that the latter is unlikely to take place as “the shift would be difficult to implement and would make little difference” as military officers actually operate the CIA’s drones.   Those urging the shift to military control argue that there would at least be potentially more scrutiny  and accountability over US military as opposed to CIA use of drones, but as Jeremy Scahill has pointed out in his excellent  new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield there is in fact very little scrutiny and public accountability over US military operations.

In  an important legal ruling this week a Peshawar High Court judge stated  that US drone strikes in Pakistan were criminal offences. Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan ordered Pakistan’s government to insist to the US that it must end drone strikes, using force if necessary.  He also called on the UN Security Council to intervene.

A great panel of experts (Chris Woods of TBIJ, Jen Gibson of Reprieve and Dan Carey of Public Interest Lawyers) addressed the various legal aspects of the use of drones at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London this week.  Thankfully the session was recorded and is available here.  It’s a really useful summary of the issues and highly recommended listen

British Reaper drone controlled from RAF Waddington

Less than a week ago, the UK MoD announced that British Reaper drones over Afghanistan are now being controlled directly from the UK.

This morning  a number of British defence journalists are reporting that the first British drone strike from UK soil was carried out yesterday (30 April)  from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.  No details about the strike have officially been released, nor are they likely to be given the secrecy surrounding the use of British drones.  [UPDATE BELOW]

This first British drone strike carried out from UK soil, striking a target more than 3,000 miles away in Afghanistan should make us all, even those who support the use of military force in Afghanistan, pause for thought.

The ability to carry out these so-called ‘risk-free’ airstrikes at great distances is a serious global military escalation.  Since the first remote-controlled airstrike from a Predator in 2001, drone strikes have now occurred in almost a dozen countries by our count.  As this technology proliferates, as it is sure to do, the prospect of many different countries around the globe remotely controlling armed drones to carry out lethal attacks is nothing short of terrifying.   Now that the UK has joined  Israel and the US to use this armed remote technology in this way, the genie appears to be  out of the bottle.

As well as the danger to global security of the growing use of armed drones for remote warfare, there are of course, as we have repeatedly tried to make clear, many other concerns about the use of drones.  The way that drones lower the threshold when it comes to launching military intervention due to lower political costs, the fact that drone strikes, according to many counter-terrorism experts are counter-productive and the way that drones seduce us into thinking that airstrikes can be ‘pinpoint accurate’ when we know there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent civilian deaths, are all serious problems.

We have been urging for more than three years that there should be -  at the very least  – a proper public and informed debate about the growing use of armed drones by British forces before it becomes normalised.  Perhaps this is not too late.  A number of MPs are beginning to express serious disquiet about the use of drones and public concern has been very much visible in the large protest at RAF Waddington last weekend.

Now, with this first drone strike from British soil, the world has taken another step towards global drone warfare. And so we must all work that much harder to draw back from the precipice,  before it is too late.

UPDATE:  MoD have now issued statement confirming first strike took place yesterday.

“Every Afghan has a name, war is not a video game!”

Six hundred people came from all around the country to take part in a large demonstration against drones at RAF Waddington, the new home of the UK drone warfare.    The demo, organised by the Drone Campaign Network, Stop the War Coalition, CND and War on Want received huge media coverage in the light of the confirmation by the Ministry of Defence that drone operations had started from RAF Waddington. After the march from Lincoln, a rally was held at Helen John’s peace camp at the perimeter of the base, and speaker after speaker emphasised that this was just the beginning of efforts to stop the drone wars.

Click this link for excellent short Channel Four video covering the demo and issues surrounding use of drones

A drone a day…

Spill no blood

Hands up if you’re against drones?

