Drone Wars UK

Drone Wars urges transparency and public oversight of UK military operations at Information Tribunal

26/09/202419/11/2024Chris Cole

Drone Wars appeared before a two-day information tribunal this week seeking to overturn the decision of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to end the release of statistical information on the use of Reaper drones and other armed aircraft on military operations. This information has been a crucial way for the public and parliament to have oversight of UK military action and without the data, it will be much hard to hold the UK to account.

The MoD has been responding to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for statistical information since 2010. In January 2023, the MoD abruptly ended the practice arguing that the information could not be provided due to exemptions provided under Section 23 (Security bodies) or Section 24 (National Security), and Section 26 (Defence) of the Act.

Section 23 and Section 24 are used as ‘alternatives’ to disguise which exemption is being relied upon, that is whether the information comes from or relates to Special Forces, the intelligence service or similar bodies, or whether it is needed to protect ‘national security’.

The hearing took place partly in open session with Drone Wars present, but it also went into closed session when we were excluded, in order to hear evidence in secret.

The MoD provided a witness statement from Group Captain Redican, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Joint Air Force Component and someone with direct experience of Operation Shader in response to our appeal. Although the full witness statement contains 50 numbered paragraphs, only 15 were visible to us, the rest was redacted.

Documents also disclosed to us in the run up to the Tribunal revealed that at an earlier stage of our appeal, the Information Commissioner had asked the MoD to provide it with evidence that disclosure of the statistics to Drone Wars had caused harm or prejudice to the UK. The MoD wrote to the Information Commissioner:

“The information previously released cannot be directly linked to harm to UK forces in its current operating environment (predominantly Operation Shader) however it has revealed capability details for a system that is capable of use on global operations where the threat environment may be significantly different against a more sophisticated adversary.”

In his witness statement, Gp. Capt Redican stated:

“I am aware that the MoD has previously provided responses to similar requests issued by Mr Cole. The MoD now seeks to withhold information which it was previously content to disclose. This is due to the changing national and security context, detailed further below.” [note the following four paragraphs were redacted]

Asked to explain what he meant by the ‘changing national and security context’, Redican explained that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK was now preparing for ‘State on State’ warfare rather than use of armed force against non-state groups. At the same time, he went on, the situation in the Middle East had changed since the beginning of Operation Shader, with Iran – which had previously engaged in the same task of opposing ISIS – but now, “was a major actor in that theatre, and their actions are contrary to British interests.”

Drone Wars strongly argued that the statistical data that we sought was simply not capable of providing insight into ‘techniques, tactics and procedures’ at the level of detail which could cause prejudice to the UK as claimed, but instead gave a broad overview which enabled public oversight.

MoD ‘drawing a line in the sand’

Redican argued that it was not about “the specifics of information” but that “a line in the sand had to be drawn somewhere”. He went on “at some point we have to set a new precedent. We are going to have to begin to protect our capabilities more and more.” Read more →

Operation Without End: Time to halt UK’s now decade-long air war in Iraq and Syria

12/08/202426/09/2024Chris Cole

New briefing (right) calls for end to UK’s ten year air war in Iraq and Syria.

As we reach the tenth anniversary of the deployment of UK armed forces to counter ISIS in Iraq and Syria – known officially as Operation Shader – many may well be surprised at the milestone, thinking that the conflict had long ended.

Indeed both Iraq and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared military victory over ISIS (or ‘Daesh’ as the group is sometimes called) more than five years ago in March 2019 when the last of the territory held by the group was overrun. Most nations that engaged in airstrikes against ISIS, including Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands and Canada, have ended their air operations.

However, in the five years since the territorial defeat of ISIS, UK fighter aircraft and drones continue to undertake almost daily military flights over Iraq and Syria alongside the US, with airstrikes continuing albeit on a much more infrequent level. The UK’s most recent drone strike – targeting an individual in Syria – took place in June 2024, nine years and nine months after the UK’s first Operation Shader strike.

