Tag: drones

MoD AI projects list shows UK is developing technology that allows autonomous drones to kill

Peter Burt and Chris Cole
Omniscient graphic: ‘High Level Decision Making Module’ which integrates sensor information using deep probabilistic algorithms to detect, classify, and identify targets, threats, and their behaviours. Source: Roke

Artificial intelligence (AI) projects that could help to unleash new lethal weapons systems requiring little or no human control are being undertaken by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), according to information released to Drone Wars UK through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The development of lethal autonomous military systems – sometimes described as ‘killer robots’ – is deeply contentious and raises major ethical and human rights issues.  Last year the MoD published its Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy setting out how it intends to adopt AI technology in its activities.

Drone Wars UK asked the MoD to provide it with the list of “over 200 AI-related R&D programmes” which the Strategy document stated the MoD was  working on.  Details of these programmes were not given in the Strategy itself, and MoD evaded questions from Parliamentarians who have asked for more details of its AI activities.

Although the Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy claimed that over 200 programmes  are underway, only 73 are shown on the list provided to Drone Wars.  Release of the names of some projects were refused on defence, security and /or national security grounds.

However, MoD conceded that a list of “over 200” projects was never held when the strategy document was prepared in 2022, explaining that “our assessment of AI-related projects and programmes drew on a data collection exercise that was undertaken in 2019 that identified approximately 140 activities underway across the Front-Line Commands, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) and other organisations”.  The assessment that there were at least 200 programmes in total “was based on our understanding of the totality of activity underway across the department at the time”.

The list released includes programmes for all three armed forces, including a number of projects related to intelligence analysis systems and to drone swarms, as well as  more mundane  ‘back office’ projects.  It covers major multi-billion pound projects stretching over several decades, such as the Future Combat Air System (which includes the proposed new Tempest aircraft), new spy satellites, uncrewed submarines, and applications for using AI in everyday tasks such as predictive equipment maintenance, a repository of research reports, and a ‘virtual agent’ for administration.

However, the core of the list is a scheme to advance the development of AI-powered autonomous systems for use on the battlefield.  Many of these are based around the use of drones as a platform – usually aerial systems, but also maritime drones and autonomous ground vehicles.  A number of the projects on the list relate to the computerised identification of military targets by analysis of data from video feeds, satellite imagery, radar, and other sources.  Using artificial intelligence / machine learning for target identification is an important step towards the  development of autonomous weapon systems – ‘killer robots’ – which are able to operate without human control.  Even when they are under nominal human control, computer-directed weapons pose a high risk of civilian casualties for a number of reasons including the rapid speed at which they operate and difficulties in understanding the often un-transparent ways in which they make decisions.

The government claims it “does not possess fully autonomous weapons and has no intention of developing them”. However, the UK has consistently declined to support proposals put forward at the United Nations to ban them.

Among the initiatives on the list are the following projects.  All of them are focused on developing technologies that have potential for use in autonomous weapon systems.  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.

Ukraine drones may grab all the headlines, but armed drones are enabling lethal force around the globe

Chris Cole
President Zelensky stand with a ‘suicide drone’ in Kyiv, Oct 2022

As we reach the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you could be forgiven for thinking that the on-going conflict in eastern Europe has become the epicentre of the use of drones.

However, while the use of UAVs by Ukrainian and Russian forces has been very significant, it is important to be aware that there are real and important differences between the use of mainly small drone systems by parties in that conflict, and the use of large armed drones by other states such as the US, UK, Israel and Turkey even since the beginning of 2023.

Drones use in the Ukraine war

Over the past year, hardly a report on the war has failed to mention Ukraine’s use of surveillance drones to zero in Ukrainian artillery and rocket attacks on Russian forces or more recently, Russia’s use of Iranian  so called ‘suicide drones’ to attack Ukrainian targets.

Early on in the conflict, Ukraine deployed a number of larger armed Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones.  Media reports at the time lauded the use of these as a game-changer and some even went so far as to suggest that use of armed drones would be strategically significant in the conflict.  However it quickly became apparent that the Bayraktar drones were very vulnerable to air-to-ground missiles as many were shot-down or crashed (see our crash database) and they quickly disappeared from the battlefield.  Some suggest that a few Bayraktars remain hidden and are being used covertly or kept for future operations but it is impossible to verify such claims.