Video games wars

Drones kill innocents

Campaigners from Cardiff with Helen John

Buddhist from Milton Keynes Peace pagoda

Killing should not be easy

Placards left on RAF Waddington’s perimeter fence

For the first time UK forces can remotely control armed drones over Afghanistan while sitting in air conditioned trailers at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.   The growing use of unmanned drones to simply and easily launch lethal attacks at great distances – over 3,000 miles in the case of Waddington and Afghanistan – with no risk or political consequences should be a cause of extreme concern.

Many counter terrorism experts are clear that drone strikes far from the solution, as Kurt Volker, the former US Permanent Representative to NATO said recently:

“Drone strikes allows our opponents to cast our country as a distant, high-tech, amoral purveyor of death. It builds resentment, facilitates terrorist recruitment and alienates those we should seek to inspire. Drone strikes may decapitate terrorist organizations, but they do not solve our terrorist problem. In fact, drone use may prolong it. Even though there is no immediate retaliation, in the long run the contributions to radicalization through drone use may put more lives at risk.”  

Volker is not alone. Many other  experts such as Professor Michael Boyle, former counter terrorism adviser to President Obama has recently outlined in the Chatham House journal how use of armed drones is directly conflicting with other long term counter-terrorism initiatives and doing real damage to global security.

This weekend join CND, Stop the War, War on Want and Drone Campaign Network to call for an end to the drone wars.

While we continue to get no details of US and UK drone strikes in Afghanistan beyond bald figures, this week Congress was notified of a $95 million sale of 500 Hellfire missiles to the UK of the ‘P’ and ‘N’ variant.  The ‘P’ variant is specifically designed for use by drones while the ‘N’ variant has a thermobaric warhead and it may be, as we have previously reported that this variant too may be being use on British drones.

While the drone wars plod on, opposition continues to grow.  Ten days ago a coalition of US human rights groups including ACLU, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch wrote to President Obama questioning the legal basis for targeted killing and calling for an end to the secrecy surrounding the use of drones.  (full letter here)   A coalition of US faith group also wrote to the President challenging the growing use of targeted killing and highlighting the danger of remote warfare. On this the letter states:

“Military trainers know that human nature itself serves as a check on lethal violence. Coming face to face with someone  described as an enemy requires a deliberate choice to override a deep human instinct against killing. Remote, technical warfare removes that very human check.  As a society we have not adequately considered where this development leads us as a species. The remote nature of this type of deadly violence has the potential to encourage overuse and extension of the policy to more countries and more perceived threats.”

On top of these civil society groups, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer also met with President Obama this week and urged restraint on the use of drones.  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that at a press conference following the visit, Maurer said ’The US is very aware… of where we disagree with the use of drones.’

Drone protesters at Hancock

Protest groups continue to demonstrate against the use of drones.  In the US five people were convicted of trespass this week after blockading the entrance to Hancock Air Force base from where drones are controlled over Afghanistan.  The five, who face jail time and fines, will be sentences on April 24.   Brian Terrell who was jailed for six months following an anti-drone protest at Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri, remains in prison and will be releases at the end of May. Many local US peace groups are currently taking part in a month-long  anti-drone campaign, with dozens of actions taking place across the US.

Here in the UK, campaigners are gearing up for a large protest planned for next week at RAF Waddington, the UK’s new centre of drone activity.  Hundreds will march on the base to call for an end to drone warfare.  Meanwhile a number of MPs are beginning to express opposition to the use of drones, (see for example the MPs quoted in this Daily Mail article reveling that UK company Cobham are supplying components for US Predator drones) while the the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones goes from strength to strength.

While the continuing use of armed drones seems inevitable to the drone lobby,  the breath of opposition on legal, ethical and humanitarian grounds means that the future is far from certain.

Join the protest at RAF Waddington on Saturday April 27 – details here

Over the past three years Drone Wars UK  has tried to highlight why the growing use of armed drones and the concept of remote, so-called ‘risk-free’ warfare, is a perilous military escalation which endangers global peace and security.   In the run-up to the Ground the Drones demo at RAF Waddington on April 27 we want to recap these reason and urge you, if you can to please join us at the event.

