Category: Campaigning

Drone Wars Online Day Conference: Sat 22 Feb 2025

Chris Cole

Drones are now rapidly proliferating around the globe enabling belligerents to kill at distance with virtual impunity. At the same time, military planners are pushing ahead with incorporating AI into military systems despite grave concerns about the development of autonomous weapons, while behind the scenes, a number of states now see space as a war-fighting domain and are gearing up for space war.

In conjunction with Leicester CND and to remember the wonderful Penny Walker, Drone Wars are a holding a one-day, online conference to inform and build our campaigning to challenge these developments. 

 

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US spy drones out of ‘RAF’ Fairford – public meeting and demonstration in January 2025

Chris Cole

Drone Wars, together with Oxfordshire Peace Campaign and CND, will host an online public meeting and in-person demonstration in January 2025 to oppose flights of US Global Hawk and Reaper drones from RAF Fairford military base in Glos.

The US Air Force (USAF) has applied to the UK’s air regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), to change airspace rules to allow RQ-4 Global Hawk and MQ-9 Reaper drones to fly regularly from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

In August 2024, a US Global Hawk drone flew into Fairford, conducted two sorties over the following days and then departed.  It appears these were two ‘demonstration’ flights to trial temporary air corridors.  Following a Post-Implementation Review, in which it was revealed that ten flights into Birmingham airport had to be diverted because of the drones flight, the CAA has ordered the USAF/MoD to investigate “mitigation strategies” to resolve the impact on Birmingham Airport.

According to one document submitted to the CAA, the “working assumption” by the USAF is that the corridors would be activated 2-3 times per week but they are “exploring activation periods that exceed these assumption, both in frequency and time periods of utilisation.”  The proposal is that the drones would take off and land overnight: “all activations will be between 1 hour after sunset and 1 hour before sunrise unless in extremis.”   While the application to fly Global Hawks from Fairford is on-going, the application to fly Reapers has been ‘paused’, likely till after Global Hawk flights have been approved,

Online public Meeting:  Wednesday 15th January, 7.00pm – 8.30pm

Join us online to learn more about these dangerous development
and its worrying consequences both locally and globally.

Please register here:  Eventbrite registration

Demonstration at RAF Fairford:  Saturday 25th January, 1pm, Main Gate

 UPDATE:  Protest will go ahead.  

Bring banners and placards, food for lunch, and dress appropriately for the weather.

Demonstration will be by the main gate  at corner of Horcott Road /Maine Street.
Postcode for Sat Nav: GL7 4DL

There will be parking for some cars at main gate with additional parking nearby (See below)

There are some spaces available on mini-bus from Oxford  £10/£5 low-waged.

Pick up point will be the Ashmolean Museum with minibus departing at 11.15 am.
To book a place email: oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk  on first come/first served basis.

If you can make a donation to cover cost of transport we would be grateful.  Read more →

New ‘Protector’ armed drones to begin flying in UK – Join the protest on 13 November

Chris Cole

 

The UK’s new armed drones – known as  ‘SkyGuardian’ internationally, but renamed ‘Protector’ by the UK –  will begin test flights in the UK next month after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) agreed to new airspace rules around RAF Waddington.  The MoD will undertake “a small number of time-critical proving flights” of the new drone ahead of a longer test and training programme due to begin in late 2023/early 2024.

The first of an initial batch of sixteen MQ-9B SkyGuardian was flown into RAF Waddington on-board a transport aircraft on 30 September.

According to Jane’s:

“While the Protector fleet will be based at and operated from RAF Waddington, it will spend most of its time overseas in the same manner as the Reaper fleet. A future operational scenario could see the Protector ferry itself from RAF Waddington to a location in the Middle East or Sub-Saharan Africa, arriving in theatre to be met by a team that would arm and prep it for its mission.”

The UK is replacing its fleet of ten Reaper drones with up to 26 of the new ‘Protector’ drones.  The newer drone has further range and longer endurance, as well as being capable of carrying more weapons.  It is also capable of autonomous take-off and landing.

Why we continue to challenge the use of armed drones

As we have argued over the past decade, while remote-controlled drones are presented as enabling ‘pinpoint’ accurate air strikes which enable us to ‘take out’ bad guys without risk to our own forces, the reality is somewhat different. While the UK continues to claim that only one civilian was killed in the thousands of British air and drone strikes in Iraq and Syria, journalists and casualty recording organisations have reported large numbers of civilian casualties from US and UK air strikes.  In addition, as they can be deployed with no or few boots on the ground, making it much easier for political leaders to choose to use armed force.