While remnants of ISIS continue to exist and the group remains a serious threat to the people of Iraq including undertaking sporadic terrorist attacks there, they are no longer the military force that they once were. ISIS in Iraq and Syria (as opposed to those in Europe who have pledged allegiance to the group) currently appears to pose little threat to the UK.

However, as the tenth anniversary of the ongoing deployment approaches there is seemingly little political appetite, in either the US or the UK, to bring it to an end. Importantly, with few ‘boots on the ground’ there is the distinct absence of any public campaign ‘to end the war – bring troops home’ as there has been for other major military deployments.

In the US, a recent poll found that less than 30% of public even knew that US troops were still stationed in Syria. Currently, there are around 900 US troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq, with an estimated 100 British troops in Iraq alongside an unknown number of British Special Forces troops in Syria and Iraq. US and UK aircraft/drones and their crews, which continue to operate over Iraq and Syria, are based outside of the countries.

Managed Perception: We only kill bad guys

Lack of public and media attention to the ongoing military operation is in no small part due to the lack of UK military casualties and the perception that the UK has undertaken a ‘precision bombing’ campaign with almost no civilian casualties.

Despite more than 4,300 UK air strikes, many of them in heavily populated areas, the UK insists that there has only been one civilian casualty. While many, including military officers, journalists and casualty recording organisations, have been scornful of these claims, the management of the perception of the impact of the bombing campaign has clearly worked.

On the ground in Iraq and Syria the story is very different, with multiple civilian deaths linked to UK airstrikes. Overall, Airwars estimates that 8,000 – 14,000 civilians died from Coalition bombing in Iraq and Syria – a huge human toll. However, while glad to see the back of ISIS, resentment at presence of western forces on the ground – and in the air – grows.

The US drone assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani outside Baghdad airport in January 2020 sparked an outpouring of anger and outrage, with the Iraqi parliament passing a motion demanding the expulsion of US forces from Iraq. When the Iraqi president pushed for a timetable for a withdrawal of forces, the US flatly refused. Instead, in December 2021, the US announced that the Coalition had ended combat operation and was now engaged in an ‘advise, assist and enable’ role. However, the same number of troops remain on the ground and aircraft remain in the skies.

Mission Creep

Here in the UK, the ongoing military operation now gets very little attention either in parliament or the media. In May 2024, the Lib Dem defence spokesperson, Richard Forde MP, mildly suggested in the House of Commons that as UK forces deployed for Operation Shader had been used instead to counter an Iranian attack on Israel, this deserved at least a debate. The reply from the (then) Defence Minister was: Read more →

Suspicious omissions: US and Chinese secret space drone missions spark questions and concerns

01/08/202412/08/2024Cora Morris

To what ends might the United States Department of Defence have developed an unmanned, highly-manoeuvrable ‘spaceplane’? Why have its lengthy missions – lasting as long as two and a half years – been so shrouded in secrecy? And what are China’s intentions for its rival vehicle? These questions and more underpin speculation around the dangers of an unfolding spaceplane race.

The US X-37b space drone, conceived by NASA and Boeing in the late 1990s, was taken up as a classified project of the US government’s ‘Space Force’ in 2004. At around nine metres long and four-and-a-half wide, the bus-sized vessel is launched by rocket but can land independently on conventional runways. Its significant cargo bay, however, rarely pictured open in any publicly-available images since its maiden flight in April of 2010, leaves uncertainty about the drone’s internal capacities, and its possible functions.

This secrecy has fuelled questions about the X-37b’s military capabilities – questions which have not been dampened by the minimal official communications issued about the X-37b’s purposes, despite the heavily publicised spectacle of its launches.

A common official line for early flights – offering that the vehicle functioned as a contained test site for the viability of new satellite materials – justified extended missions with a need to examine these materials’ resilience over time. That this testing could not take place in the established International Space Station (ISS), however, implied secrecy, and added to the questions that have accompanied each of the space drone’s launches. Among other omissions, commentators have remarked on the absence of requisite UN notification and thus proper transparency for satellites the X-37b has released in flight – an unusual divergence from international space norms with which the United States usually seeks to demonstrate public compliance.

