After a busy few months we have revamped the Drone Wars website and updated our datasets. Most obviously we have reorganised our information under a new top-level menu structure.
‘About Drones’ gives key, basic information about armed drones, their history, and concerns about their use. ‘British Drones’ focuses on the use of armed drones by the UK including our data on UK drones strikes (recently updated) while ‘Ethical and Legal Issues’ looks at the use of armed drones for targeted killing (including a new long overview essay on the issue) and brings together a number of posts about the ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of armed drones.
We have updated and (and re-presented) our Drone Crash Database bringing the number of military drone crashes in our dataset to just under 200 since 2007. Details of around 50 large drone crashes by US army units (including Special Forces units) which previously had not been public have been added to the large number of USAF drone crashes thanks to the valuable work of Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post and his investigation into US military drone crashes.
We have also added a dozen key documents to the Drone Wars Library in our latest quarterly update. The Library now consists of over 120 important articles and documents divided into a dozen topics. And we have had added a ‘Take Action’ section focusing on our campaigning work. We plan to grow this section over the next year with a new campaign focus coming in the New Year.
Finally we have added a Drone Wars Cartoon Gallery with what we think are (so far) the best twelve cartoons on the drone wars.