Tag: Reaper

US spy arrest halts drone strikes in Pakistan as Al-Qaeda steal Predator drone

Chris Cole
Activist group 'Pasban Pakistan' protest against American diplomatic Raymond Davis at the Karachi Press Club in Pakistan. Davis, is under investigation for the double murder of two Pakistani motorcyclists in Karachi, Pakistan.

In Pakistan drone strikes seem to have ceased since 23rd January. While there have been pauses in drone strikes in Pakistan before, there has been speculation that this latest pause is connected to diplomatic efforts to secure the release of Raymond Davis a US citizen who shot and killed two Pakistan men in disputed circumstances. It has been alleged that Davis is a US spy – the US say that he is a member of the US Embassy staff and has diplomatic immunity. For background to the case see this Washington Post piece.

Meanwhile AFP has reported the crash of a Predator drone in Yemen this week in which the wreckage, initially collected by the police, was then hijacked and taken away by Al-Qaeda gunman. (Rather strangely StrategyPage.com are recommending that AQAP sell the drone to the Chinese.)  Yemen authorities later denied that a Predator had crashed.  The Yemen Times rather cleverly reported both the crash and the denial and then reminded its readers that last year a Wikileaks cable revealed that Yemen had deliberately covered up the crash of a US Scan Eagle drone in Yemen.

In the UK, the Highlands and Islands Enterprise agency has proposed that the Hebrides be used as a place for testing unmanned drones. While the agency is headlining the fact that such drones would be used for civilian use, the proposal has presented to Peter Luff, UK defence minister and the testing range is currently being run by arm giant QinetiQ

Proliferation and protests

Chris Cole

Apologies for the recent silence but I was, as they say, unavoidably detained.

Proliferation of drones continues apace with Israel’s recent delivery 12 drones to Russia in a $400m deal and Brazil ordering further Hermes 450 drones.   Meanwhile the USAF continues to increase its UAV capability by ordering a further 24 Reaper drones from General Atomics as Israel and India have inaugurated new drone squadrons.

On the technological development side, Gorgon Stare, the new drone surveillance capability, has been dammed in an internal draft USAF report as “not operationally effective” and “not operationally suitable.”  Danger Room however reports an ‘updated’ report suggesting that ‘fixes are in place”.  

The new X-47B US Navy stealth bomber drone had its first flight this week.  The X-47B is one of the new autonomous drones that is not remotely piloted, but rather follows a pre-programmed mission.

There have been large protests against US drone strikes in Pakistan with some reports of thousands attending protest marches.   In the US, 14 protestors who trespassed at Creech AFB to protest drone strikes were found guilty and sentenced to time served.  John Dear, one of the 14, reports here on testimony from the court.

Finally should mention Drone Wars UK  letter published in Guardian on call for inquiry into use of British drones.

UK Drones Firing Thermobaric Weapons in Afghanistan?

Chris Cole

The UK MOD has this week refused to answer a parliamentary question on whether UK drones in Afghanistan are firing thermobaric weapons. 

Oxford East MP  Andrew Smith enquired whether any of the 84 ‘Hellfire AGM114’ missiles that Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox reported had been fired by British Reaper drones had been Hellfire AGM 114N’, the thermobaric version.   MoD Minister Andrew Robathan refused to answer saying that the information “would, or would be likely to, prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of our armed forces”.

Thermobaric weapons, sometimes called ‘vacuum’ weapons have been condemned  human rights group and, as the Times reported in 2008 , “the weapons are so controversial that MoD weapons and legal experts spent 18 months debating whether British troops could use them without breaking international law.”  The ‘debate’ came to an end when a ‘Yes Minister’ solution was offered – they “redefined” the weapon as an ‘enhanced blast missile’.

The Guardian reported in May 2009 that he MoD had admitted that British Apache helicopters had fired 40  Hellfire 114N ‘enhanced blast weapons’ in Afghanistan so why is the MoD being so secretive about drones firing theses weapons?   