Armed drones have also enabled a huge increase in so-called ‘targeted killing’ including killing of individuals far from battle zone.  While some argue that it the policy of targeted killing that is problematic, it is hard to deny that the practice has hugely increased with the advent of armed drones. While the US is at the forefront of such operations, the UK too has used its drones to carry out a number of such killings including the killing of a suspected ISIS leader in Syria in December 2022.  Read more →

Future War: The Shape of Things to Come

Chris Cole

A day conference of workshops, discussion and debate on the impact new technologies
will have on future conflicts – and the challenges facing peace activists.

While terrible wars currently rage in Ukraine, Yemen, Ethiopia and elsewhere, preparations for future wars using new technologies is also underway.

New technology can be a spur for great social change, offering tremendous possibilities.  However, innovations in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems and biotechnology are also being used in the military and security realms in ways which will directly and indirectly affect global peace and security. Scrutiny of these developments and building towards peaceful ways to solve political conflicts in ways which do not threaten people and the environment is crucial.

This open public conference organised by Drone Wars and CND  will bring together expert speakers and campaigners to discuss these developments and debate how we can work together to challenge wars today and in the future.

Book your free tickets here 

Supported by Scientists for Global Responsibility, UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Peace News and others.  Read more →

Pandora’s Box: Reflecting on 20 years of drone targeted killing

Chris Cole

Online webinar: 3 November 2022, 7pm (GMT)

November 3rd this year will mark 20 years since a remotely-controlled drone was first used to carry out an extra-judicial killing ‘beyond the battlefield’. While drones had previously been used in warzones, this was the first time a drone had been used to hunt down and kill specific individuals in a country in which the US was not at war.

Since then, an untold number of such operations have taken place across the globe with a significant number of such strikes also causing serious civilian casualties.  Despite huge controversy the United States continues to engage in such killings (even while arguing publicly such actions are ‘limited‘) and the practise has now spread amongst other drone operators including the UK, France and Turkey.

In this important online webinar, Drone Wars has invited a number of experts to mark 20 years of drone targeted killings, to offer some reflections on the human, legal and political cost of the practice and to discuss how we can press the international community to ensure that drone operators abide by international law in this area.

 

Speakers:

  • Agnes Callamard, Secretary General, Amnesty International. Ex Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions (2016-2021)
  • Chris Woods, Founder of Airwars, author of ‘Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars’
  • Bonyan Jamal, Yemen-based lawyer and Legal Support Director with Mwatana for Human Rights, Yemen
  • Kamaran Osman, Human Rights Observer for Community Peacemaker Teams in Iraq Kurdistan

Chair:  Chris Cole, Director, Drone Wars UK

 

Tickets for the webinar are free and can be booked at the Eventbrite page here.

 

See also  ‘Twenty years of drone targeted killing‘

Join us to protest the Cornwall space launch and #KeepSpaceforPeace

Chris Cole

 

Monday 24th October: 7pm, Online briefing meeting – Click here to register 

 

Saturday 29th October, Noon – 2pm: Protest outside Newquay Airport

St Mawgan, Newquay TR8 4RQ
Meet at West Car Park entrance. Public transport details here.  Car parking costs £5 for 2 hours.

The first space launch from UK soil will take place sometime during the first two week of  November with a ‘launch window’, granted by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) opening on  October 29.

Unlike traditional vertical launches, the Launcher One rocket will begin its flight strapped to Virgin Orbit’s ‘Cosmic Girl’ aircraft, a converted Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.  Once the plane reaches 36,000ft the rocket will separate and then ignite, with its engines firing it through the earth’s upper atmosphere till it reaches orbit.

While the launch is being presented as a step forward for the civil space industry – with Virgin’s commercial space ambitions being heavily promoted – the rocket will launch two military satellites (that we know about) alongside commercial ones: Prometheus-2 and Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment (CIRCE).  The mission is being led by RAF Squadron Leader Matthew Stannard.

Minister for Defence Procurement Jeremy Quin told the Defence Space 2022 conference in London earlier this year that Prometheus-2 is a CubeSat intended as a test platform for monitoring radio signals including Global Positioning System (GPS), conducting sophisticated imaging, and paving the way for a more connected space-based communication system. It was built in collaboration with Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), In-Space Missions, and Airbus Defence and Space, with DSTL owning the satellite.  Read more →