Tag: FoI

UK MoD release presentations on Reaper and Watchkeeper drones to Drone Wars UK under FoI

Chris Cole

Last month the UK MoD’s Air Warfare Centre held a symposium on drones at the Shrivenham Defence Academy. While the overall theme of the symposium was how drones could help ‘UK Resilience Operations’, attendees were also given updates by senior military officials on the progress of the UK’s  major drone programmes: Reaper and Watchkeeper (see our story here from last month).  We applied to the MoD for copies of the presentations under Freedom of Information (FoI) Act and received them yesterday.   To view the presentations simply click on the images.

MoD presentation on Reaper - click to view

The briefing on the Reaper drone, entitled ‘RAF Reaper MALE RPAS  [‘Medium Altitude Long Endurance Remotely Piloted Air System] capability/Lessons’ covers the armed capability of Reaper; the ‘Reaper Roadmap’ as well as lessons identified from operations.  Although the civil use of drones is refered to, there is little no information on this in presentation.

Slide eight of the presentation shows the ‘Reaper Roadmap.  The Reapers currently on operation and those planned to come into service in 2012/13 have an ‘out service date’ of 2015 and there is a three year gap before the planned new drone capability ‘Scavenger’ will be available in 2018.  This ‘gap’ is highlighted in the roadmap and may mean that additional Reapers will be procured.

Most interesting in the presentation are the nine slides covering ‘lessons identified’ covering operations, impact on personnel, safety, training and procurement.  While the presentation only gives the headlines with the detail no doubt covered in the accompanying talk by Wing Commander Gary Coleman, from the presentation we learn that:

  • From mid-2012 there will be 44 Reaper crews operating UK Reapers with three Reapers constantly flying 24/7
  • There have now been over 190 drone strikes in Afghanistan by British Reaper crews
  • Hellfire missiles are three times more likely to be uses than the 500lb bomb
  • If “lower yield weapons” had been available more strikes would have been undertaken
  • Reaper “mishaps” (i.e. crashes) happen approximately every 10,000 hours of flying
  • There are ‘Fatigue and Psychological stressors’ on personnel operating Reaper

The briefing on Watchkeeper  entitled ‘Watchkeeper and Land Forces Operational UAS’ is much more technical and focuses on how Watchkeeper will fit in with other smaller drones such as the Desert Hawk and T-Hawk.

MoD presentation on Watchkeeper - click to view

From the presentation it appears that the Watchkeeper in-service date has slipped again (or as the briefing  tactfully puts it, the ‘schedule re-programmed to meet current operational requirements’. Watchkeepers will now  be deployed to Afghanistan sometime during the first quarter of 2012.  While early flight testing of  Watchkeeper took place in Israel, there have now been 230 flight of Watchkeeper in the UK, with the longest test flight being 14 hours.

Drone industry gets updates on Reaper and Watchkeeper operations

Chris Cole

On 8 September, the UK MoD’s Air Warfare Centre held what is apparently an annual symposium on drones at the Shrivenham Defence Academy. While the overall theme of the symposium was how drones could help ‘UK Resilience Operations’, attendees were also given updates by senior military officials on the progress of the UK’s  major drone programmes: Reaper and Watchkeeper.

We have asked the MoD for a full copy of the updates under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) and will post them here when (if!) our request is accepted.  Meanwhile we will have to reply on the reports of the briefings according to an article in Shephard News.   According to the article Wing Commander Gary Coleman briefed delegates about the Reaper:

The RAF’s fleet of MQ-9 Reapers purchased under a UOR for operations in Afghanistan has now completed 25,000 flight hours. The RAF’s Reaper community is now doubling in size to 10 aircraft and a second squadron – XIII Sqn – is being reformed onto the Reaper to begin ground control station operations from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. With a fleet of 10 aircraft and 44 crews, the RAF will be able to provide three ‘combat air patrols’ or CAPs over Afghanistan 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Wing Commander Gary Coleman, HQ 2 Group ISTAR (Land), told delegates that crew retention had been an issue as aircrew were being based at Creech AFB outside Las Vegas for three years away from family and friends in the UK, flying operational missions and then returning home to family.

He also pointed out that the time differences between Afghanistan and Creech meant that while the aircraft was flying in daylight over Afghanistan, the crews at Creech would be working night shifts flying it. Coleman hopes that the time differences will be addressed when flying begins from Waddington which is just four hours behind Kabul time.

He did point out that the Reaper community had enjoyed an influx of personnel from the Nimrod fleet, which was taken out of service in May 2010.   An experimental training programme, Project Daedalus, trained a group of four non-aircrew including two air traffic controllers, a fighter controller and a policeman in the United States to fly the MQ-1 Predator. The four were amongst the top-rated in their class beating pilots with fast jet experience. There is now some consideration in training the four up to fly the MQ-9.

Shephard News also reported  on the update by Major Matt Moore of the Watchkeeper Implementation Team.  According to the article Moore reported that the British Army’s new Watchkeeper UAS has flown its longest flight yet during a test flight from west Wales.

A test flight in the beginning of September from the Parc Aberporth flight test centre saw the Watchkeeper fly for 14 hours and out to a range of 115 km, making the sortie the longest both in terms of range and endurance…

‘We launched the air vehicle at dawn and we recovered it at dusk as we are currently limited to testing in daylight hours only, but we still had another four hours of fuel in the tank.’

Watchkeeper has now completed some 320 hours of flight testing over 230 flights and Moore said the programme is still on track to be fielded in Afghanistan in the first quarter of 2012.

In preparation, a number of modifications have been made to get the aircraft ready for operation in Afghanistan including the addition of covert lighting as well as additional IT systems in the ground control station to make it more compatible with systems being used in theatre.

Personnel began training for Watchkeeper in May. As well as flight testing at Aberporth, the Royal Artillery will also conduct training flights from MoD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire from where the aircraft will be flown in airspace specially allotted for UAV flying around and to the south of the Salisbury Plain Training Area. Royal Artillery crews will also be able to use the grass airstrip at Upavon for rough field or austere flight operations with the system.

Moore also said his team was exploring the potential of partnering the Watchkeeper with the Army Air Corps Apache attack helicopter, so that the Watchkeeper could cue or send the Apache imagery of potential targets.

As well as this Shivenham confernce and the ASTRAEA conference reported below, the DSEI arms fair has generated a lot of news about drones, whihc we will cover in the next post.

MoD drone FoI refusal upheld

Chris Cole

The Information Commissioner has recently upheld the MoD’s refusal to release details of the circumstances of British drone strikes in response to my November 2009 Freedom of Information  request.  The ruling is here.

In summary,  the MoD’s argument is that they cannot release the information that they hold on drone strikes as it contains details that would be useful to the enemy .  My argument is that the level of details in the information that the MoD holds could be reduced by redaction or by summarising that information,  so that it falls below the threshold of being ‘useful to the enemy’ but can satisfy the weighty public interest in the use of armed drones in Afghanistan.  The MoD’s position, which the information commissioner implicitly upholds, seems to be that ether all of the information should be released or none.   

We will continue to pursue information on the use of armed drones by the MoD.