Category: UK Drones – UK-US Cooperation

The lawfulness of the drone strike against Sally Jones

aguestcontributor

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 →

US drone operations centre to open in the UK?

Chris Cole

LakenheathIn December 2015 the US announced plans to vastly expand its drone programme including increasing the number of drones to be purchased, doubling the number of drone operators and opening new drone bases.

According to a report in the LA Times, as part of these plans Pentagon officials are considering putting a drone operations centre at a USAF base in the UK – at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. Read more →

Project Crossbow: How a Norfolk RAF base plugs into the drone wars

Chris Cole
Image analysis at TIW, RAF Marham

A map in the USAF’s new ‘RPA Vector Report’ released on April 4 2014 confirms that ‘Project Crossbow’ based at RAF Marham in Norfolk is part of the intelligence backbone guiding the growing use of US and UK drones.

While British Reaper drones based in Afghanistan are being remotely controlled from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, RAF Marham near Kings Lynn is home to Crossbow, a joint UK-US intelligence analysis project.  Operated by the RAF’s Tactical Imagery Intelligence Wing (TIW) but “under the tactical control” of a USAF Squadron, Crossbow receives and feeds information into the US Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS). Read more →

British drone strikes in Afghanistan using borrowed US drones revealed

Chris Cole

reaper-at-nightupdated below

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted that British RAF pilots have borrowed USAF Reaper drones more than 250 times in Afghanistan, launching weapons on at least 39 occasions. However the numbers of strikes by RAF pilots using US Reapers drones is likely to be higher as the MoD  are keeping secret the number of weapons launches by RAF pilots when they have been officially embedded with the USAF. Read more →

More on legal action over US drone strikes

Chris Cole

On both sides of the Atlantic, legal challenges related to US drone use are about to hit the courts.

Tomorrow the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will take the CIA to court for refusing to comply with a Freedom of Information request for copies of documents related to the CIA’s drone strike programme.

The CIA has refused to comply with the FoIA request on the grounds that it is forbidden to talk about the secretive programme.  The ACLU say that the CIA cannot on the one hand refuse documents on the grounds of secrecy while at the very same time regularly give  briefings about its drone strikes.    Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU told the Guardian: Read more →

British parliamentarians condemn US drone strikes as its revealed that RAF pilots controlled US drones over Libya

Chris Cole
NATO airstrike between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah

On the day that 12 British parliamentarians wrote a joint letter to The Times calling on President Obama to stop drone strikes in Pakistan, it has been revealed that RAF pilots flew US drones during the Libyan conflict last year.

The UK has repeatedly insisted, in response to questions about UK involvement in the US drone strikes in Pakistan for example, that it has only every operated drones over Afghanistan.  However in a written answer in the House of Lords, on the last day before recess, UK Defence Minister Lord Astor revealed: Read more →