Author: Chris Cole

Small drones, big problem. Two new reports examine the rise and rise of armed ‘one-way attack’ drones 

Chris Cole
From top: Israeli Harop, Iranian Shaded 136, Polish Warmate.

Over the past few years  – and particularly in the on-going war in Ukraine – we have seen the rise in use of what has become known as ‘kamikaze’ or  ‘suicide’ drones.  Two new excellent reports have just been released which examine these systems.  ‘One-Way Attack Drones: Loitering Munitions of the Past and Present’ written by Dan Gettinger, formerly of the Bard Drone Center and ‘Loitering Munitions and Unpredictability’ by Ingvild Bode & Tom Watts,  examine between them the history, current use, and growing concern about the increasing autonomy of such systems.

A drone by any other name…?

Firstly, to address the elephant in the room: are these systems ‘drones’?

Naming has always been a keenly fought aspect of the debate about drones, with sometimes bitter conflict over whether such platforms should be named ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVS), ‘remotely piloted air systems’ (RPAS) or ‘drones’. ‘Drones’ has been the term that has stuck, particularly in mainstream media, but is regularly used interchangeably with UAV (with ‘unmanned’ being replaced in recent years by ‘uncrewed’ for obvious reasons).  While many in the military now accept the term ‘drone’ and are happy to use it depending on the audience, some continue to insist that it belittles both capabilities of the system and those who operate them.

Whichever term is used, a further aspect of the naming debate is that an increasing number and type of military aerial systems are being labelled as ‘drones’.  While all these systems have significant characteristics in common (aerial systems, unoccupied, used for surveillance/intelligence gathering and/or attack), they can also be very different in terms of size and range; can carry out very different missions; have different effects; and raise different legal and ethical issues.

One type of such system is the so-called ‘suicide’ or ‘kamikaze’ drone  – perhaps better labelled ‘one way attack’ drone.  There are several different categories of this type of drone, and while they are are used to carry out remote lethal attacks and therefore have significant aspects in common with the much larger Reaper or Bayraktar drones, they are significantly different in that they are not designed to be re-used, but rather are expendable as the warhead is part of the structure of the system which is destroyed in use. Importantly, while loitering munitions are a sub-set of ‘one way attack’ drones, not all one-way attack drones are loitering munitions.

Dan Gettinger’s report ‘One-Way Attack Drones: Loitering Munitions of the Past and Present’ helpfully sets out a history of the development of these systems and identifies three sub categories: anti-radar systems, portable or ‘backpackable’ systems and Iranian systems.  He has compiled a helpful dataset of over 200 such systems (although not all are currently in operation). All of these, he argues, can be traced back to “the transition from the era of jet-powered target drones to that of remotely piloted vehicles.” Read more →

Tribunal upholds MoD refusal to disclose details of UK Reaper drone missions outside of Op Shader

Chris Cole
Click to read Decision Notice

Fifteen months after hearing our appeal, an Information Tribunal handed down its decision this week rejecting our arguments that basic details about the deployment of armed Reaper drones outside of Operation Shader (Iraq/Syria) by the UK needed to be released to enable public and parliamentary oversight over such deployments.

Both Clive Lewis MP and Baroness Vivienne Stern, Vice-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Drones and Modern Conflict had submitted statements to the Tribunal supporting our appeal.  Clive Lewis argued that  the refusal to answer these questions about the deployment of Reaper is “a serious backward step in terms of transparency and accountability.”   Baroness Stern stated:

“Despite repeated attempts by myself and colleagues to attain even the most basic information about the UK’s drone deployments, policy, and commitments, Parliament has not been provided with the accurate and timely information needed to meaningfully carry out its constitutional scrutiny role. Whilst certain details must be kept secret in order to ensure operational and national security, the current trend of withholding information about the use of drones purely because it is seen as an “intelligence” asset, as well as withholding vital information on the UK’s growing military capabilities and commitments is deeply concerning and unjustified.”

While insisting that it was neither confirming nor denying the deployment, the MoD argued against the release of the information on three broad grounds . As the Decision Notice states:

“the MOD’s key concern about the release of the requested information was that it could lead an adversary to infer the absence or presence of UK personnel. In his [The MoD’s witness’] opinion were the locations to be released or inferred from a combination of requested data and already published material (the “mosaic effect”), there would be an elevated risk to any potential personnel in that location and an increased risk of hostile acts against them.”

