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The lawfulness of the drone strike against Sally Jones

12/10/2017aguestcontributor

By Max Brookman-Byrne, Lecturer in Law, University of Lincoln. Reposted with permission.

Sally Jones, reportedly killed in US drone strike in June 2017

It was today revealed by various newspapers (for instance, the Guardian, BBC and Mail) that Sally Jones, the so-called ‘White Widow’, has likely been killed by a targeted drone strike. Jones was described as being a member of ISIS and was apparently killed, along with her 12-year-old son, in June 2017 near the Iraq-Syria border.

As a researcher whose work for the last three and a bit years has been on the lawfulness of drone strikes, the question of whether this strike was lawful or not immediately came to mind. Jones was viewed as a member of ISIS and generally the media has uncritically reported her death, implying an assumption that the strike was lawful. But is this correct?

There is an armed conflict occurring in the situation in which Jones was Read more →

‘Anarchist’ hacks Israeli drones

14/02/2016aguestcontributor

Mary Dobbing, co-author of Drone Wars’ briefing on Israel and the drone wars, looks at the implications of the recent news that US and British spooks hacked Israeli drone feeds.

Image of Heron TP drone - Credit: Laura Poitras/The Intercept — Image of Heron TP drone – Credit: Laura Poitras/The Intercept

The United States and Britain have been hacking into Israeli drone signals and video feeds since 1998 we have learned from latest publication of leaks from former US NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The details were published by The Intercept at the end of January. “This is an earthquake, the worst leak in the history of Israeli intelligence” shouted the headline in The Times of Israel quoting “a security source”. The information hacked related to video feeds and routes-over-the-ground that the drones were flying. Read more →

Book Review: ‘Drone Theory’ by Grégoire Chamayou (Trans: Janet Lloyd)

22/04/2015aguestcontributor

READING WEEK: The second in our short series of book reviews related to the use of armed drones.

Henrietta Cullinan reviews Drone Theory by Grégoire Chamayou

‘One side loses people, the other side loses toys. All that is left is the shooting and the dying…..and toys don’t die.’
Toys against the People, or Remote Warfare, Science for the People Magazine, May 1973, quoted in the Epilogue

When US armed drones, operated by teams in the Nevada desert, conduct air strikes over Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, countries the US is not at war with, when the battlefield is a ‘killbox’, when drones are only one step away from fully automated robots, it is time for philosophy to demolish the arguments put forward in support of their use. Read more →

Book Review: ‘Precision Guided Munitions and Human Suffering in War’ by James E. Hickey

21/04/2015aguestcontributor

READING WEEK: A short series of book reviews related to the use of armed drones.

Nick Gilby reviews Precision Guided Munitions and Human Suffering in War by James E. Hickey

In this very interesting book, a member of the American military, James E. Hickey, tries to evaluate whether the use of precision-guided munitions (by the American military) has reduced the level of suffering in the conflicts he analyses. As he points out, in general throughout history technological advances have tended to increase the amount of destruction, killing and suffering in war, the development of nuclear weapons being the logical culmination of this trend. However, since the late 1960s the development in America of laser-, electro-optical- and GPS-guided (or so-called “smart”) munitions has made possible wars which lessen human suffering compared with what would have happened had conventional “dumb” munitions been used. Read more →

Europe condemns civilian casualties in Gaza while procuring Israeli ‘combat proven’ drones

14/07/201421/11/2019aguestcontributor

As Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, named ‘Operation Protective Edge’, enters its second week, Palestinian casualties have reached 168 and continue to mount according to the latest UN figures. Israeli casualties are so far nil. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said of these Palestinian casualties “80 per cent of the fatalities (133) have been civilians, of whom 21 per cent (36) are children, raising concerns about respect for international humanitarian law.” The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that 1,140 Palestinians, including 296 children and 233 women have also been injured. As well as this, OCHA estimate 25,300 children whose families have experienced death, injury or loss of homes are in need of psychosocial support. Read more →

Drones and the EU: a ‘solution’ looking for a problem

11/02/2014aguestcontributor

Guest post by Ben Hayes and Chris Jones.

Today the Transnational Institute and Statewatch are jointly publishing a new report on the European Union and drones, entitled Eurodrones Inc. Our report examines the considerable economic and political support given to the drone industry by the European Union, which has now reached a level at which we can speak of an emerging EU drone policy based on two interlinked principles. First, an urgent need to develop and use drones in Europe for a wide and as yet unlimited range of purposes. Second, the various barriers – chiefly regulatory and technical – to the introduction and routine use of drones in EU airspace must be overcome. Read more →