The BBC described thermobaric weapons in 2002,

“As the name implies, it works on a combination of heat and pressure applying lessons that have been widely learnt from coal mine explosions or other industrial accidents. These are often created by clouds of gas or fine particles erupting into flame.

The thermobaric weapon reproduces this situation to order, distributing a very fine cloud of explosive material throughout the target which is then ignited.  The heat and pressure effects are formidable – soldiers caught in the blast could have the air sucked from their bodies and even their internal organs catastrophically destroyed.

Thermobaric weapons are closely related to so-called fuel-air explosives – where the explosive cloud is provided by a volatile gas or liquid.”  

According to Globalsecurity.org the thermobaric version of Hellfire missiles was developed “to make the Hellfire more suitable for military operations in urban terrain. The number one requirement was that the new warhead increase the probability of personnel lethality or incapacitation.”

Noah Shachtman of Wired.com says  “It is among the most horrific weapons in any army’s collection: the thermobaric bomb, a fearsome explosive that sets fire to the air above its target, then sucks the oxygen out of anyone unfortunate enough to have lived through the initial blast.”

More details about development and use of thermobaric (sorry, ‘enhanced blast’) weapons can be found here. 

(With thanks to Jo)

UK Drones to Double as US Court Delivers “Dangerous” Drone Decision

Chris Cole

During a visit to Afghanistan this week, David Cameron pledged to double the number of armed Reaper drones in service with British forces at a cost of £135m. While this seemed to be news to many,  we reported that fact over a monthly ago.  (Revealed: details of British drone attacks & plans to purchase more Reapers – sorry we have to blow our trumpet sometimes!)  The MOD later said that these drones, to be in service by 2013, would enable three British Reapers to be airborne at the same time.

While the commitment to purchasing and developing new drones has the British military industry salivating they are also peeved that money is going to US companies, hence following written exchange from Hansard:

Mark Pritchard: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will have discussions with the Defence Manufacturers Association for the purposes of ensuring that future unmanned aerial vehicles are procured from UK manufacturers. [21701]

Nick Harvey: Our primary objective is to provide our armed forces with the equipment and support they need, at the right time, and at a cost that represents value for taxpayers’ money. We continue to believe the best approach to delivering value for money is through purchasing goods and services from the global market, in which UK companies compete, including off-the-shelf where appropriate. The Ministry of Defence has a number of future unmanned aerial vehicle requirements at different stages of development. MOD regularly has discussions about its future requirements with interested companies, trade bodies and the National Defence Industries Council.

Meanwhile in the US, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s legal suit on behalf of the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a Yemeni-born US citizen who is on a kill-or-capture list of terrorists, has been dismissed.   The targeting and execution by armed drone of a number of terrorist suspects has been questioned by many including the UN Special R on Extra Judicial Killing.

In a surprising decision,  U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said that the court “ lacked the jurisdiction to review the targeting of a U.S. citizen abroad for death”.

“This Court recognizes the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion – that there are circumstances in which the Executive’s unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is . . . judicially unreviewable. But this case squarely presents such a circumstance.”

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, said it would be “a profound mistake” to allow the government “unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere.  It would be difficult to conceive of a proposition more inconsistent with the Constitution or more dangerous to American liberty.”  

In response to the decision Human Rights Watch have written to President Obama asking him “to clarify [the] legal rationale for targeted killings, including the use of Unmanned Combat Aircraft Systems (drones), and the procedural safeguards it is taking to minimize harm to civilians”.

Death TV: Overwhelmed and bored analysts recommending drone strikes

Chris Cole

The Washington Post reported this week that vast amount of video footage from drones are overwhelming analysts. 

According to Marine Corps General James Cartwright, Vice Chair of the Military Joint Chiefs of Staff, the video is “boring intelligence analysts to tears.”

