November 2010 – Drone Wars UK

MoD releases ‘drone porn’

25/11/2010Chris Cole

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has released two videos showing attacks by British Reaper drones.

The two videos, released via youtube, shows a drone missile “neutralising” a ‘Taliban bomb factory’ and another killing someone allegedly planting an improvised explosive device.

While the US regularly releases what has become known as ‘drone porn’, this is the first time that the British MoD has done so. Already, that bastions of good taste, The Sun, has lapped up the footage and is reporting that the alleged IED planter was turn ‘to pink mist‘.

Over the past two years the MoD has so far flatly refused to give any details about the circumstances of the 120+ attacks by British Reaper drones saying repeatedly that to do so would endanger the lives of British servicemen. These concerns however seem to have been forgotten in order to release mere propaganda proclaiming the accuracy and lethality of their latest weapons system.

Drone Crash Database

25/11/201020/04/2020Chris Cole

Over the past couple of months I have regularly ended blog posts by reporting that yet another military drone had crashed. While drones are portrayed by the defence industry and many in the media as the latest ‘invincible’ super-weapon that will make us safe and secure, the reality is that they often simply fall out of the sky.

With the growing use of armed drones and the increasing pressure from some quarters to allow drones to fly in civilian airspace in the UK, the reliability and safety of drones is a key issue. Using USAF Accident Investigation Board reports, the Wikileaks War Logs and press reports I have begun a database of drone crashes since the beginning of 2007. I have not included crashes of the smaller UAV’s (sometimes called mini-UAVs) as the crash so often it would simply swamp the database (see this Australian article on mini-UAV crashes reported in the Wikileaks war logs which gives an idea of how often they crash!)

The database is almost certainly not complete as there is often no public notification when a UAV crashes. If you know of drone crashes not in the database do let me know.

See the drone crash database

New “cool” armed drone for US special forces in Afghanistan

24/11/2010Chris Cole

US Special Forces in Afghanistan are now operating their own armed drones Defence News has recently reported. Four Grey Eagle UAV’s armed with Hellfire missiles are now with special units in Afghanistan. We reported on the drone, previously known as Sky Warrior, in early August (US Army Special Forces Unit Gets New Drone ) but it has since had its name changed from Sky Warrior to Grey Eagle to avoid confusion and to give it a “cool name”. The drone is from the same family as the Predator and Reaper drone and unarmed versions have been operating for some time in Iraq.

Meanwhile the drone industry continues to develop. A new production facility for the Orion drone, which is designed to remain in flight for five days at 20,000 feet and is capable of carrying a payload of 1,000 pounds, has been opened in Mississippi and military labs continue to churn out new surveillance devices as the drone electronics industry revenue is expected to double to $6 billion in the next eight years.

PS. I’m speaking about drones in Bristol tonight – if you are in the area come along!

Drones: See No Border, Hear No Victims, Speak No Peace

20/11/2010Chris Cole

“You expect us to open the skies for anything that you can fly… in which country can you do that?” Unnamed Pakistani Intelligence Official

The Washington Post reports today (Nov. 20th) that further pressure is being put on the Pakistani government to widen the area that US drones are allowed to strike within Pakistan.

Unsurprisingly, after more than 100 drone strikes this year alone in the area in which they are operating, the Pakistani government has refused the request. This stance has, to put it mildly, annoyed the powers that be with one senior anonymous NATO military official quoted as saying “If they understand our side, they know the patience is running out.”

Also barely reported this week (and anytime it happens) was Israel’s incursion by unmanned drone into Lebanon. The flight, which pass within almost 50 miles of the capital Beirut, was in direct violation of UN resolutions (as Israel regularly is).

While neither the US nor Israel are famed for their respect of international law, there does seem to be something about unmanned drones that appears to mean a decrease in respect for international borders and sovereignty. Perhaps it’s the fact that the drone is unmanned and so ‘no body’ is actually crossing a border makes a difference to the military mind.

With more than forty countries developing unmanned drones these precedents of armed drones crossing international borders seemingly at will makes for a worrying future and suggests that a ban on armed drones is more important than ever.