Drones enable military intervention

A  primary concern is that the advent of armed unmanned drones has made the option to resort to the use of military force much easier. For political leaders, the risk to their own forces and the potential of TV footage of grieving families awaiting returning coffins of young men and women sent to fight overseas is a real restraint. Take away that potential political cost by using unmanned systems however, and it makes it much easier for political leaders to opt to use lethal military force as a ‘quick fix’ rather than engage in the difficult long-term task of trying to solve root causes.

While the UK has so far only used its armed drones in Afghanistan (although RAF aircrew flew US Predators during the Libyan conflict), there were serious calls for the UK to deploy its armed drones to support French forces currently fighting in Mali.  The deployment of UK armed UAVs to Mali appears only to have been prevented by the Secretary of State for Defence insisting that the UK’s Reapers were too busy in Afghanistan to be re-deployed. Once the UK has acquired more armed UAVs it may be harder to resist the call to deploy these systems each time a crisis develops as there is no perceived cost to doing so.

The US and Israel too are increasingly using their drones with the US using their more than 240 armed UAVs in at least six countries since 2007: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. There is also evidence that the US has also undertaken armed strikes using UAVs in the Philippines and Mali although this has not been confirmed.  Israel has used armed drones  to undertake air strikes in Egypt and Sudan as well as the occupied territories. There are also regular reports of Israel flying UAVs over Lebanon.

Enabling the expansion of targeted killing

Perhaps the most controversial use of armed drones has been their use by the United States for targeted killing of suspected terrorists and insurgents outside of Afghanistan. Legal scholars define targeted killing as the deliberate, premeditated killing of selected individuals by a state who are not in their custody.  Where International Humanitarian Law (IHL) applies, as is the situation currently in Afghanistan, the targeted killing of combatants can be legal. Outside of IHL situations, International Human Rights Law applies and lethal force may only be used when absolutely necessary to save human life that is in imminent danger.  This does not appear to be the case for many of the US UAV airstrikes that have been carried out in Pakistan and Yemen.

The United States insists it has lawful authority for such strikes under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act (AUMF) passed in the days after 9/11 as well as in the inherent right of self-defence under the UN Charter.  However many legal experts and scholars, not least the former and current UN special rapporteurs on extra-judicial killings, disagree strongly with the US position.

While the United States’ use of armed UAVs for targeted killing is highly controversial, the longer it continues, the more it becomes normalised and accepted.  It is now possible, perhaps even likely, that other states will follow the US example and use UAVs to undertake their own targeted killing programme of ‘suspected terrorists’.

The UK and Targeted Killing

There have been reports that UK intelligence agencies have supplied information to the US to help identify and locate drone targets in Pakistan. These allegations have already led to one High Court case as well as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, suggesting that the UK is facing “a wave” of compensation claims  over the sharing of intelligence for such activity.

Within Afghanistan, it appears that the UK may have used its Reaper UAVs to carry out targeted killings although due to the lack of transparency surrounding the use of British armed UAVs it has not been possible to confirm this. We know from published RAF operational updates that UK Reapers have tracked “high value” targets for many hours before finally launching weapons.

Although the use of force in Afghanistan has been authorised by the UN and International Humanitarian Law therefore applies, insurgents in Afghanistan are not members of uniformed armed forces and their status as combatants under IHL remains unclear.  Generally speaking, individuals belonging to armed insurgent groups cannot be considered combatants as defined under international law since this, in most cases, relies on them fighting within a state structure.  Under IHL, then, those fighting in Afghanistan legally remain civilians who may only be targeted while directly participating in hostilities.  However after much debate about this in 2009 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) put forward interpretative guidance suggesting that member of armed groups can be targeted as they have a “continuous combat function”  But the legal status of this ‘guidance’ is unclear”

The lack of clarity surrounding who may be targeted and when, combined with the secrecy surrounding drone strikes  is a recipe for disaster. As Christopher Rogers has pointed out, residents of areas in which armed drones  are operating simply do not know what kind of conduct or relationships could put them at risk. Offering indirect support to militants such as food or quarter or political or ideological support would not formally qualify under international norms as direct participation in hostilities.  However, it is entirely possible that people may be being targeted owing to their relationships to known militants, when they are legally civilians.