A second concern was

“there would be an increased risk to any nation hosting the Reaper operations as an adversary may target a hostile act at the host nation rather than the UK which may be a more difficult target. Thereby undermining the UK’s relationship with that nation and undermining military operations conducted from that location.”

Finally, and most concerning from a scrutiny and oversight point of view the MoD argued (again quoting Decision Notice)

“The effectiveness of operations conducted using Reaper outside Operation Shader in future depend, in part, on a greater degree of ambiguity as to the employment of Reaper in order to be successful. It is important to retain a degree of ambiguity regarding the full extent of Reaper operations now in order to maintain this flexibility in the future. “

Drone Wars argued strongly that the information requested –  a single figure of the number of sorties undertaken outside of Operation Shader and their broad, geographic location (i.e. ‘The Middle East’) – was not capable of causing the prejudice alleged.  We also pointed out to the Tribunal that the MoD has previously released the number of sorties undertaken outside of Operation Shader (In response to our questions about the targeted killing of Naweed Hussain in 2018) without any of the prejudice or harm suggested, but that seems to have been ignored by the tribunal.  Read more →

The UK and the Ukraine War: Drones vs Diplomacy

Chris Cole
Custom-built British ‘suicide-drone’ reportedly bound for Ukraine.     Pic: QinetiQ

The UK is to supply Ukraine with “hundreds of new long-range attack drones” a government spokesperson told the media on Monday as the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Britain for a brief visit.

“Today the prime minister will confirm the further UK provision of hundreds of air defence missiles and further unmanned aerial systems including hundreds of new long-range attack drones with a range of over 200km. These will all be delivered over the coming months as Ukraine prepares to intensify its resistance to the ongoing Russian invasion.”

It is not at all clear what theses ‘long range attack drones’ are, although there has been some reports of the UK funding the development of a ‘suicide-drone’ to supply to Ukraine.

This latest news comes on top of the announcement in the last few weeks that the UK is supplying Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine following the export of UK Challenger 2 tanks.

Some will no doubt welcome the supply of attack drones and cruise missiles to Ukraine as a counter to Russia’s military aggression. It goes without saying that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and continuing use of lethal force is unlawful and must be resisted.   However, there are real questions to be asked now about how such a strategy of supplying evermore lethal military hardware risks expanding rather than ending this war. It is becoming increasingly easier to see the UK and other NATO countries being drawn more directly into an armed conflict with Russia.  Any such escalation would be disastrous for the people of Ukraine and the wider region as well as seriously risking a catastrophic nuclear event.

Rather than escalating the conflict by supplying ever more lethal arms, the UK should be urging negotiations to end the war as it is inevitable that this will have to happen at some point.  While some western military analysts urge that the war should be prolonged in order to weaken Russia in the long term, Ukraine and its people suffer.

Negotiations are of course a matter for the Ukrainian people, but it should be remembered that a settlement  was seemingly very close last March with a Turkish-backed plan for Russian forces to withdraw to their pre-24 February positions without Ukraine giving up its claim to any of its territory.  Unfortunately the moment passed (with suggestions that the then British PM Boris Johnson personally lobbied Zelenskiy to reject the plan (for more on this see  Ukraine One Year On: Time to Negotiate Peace).

While it is easy for the current PM to grab a few headlines and play to the crowd by supplying lethal attack drones to Ukraine, the harder but more rewarding long-term work of diplomacy in order to end this awful war is being neglected.

UK deployed Reaper drone to Sudan

Chris Cole
Image of Port Sudan from UK Reaper video feed

The UK deployed an MQ-9 Reaper drone to Sudan as part of the military operation to support the evacuation of UK personnel the RAF has reported.

This is the first public acknowledgment of the deployment of UK Reaper drones outside of operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.  Drone Wars UK has been fighting a long FoI battle with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) about a possible further unacknowledged deployment. The drone provided intelligence gathering and surveillance cover for UK military operations during the evacuation, but it is not known if it was armed during the operation.

In a brief 3 May 2023 press release, the Royal Air Force (RAF) stated

“The RAF’s Reaper, an uncrewed aircraft that is designed for Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) missions has been supporting by providing up to date imagery of the port, airfield and ground environment. This includes highlighting unsafe and potentially dangerous areas to troops on the ground. It has also allowed for identification of buildings which would be suitable for temporary shelter, medical facilities, or locations to process passengers.