Forced to watch what Gen. Cartwright called “Death TV,” bleary-eyed analysts at ground stations and other outposts spend hours wading through useless data until they spot signs of a target and recommend that the drone fire its missile.

Cartwright wants (yes, you’ve guessed it) more autonomy and technology to solve the problem and companies are lining up to provide the technology to process the video feed.  “Within three years, it will be technically feasible to run these sophisticated algorithms and extract relevant essence data from the content” according to John Delay of Harris Corp which has, according to the article, several defense contracts, but also has also made transmitters for broadcast television since 1969. (Death TV indeed!)

Unfortunately for the analysts, and without doubt Afghans too, Aviation Week says that Gorgon Stare will enter service aboard US Reaper drones in Afghanistan  next month   Gorgon Stare is a new surveillance capability that allows a wide area of ground to be videoed  while also enabling individuals to be tracked within that wide area. As Aviation Week explains:

‘The five EO cameras each shoot two 16-megapixel frames/sec., which are stitched together by the computer to create an 80-megapixel image…. The result is a system that offers a “many orders of magnitude” leap beyond the “soda straw” view provided by the single EO/IR camera carried by an MQ-1 Predator or a conventional Reaper UAV…. The video taken by Gorgon Stare’s cameras can be “chipped out” into 10 individual views and streamed to that many recipients or more… At the same time, Gorgon Stare will process the images from all its cameras in flight, quilting them into a mosaic for a single wide-area view.’

Four sets of Gorgons will enter service next month as part of the initial deployment.  A further developed version, involving BAE Systems’ ARGUS system [see ‘our Outstaring the Gorgon: BAE, Drones and ARGUS] is already being developed and tested.

Meanwhile the US Army has announced plans to conduct the largest ever demonstration of interoperability between manned and unmanned systems next year with the aim of proving that MUSIC (Manned Unmanned Systems Integration Concept) can work. As previously mentioned there is enormous pressure on political and civil authorities to allow unmanned aerial vehicles to operate within civil airspace and MUSIC is another step in that direction.   However Drone Wars UK can’t help but point out, as yet another drone crashes, that unmanned systems continue to regularly fall out of the sky.

Revealed: details of British drone attacks & plans to purchase more Reapers

Chris Cole
Answering Questions: Dr Liam Fox

Catching up on Hansard, have just noticed that last week Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox revealed new details  about British Drone attacks in Afghanistan in response to written question from SNP MP Angus Robertson:

26 Oct 2010 : Column 173W

Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many missions the MQ-9 Reaper has flown in Afghanistan since May 2008; and how many of those missions involved the release of each type of weapon. [18015]

Dr Fox: The primary role of the UK Reaper Remotely Piloted Air System is Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Since October 2007, it has flown 1,344 sorties and since May 2008 employed 36 laser guided bombs and 84 Hellfire missiles in support of UK and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

A couple of days later, in response to a question from former Labour Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth,  MoD Procurement Minister Peter Luff revealed that the UK plans to purchase five more Reaper drones from the US  (28 Oct 2010 : Column 421W)

Mr Ainsworth: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) how many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) he expects to order in the Spending Review period; and by what date he expects such vehicles to be in service; [20259]

(2) how many new unmanned aerial vehicles he expects to order; and what timescale he has set for their entry into service. [20418]

Peter Luff: The Ministry of Defence has in recent weeks placed an order for a further 100 Mini Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) Desert Hawk III Air Vehicles to sustain the capability which has been supporting our troops in theatre since 2007. These are expected to be delivered in 2011-12. Additionally, we plan to order and receive up to five additional Reaper remotely piloted aircraft during the Spending Review period. Consideration of our requirement for future persistent armed surface surveillance is in its early stages. A remotely piloted system is one of the potential options to deliver this capability.

Maybe we are entering a new period of government openness on the use of drones – or perhaps its just a co-incidence that the release of information came in the same week… but it is curious…..