But it is in the months since the X-37b’s most recent departure, in late December 2023, that attention to its purposes has come to a head. The use of the highly powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for the plane’s launch – rather than the Falcon 9 rocket used for 2020’s launch – has prompted questions: why might its engineers need the plane to orbit at the altitudes this higher-powered rocket could propel it to? These queries remain unresolved by formal statements regarding its still ongoing flight, which poses extended experiments into the atmospheric viability of plant seeds as the mission’s innocuous purpose.

In the absence of trustworthy information, it is of little surprise that curious minds have sought clues to intentions for the X-37b. In February 2024, Tomi Simola – an amateur satellite tracker from Finland – spied the spacecraft in one of his regular sky captures after weeks of collaborative effort by fellow online tracking enthusiasts. Based on this, Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell remarked that the ‘unusual elliptical orbit’ of the plane appeared similar to that of US Space Force satellites used for detecting ballistic missiles in flight. McDowell speculates that the X-37b’s current mission could be about testing a powerful infrared ‘early-warning’ sensor used to detect such missiles – but stressed that this was only speculation. Indeed, without proper transparency, only such speculation is possible. Read more →

MoD admits British Reaper drone written off after 2021 crash at undisclosed location

18/07/202401/08/2024Chris Cole

UK Reaper drone ZZ209, damaged in a December 2021 accident, seen here being delivered to the RAF in Afghanistan in 2014

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has finally admitted, following an FoI appeal, that an RAF Reaper drone which crash landed at an undisclosed location in December 2021 has actually been written off. This was the sixth crash of a UK Reaper drone and the fifth to have been destroyed. The RAF now operates nine Reaper drones. Separately, 8 Watchkeeper drones, operated by the British Army have also crashed. This latest news comes as the RAF plans to begin regular flights of its new US MQ-9 SkyGuardian – renamed as ‘Protector’ by the UK – over the UK.

In keeping with its ongoing secrecy around the use of its armed drones, 18 months after the December 2021 crash, the MoD told Drone Wars in June 2023 that the drone “was still awaiting repair.” When we asked for an update in February 2024, we were refused the information with MoD stating that providing such information “would place an unnecessary burden” ahead of releasing the information in its annual report. We appealed this stonewalling and contacted the Information Commissioner. Subsequently the MoD have released the information.

The December 2021 crash is the sixth ‘mishap’ that has occurred to the UK’s armed Reaper UAV fleet since the system came into service in 2008. At least 24 large (Class II and III) military drones operated by UK armed forces have crashed in the last 15 years. The December 2021 accident came less than a month after a newly purchased Reaper came into service with the intention of bringing the UK’s fleet back up to its full strength of ten. Read more →

MALE performance anxiety: Technical problems and SAMs bring large drones down to earth

24/06/202418/07/2024Chris Cole

We’ve added details of 25 more crashes of medium altitude long endurance (MALE) drones to our database since the last update in November 2023 – including details of three US drone crashes in 2023 that have only recently come to light.

Although the use of smaller ‘one-way attack’ drones has grown in prevalence alongside a huge rise in the use of FPV drones in Ukraine, the larger MALE drones – as typified by the Reaper and Bayraktar – continue to be a mainstay for many militaries. While many of the crashes of these systems are due to pilot error, mechanical/electrical failures or other technical problems, we have seen an increase in the number of these aircraft being shot down over the past year.

While it has been widely accepted over recent years that the current generation of MALE drones “are vulnerable in warfighting conflicts involving peer or near-peer adversary” as the MoD’s most recent strategy document on the issue put it (and hence arguing to “go beyond RPAS” to develop autonomous drones), we have actually seen a significant number of these drones brought down to earth by non-state groups such as the Houthis and Hezbollah over recent months.

