On 13 May, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced it is forming a second RAF drones squadron to be based at RAF Waddington, Lincs. RAF pilots will then control the UK’s armed Reaper drones that fly in Afghanistan from Waddington rather than the Creech US air force (USAF) base in Nevada. Defence secretary, Liam Fox noted that this followed the doubling of the UK’s Reaper capability to ten aircraft, an increased investment of £135m in drone warfare.
A recent article by two senior MoD…
At the end of March, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) published a 100-page document to “inform and prompt wider debate” on the use of military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones. The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems examines technological and scientific issues related to current and future use of armed and unarmed drones and also sets out, for the first time, what the MoD sees as the legal, moral and ethical issues that arise from using such systems. The document…
Aberystwyth Peace and Justice Network got the election ball rolling in March, organising a peace and justice hustings in the Morlan Centre.
Prospective parliamentary candidates Mark Williams (Lib Dem), Penri James (Plaid Cymru), Richard Boudier (Labour) and Luke Evetts (Conservative) turned up for a grilling from the audience. Typically, the Labour and Conservative candidates, who stand no chance of winning the seat, were politically-inexperienced young men.
The…
The MoD Watchkeeper drone programme is beginning trials at ParcAberporth using the Israeli-built Hermes 450 UAV (“Unmanned Arial Vehicle”). Watchkeeper is not about agricultural and environmental monitoring, oceanographic and atmospheric data collection or grassland management, it is about “intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition”.
Which, in plain English, means locating people and killing them.
So I’m not going to waste your time moaning…
