In 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,… Read More ›
Over the past 3 months US, UK and other forces have carried out airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria using manned aircraft and drones. There is little public available information as yet about the impact of these strikes on the… Read More ›
US drone strikes resumed this week in Pakistan with the first strike taking place on Wednesday evening near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. This was quickly followed by a second strike early Thursday morning, although as the Bureau… Read More ›
As the December 2014 Afghan drawdown deadline approaches the UK government has accepted that it can’t bring its fleet of ten armed Reapers back to the UK except packed up in boxes. Due to safely concerns Reaper drones will not… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
Over the past decade the use of armed drones has dramatically increased and spread with drone strikes reported to have taken place in up to ten countries. Although the US use of drones in Pakistan and Yemen has been most controversial and… Read More ›
Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and countering terrorism has issued his final report into the impact of drone strikes on civilians. Briefly, as I have only just seen it, the report looks at recent civilian casualty rates… Read More ›
The present and future use of armed drones in Afghanistan came under the spotlight this week, with details of one drone strike in which a 2 year-old child was killed being revealed. Negotiations continue between Afghanistan and the US over a… Read More ›
Four important reports relating to the use of armed drones have been published over the past ten day. Two official reports by UN Special Rapporteurs examine the legal issues surrounding the use of armed drones. These were closely followed by a… Read More ›
It is very rare to get any details of civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan and even rarer to have information about civilian casualties from drone strikes in Afghanistan. Today the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released… Read More ›
On Thursday (23 Oct) President Obama gave a much-trailed speech on counterterrorism, large parts of which focused on the US use of drones. At the same time a ‘fact sheet’ on US policy on the use of force outside declared… Read More ›
This week the New York Times reported that the US is planning to establish a new base for its drones in north-west Africa. While the base is to be used initially to fly unarmed surveillance drones, according to the article the… Read More ›
New information about the number of US drone strikes in Afghanistan has been revealed by DangerRoom, the national security blog at Wired.com. According to official US figures supplied to the website there have been a total of 1,160 US drone… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