Drones: Stressful for some, fatal for others

19/11/2010Chris Cole

An Israeli drone launched an assassination strike in Gaza this week killing two people and injuring three more. The two fatalities, killed in their vehicle as it drove along al-Wihda Street in the centre of Gaza City, were named locally as brothers Islam Yassin and Mohammed Yassin, members of the Army of Islam. According to Al-Jazeerah an Israeli military spokesperson claimed responsibility for the assassination and stated that the attack was carried out after close collaboration between the army and the Israeli Security Agency Shabak, as the men were “plotting to attack Israeli citizens in the Sinai”. The dramatic photos in this report of the aftermath of the attack give some insight into the drone assassinations taking place in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Meanwhile British MoD Minster Andrew Robathan, confirmed this week that a study into the psychological health of British drone operators based in the US is currently underway. Previous reports focusing on US drone operators have suggested that drone pilots operating at great distances from the battlefield, are suffering from stress.

On the other side of the world, the sudden appearance of many new Chinese drones at a Chinese air show are causing Western defence officials a fair amount of stress. According to the Wall Street Journal

Western defense officials and experts were surprised to see more than 25 different Chinese models of the unmanned aircraft, known as UAVs, on display at this week’s Zhuhai air show in this southern Chinese city. It was a record number for a country that unveiled its first concept UAVs at the same air show only four years ago…. China is investing considerable time and money to develop drone technology, and is actively promoting its products on the international market …. It is of particular concern to the U.S. and Israel, whose drones are unrivalled in the world today.

One of the Chinese drones, WJ600, will caused considerable anxiety as a video animation showed it helping “to attack what appeared to be a U.S. aircraft carrier steaming toward an island off China’s coast that many visitors assumed to be Taiwan”. Another, dubbed ‘the Chinese Predator’ by the aviation magazines, has undergone a series of flight trials, including weapons launches.

This week – two more drones crashed in Afghanistan – one on Kharvar city on 12th November and another in the Kharwar district of Logar Province on Wednesday 17th November. So many drones are crashing that I plan to put up a separate list of drone crashes in the next few days.

Death TV: Overwhelmed and bored analysts recommending drone strikes

11/11/2010Chris Cole

The Washington Post reported this week that vast amount of video footage from drones are overwhelming analysts.

According to Marine Corps General James Cartwright, Vice Chair of the Military Joint Chiefs of Staff, the video is “boring intelligence analysts to tears.”

Forced to watch what Gen. Cartwright called “Death TV,” bleary-eyed analysts at ground stations and other outposts spend hours wading through useless data until they spot signs of a target and recommend that the drone fire its missile.

Cartwright wants (yes, you’ve guessed it) more autonomy and technology to solve the problem and companies are lining up to provide the technology to process the video feed. “Within three years, it will be technically feasible to run these sophisticated algorithms and extract relevant essence data from the content” according to John Delay of Harris Corp which has, according to the article, several defense contracts, but also has also made transmitters for broadcast television since 1969. (Death TV indeed!)

Unfortunately for the analysts, and without doubt Afghans too, Aviation Week says that Gorgon Stare will enter service aboard US Reaper drones in Afghanistan next month Gorgon Stare is a new surveillance capability that allows a wide area of ground to be videoed while also enabling individuals to be tracked within that wide area. As Aviation Week explains:

‘The five EO cameras each shoot two 16-megapixel frames/sec., which are stitched together by the computer to create an 80-megapixel image…. The result is a system that offers a “many orders of magnitude” leap beyond the “soda straw” view provided by the single EO/IR camera carried by an MQ-1 Predator or a conventional Reaper UAV…. The video taken by Gorgon Stare’s cameras can be “chipped out” into 10 individual views and streamed to that many recipients or more… At the same time, Gorgon Stare will process the images from all its cameras in flight, quilting them into a mosaic for a single wide-area view.’

Four sets of Gorgons will enter service next month as part of the initial deployment. A further developed version, involving BAE Systems’ ARGUS system [see ‘our Outstaring the Gorgon: BAE, Drones and ARGUS] is already being developed and tested.

Meanwhile the US Army has announced plans to conduct the largest ever demonstration of interoperability between manned and unmanned systems next year with the aim of proving that MUSIC (Manned Unmanned Systems Integration Concept) can work. As previously mentioned there is enormous pressure on political and civil authorities to allow unmanned aerial vehicles to operate within civil airspace and MUSIC is another step in that direction. However Drone Wars UK can’t help but point out, as yet another drone crashes, that unmanned systems continue to regularly fall out of the sky.