Russia has at least one type of the larger armed medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) drone in its inventory – the Inokhodets or Orion (not to be confused with the much smaller and ubiquitous surveillance drone, the Orlan).  However, like the Bayraktar, the armed drone seems to have disappeared from the skies after one was shot down in April 2022.

Both sides have also occasionally used very old, soviet-era unmanned aircraft such as the Tupolev Strizh or Reys as missiles.

More recently, Russia has also used systems acquired from Iran. These have mainly been the Shahed 131/136 which are  technically loitering munitions that can only be used once, and have gained the moniker of ‘suicide drones’ in the press.  Alongside Russia is known to have acquired Iranian Mohajer-6 armed drones (one was filmed being fished out of the Black Sea after it was shot down/crashed) and, according to US sources, the Shahed 191 /129 armed UAVS, but these have not been seen in use.

Alongside the use of loitering munitions, both sides have primarily used small, short range drones for reconnaissance and  surveillance as well as targeting of artillery and rocket systems. While the use of drones in this way has been very significant – indeed perhaps the most significant use of drones for this purpose in any conflict until now – it is very different to how some states are using armed drones elsewhere.

Armed drone attacks outside of Ukraine virtually ignored

Even since the beginning of 2023, let alone the start of the Ukraine war, there has been significant use of armed drones by the states including the US, Israel and Turkey to conduct unlawful attacks.  These strikes, however, only get a fraction of the amount of media attention that drone use in Ukraine has, and are virtually ignored by the international community.  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‘

A deadly legacy: 20 years of drone targeted killing

A deadly legacy: 20 years of drone targeted killing

Chris Cole

On the 3rd November 2002,  a US Predator drone targeted and killed Qa’id Salim Sinan al-Harithi, a Yemeni member of al-Qaeda who the CIA believed responsible for the attack on the USS Cole in which 17 US sailors were killed. While drones had previously been used in warzones, this was the first time the technology had been used to hunt down and kill a specific individual in a country in which the US was not at war – ‘beyond the battlefield’ as it has become euphemistically known. Since then, numerous US targeted killings have taken place in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, while other states who have acquired the technology – including the UK – have also carried out such strikes.

At first, the notion of remotely targeting and killing suspects outside of the battlefield and without due process was shocking to legal experts, politicians and the press.  In an armed conflict where international humanitarian law (the Laws of War) apply, such strikes can be lawful.  However, outside of the battlefield, where killing of suspects is only accepted in order to prevent imminent loss of life, such killings are almost certainly unlawful. Indeed in early reporting on the first such attack 20 years ago, journalists noted that the US State Department has condemned targeted killing of suspects by Israel (see article below).

New York Times, 6 November, 2002. Click to see original.

However, the US argued – and continues to argue today – that its targeted killings are lawful.  It has put forward a number of arguments over the years which are seriously questioned by other states and international law experts.  These include  the notion that whenever and wherever that US undertakes military action international humanitarian law applies; that because states where the US engages in such strikes are ‘unable or unwilling’ to apprehend suspects its lethal actions are lawful; and that there should be greater ‘flexibility’ in interpreting the notion of  ‘imminence’ in relation to last resort.

Here are a small sample of drone targeted killing operations undertaken by the US and others.

November 3, 2002, US drone strike on a vehicle in Marib province, Yemen. 
  • Target: Qa’id Salim Sinan al-Harithi

The first drone targeted killing saw a CIA Predator drone operating out of Djibouti launch two missiles at a vehicle travelling through the desert in Marib province, Yemen. The drone’s target was ostensibly al-Qaeda leader Qa’id Salim Sinan al-Harithi, said by the US to be behind the lethal attack on the USS Cole two years previously.  However, also in the vehicle was  US citizen Kemal Darwish and four other men, all believed to be members of al-Qaeda.  As Chris Woods wrote in 2012, “The way had been cleared for the killings months earlier, when President Bush lifted a 25-year ban on US assassinations just after 9/11. [Bush] wrote that ‘George Tenet proposed that I grant broader authority for covert actions, including permission for the CIA to kill or capture al Qaeda operatives without asking for my sign-off each time. I decided to grant the request.’”

Online webinar: Pandora’s box: 20 years of drone targeted killing

Drone Wars has invited a number of experts to mark 20 years of drone targeted killings by offering 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.

  • 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 this online webinar are free and can be booked at the Eventbrite page here.

Read more →