The Reaper was operated by XIII Squadron based at RAF Waddington. The Squadron Executive Officer said: “For XIII Squadron to operate the RAF Reaper over two separate continents on two different missions, having eyes on the ground in Africa and the Middle East simultaneously shows the flexibility of the aircraft and our people, a remarkable effort from all the Squadron”.”

The MoD reported that the military operation to safely evacuate UK personnel from Sudan had concluded on 3 May with the last flight departing from Port Sudan airport.  It reported that almost 2,500 personnel, including  1,200 non-UK nationals from 20 different countries had left via flight from  Wadi Saeedna airfield and Port Sudan airfield.  The UK Reaper drone had been tasked in particular with monitoring the UK’s processing station at Cora Hotel, Port Sudan where HMS Lancaster was based, as well as the two airfields from where evacuation flights too place.  Read more →

Armed drone proliferation update – March ’23

Chris Cole

We have fully updated our list of countries operating medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) armed drones as typified by the MQ-9 Reaper and Bayraktar TB2.  Just to emphasis, our list does not include states possessing loitering munitions (sometimes dubbed ‘suicide’ or kamikaze’ drones by the media) or other, one-off use smaller systems.

According to our data, thirty-four countries currently possess armed MALE drones although  some of these countries may not be currently using them operationally. Out of the 34 states known to possess armed drones 12 have used them in  cross border strikes and 11 have used them for strikes within their own borders.

Since our last update in May 2022, seven new countries have acquired armed drones:  Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Mali, Niger, Poland, Somalia, Togo and Tunisia.  All have acquired them from Turkey.  While Bayraktar TB2 armed drones are being used in Somalia it is not clear if they are being used by Turkish or Somali forces.

In addition to these 34 countries, we have identified another 14 countries that are likely to acquire armed drones in the near future although this is almost certainly a significant underestimate as  proliferation of these systems, particularly from Turkey, is rapidly increasing.

The full list of countries that possess armed drones, the type of armed drones they operate, which countries are likely to become operators in the near future, and a short narrative report on each country is available on our page: ‘Who Has Armed Drones?’

Turkey’s armed drone exports

Over the past five years (2018 – 2022) Turkey has become the predominant exporter of armed drones.  Out of the 20 countries that first gained armed drone capability in that period, four received drones from China, France armed its US drones and Russia began using its indigenously developed ‘Orion’ (Inokhodets) armed drone. The other 14 all received armed drones from Turkey.  Read more →

Defence Secretary confirms UK drone targeted killing in Syria

Chris Cole

At Defence Questions yesterday (13 March), the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, confirmed suspicions that the UK strike in Syria in December 2022 was a British drone targeted killing.  Choosing his words carefully, Wallace told the House of Commons:

“I want to update the House on a strike that took place a few weeks ago, as is our agreement on strikes under Operation Shader. In late December, an RAF Reaper remotely piloted aircraft conducted a strike against a leading Daesh member in al-Bab, northern Syria. The individual’s activity was related to chemical and biological weapons. The Reaper’s crew minimised potential risk to civilians before firing two Hellfire missiles, both of which struck the target accurately. These actions are vital to degrading such terrorist threats, protecting British citizens and supporting our international partners.”

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had issued a short update two days after the strike:

“On Tuesday 20 December, a Reaper remotely piloted aircraft kept close observation on a building near Al Bab in northern Syria where at least one active Daesh terrorist was known to be present.  Great care was taken to ensure that any potential risks to civilians were understood and minimised before the Reaper’s crew fired a salvo of two Hellfire missiles which both struck the target accurately.”

Local sources reported at the time that two civilians – a woman and child – were injured in the strike and that one individual, a Yemeni national and ISIS commander was either severely injured or killed (see Airwars round-up of media reporting on the strike).  He was named locally by his nom de guerre of Abu Yasser al-Yemeni.

The local civilian civil defence force, know as the White Helmets, shared footage of the aftermath of the strike showing the house completely demolished.

Drone Wars submitted a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to the MoD in January asking if an investigation was underway into the reports of civilian casualties arising from the strike.  The MoD has refused to answer the request citing national security and international relations exemptions.  We have submitted an appeal.  Read more →