MALE drones recently shot down by Ansar Allah (Houthis)*

Date	Operator	Drone type	Phase/details	Location
May 29, 2024	US intelligence?	MQ-9 Reaper	Mid-flight, shot down	Marib Province, Yemen
May 16, 2024	US Air Force	MQ-9 Reaper	Mid-flight, shot down	Marib province, Yemen
Apr 26, 2024	US Air Force	MQ-9 Reaper	Mid-flight, shot down	Off coast of Yemen
Feb 19, 2024	US Air Force	MQ-9 Reaper	Mid-flight, shot down	Off coast of Yemen
Nov 8, 2023	US Air Force	MQ-9 Reaper	Mid-flight, shot down	Off coast of Yemen

*Note other downings have been claimed but not verified

MALE drones recently shot down by Hezbollah

Date	Operator	Drone type	Phase/details	Location
Jun 10, 2024	IDF	Hermes 900	Mid-flight, shot down	Southern Lebanon
Jun 1, 2024	IDF	Hermes 900	Mid-flight, shot down	Southern Lebanon
Apr 22,2024	IDF	Hermes 450	Mid-flight, shot down	Southern Lebanon
Apr 6, 2024	IDF	Hermes 900	Mid-flight, shot down	Lebanon
Feb, 26, 2024	IDF	Hermes 450	Mid-flight, shot down	Nabatieh, Lebanon
Nov 5, 2023	IDF	Hermes 450	Mid-flight, shot down	Nabatieh, Lebanon

MALE drones brought down by other non-state groups/States

Date	Operator	Drone type	Phase/details	Location
Apr 29, 2024	UAE	Wing Loong	Mid-flight, shot down	Shabwah, Yemen
Jan 18, 2024	US Air Force	MQ-9 Reaper	Mid-flight, shot down	Diyala Province, Iraq
Oct 5, 2023	Turkish Air Force	Anka-S	Mid-flight, shot down	Hasakah, Syria,

Alongside the fact that these drones are increasing vulnerable to ground launch missile attacks, there continues to be a significant amount of crashes due to technical issues or pilot error. Read more →

Autonomous Collaborative Platforms: The UK’s New Autonomous Drones

13/06/202416/07/2025Chris Cole

Following on from the MoD’s Defence Drone Strategy released in February (see our report here), the RAF has now published its ‘Autonomous Collaborative Platform Strategy’ as it works to develop, produce and deploy these new type of military drones.

The strategy defines Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) as types of uncrewed systems (drones) “which demonstrate autonomous behaviour and are able to operate in collaborative manner with other assets.” The strategy argues that Reaper and the (soon-to-enter-service) Protector drones “are vulnerable in warfighting conflicts involving peer or near-peer adversary. Therefore, as a priority the RAF needs to go beyond RPAS [Remotely Piloted Air Systems] to develop ACP capabilities.”

The plan argues that “through increasing use of autonomy, remote mission operators (commanders /supervisors) will be able to command an increasing number of AV [drones] within each ACP system.”

Underpinning the development, is the notion that the “geopolitical climate demands that we move beyond the caution of the post-cold war world” and that therefore the RAF must “undertake activity in areas that are demanding, difficult or overtly hostile.” While the Strategy sets out a variety of tasks for these new drones, it makes clear that a key focus is on “overwhelming an adversary’s air defences.” ACP are therefore not a defensive system, but are designed from the outset to enable the UK to engage in attack.

Tiers for Fears

The strategy sets out three ‘Tiers’ of ACP based on their ability to survive in “high-risk” (i.e. defended) environments:

Tier 1 ae disposable drones, with life-cycle of one or very few missions;
Tier 2 are “attritable” (or “risk tolerant”) that is, expected to survive but losses are acceptable;
Tier 3 are drones which have high strategic value, which if lost would significantly affect how the RAF will fight.

Diagram from Autonomous Collaborative Platform Strategy

Echoing the words of the Chief of the Air Staff Sir Richard Knighton before the Defence Select Committee earlier this year, the document states that a Tier 1 ACP will be operational “by the end of 2024”, while Tier 2 systems will be part of RAF combat force by 2030. Read more →