Precision strike and civilian casualties

Supporters of drones strikes argue that they are capable of precision strike  – the word  “pinpoint” is repeatedly used by journalists in media reports – but it is unclear exactly what that means. Requests for information about the variants of Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 bombs used in UK Reaper strikes, their blast radius and details about  how often they have landed outside their given Circular Error Probability have been refused.

In its most recent annual report, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that the number of weapons released by drones in Afghanistan .jumped from 294 in 2011 to 506 in 2012, a 72 per cent increase.  UNAMA documented five incidents of drone strikes which resulted in 16 civilian deaths and three injuries, during 2012,  an increase from 2011 when UNAMA documented only one incident.   However as UNAMA states “the number of civilian casualty incidents from drone strikes may be higher as UNAMA is not always able to confirm which type of platform was used during an aerial operation (fixed-wing, rotary or remotely controlled) that resulted in civilian casualties.”

Out of 365 weapons launches from British Reaper UAVs in Afghanistan the MoD insists that only 4 civilians have been killed.  However there are no public figures available figures for total numbers of people killed.  The MoD states that “for reasons of operational security we are not prepared to comment on the assessed numbers of insurgents killed/wounded in Reaper strikes.”

By coincidence the number of US airstrikes across the border in Pakistan (366) is almost exactly the same number as UK Reaper airstrikes in Afghanistan (365)  (although US figures refers to ‘kinetic operations’ in which more than one weapon may be used).  According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, credible reports show that between 2,537 and 3,581 have been killed in US UAV strikes in Pakistan of which between 411 and 884 have reliably been recorded as civilians.  Given that the US and the UK are operating similar armed UAVs in the same part of the world in apparently similar ways, there is, to say the least, a remarkable difference in reported civilian casualty figures.

Creating instability rather than security

The stated aim of UK military action in Afghanistan (and presumably any military action) is to create long term peace and security.  Increasingly however there is a growing understanding that the use of armed UAVs may be doing just the opposite. As Kurt Volker, the former US Permanent Representative to NATO put it recently,

“Drone strikes allows our opponents to cast our country as a distant, high-tech, amoral purveyor of death. It builds resentment, facilitates terrorist recruitment and alienates those we should seek to inspire. Drone strikes may decapitate terrorist organizations, but they do not solve our terrorist problem. In fact, drone use may prolong it. Even though there is no immediate retaliation, in the long run the contributions to radicalization through drone use may put more lives at risk.”

Volker is not alone. Many others counter terrorism experts are now raising similar concerns. In a recent issue of the Chatham House journal, Professor Michael Boyle, former counter terrorism adviser to President Obama has outlined how use of armed UAVs is directly conflicting with other long-term counter-terrorism initiatives and doing real damage.   Yet again, Robert Grenier, who headed the CIA’s counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006 and was previously CIA station chief in Pakistan said of the use of armed UAVs in Afghanistan and Pakistan:  

 “We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

As well as these direct concerns from counter terrorism experts, a number of recent reports have detailed how the use of armed UAVs , and in particular their use of loiter over particular areas for long periods of time before launching attacks, is causing severe metal trauma to the local populations,  disturbing children’s education, and disrupting food production.

These are just a few of the legal and ethical issues that surround the growing use of armed unmanned systems.   Partly because these are complex issues and partly because drones are being used in remote places against people who are labelled as ‘terrorists’ it could be easy to go along with the drone wars and not make the extra effort needed to resist.  But resist we must.  Join us in Lincoln on April 27th.