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Drone Wars
Latest: Downing the Drones at DSEi
Young activists from FoRE, the SPEAK Network, Student Christian
Movement and many others joined together yesterday (13 September) to
nonviolently protest against the UK's use of armed drones. After
assembling outside the Houses of Parliament for the Stop the Arms Fair
coalition's media stunt and lobby of MPs, over 30 activists travelled
to Liverpool Street to protest outside Reaper drone manufacturer
General Atomics' new London office. Watch the action. Watch why we took the action.
Coming up: In preparation for a Week of Action on Drones (01 to 08 October), we have worked with Pax Christi and the Drone Campaign Network (DCN) to provide a Briefing.
"The 'PlayStation mentality' that surrounds drone killings is discomfiting. Young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely using joysticks. Far removed from the human consequences of their actions, how will this generation of fighters value the right to life?"
Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur and Hina Shamsi, Senior Advisor at New York University
What
was once the stuff of science fiction - remote controlled drones
dropping bombs onto targets thousands of miles away - is now taking
place on an almost daily basis. Indeed it seems to have become the
preferred method of attack by US and British forces. However one aspect
of warfare has not changed. According to the New America Foundation,
a US based think tank, high numbers of civilians are regularly being
killed in drone strikes. In addition, the use of armed drones to target
specific individuals could amount to summary or arbitrary
execution. The indiscriminate nature of drone attacks is breeding
anger and resentment amongst the civilian populations where attacks are
taking place. Perhaps most crucially, the fact that drones enable
bombing raids without endangering the pilot’s lives is driving a new,
robotic arms race founded on the misguided belief that a new
super-weapon will resolve conflict in human relationships.
Take Action
Write to your MP. We have drafted a letter for you to use as a template in writing to your local MP. You can do this as a posted letter, or you can do it by email - and there are instructions for that on the template.
Send a campaign postcard to Prime Minister David Cameron
calling for public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny of armed
drones. To order postcards, please contact us.
You can subscribe to our campaign items via Wordpress or FeedBurner. (Please note this is just the campaign items. We don't publish our other news items in RSS.)
Campaign Background
Unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as 
drones, are small
remotely-piloted aircraft controlled from the ground or autonomously
following a pre-programmed mission. While there are literally dozens of
different types of drones, they fall into two basic categories: those
that are used purely for surveillance and intelligence purposes and
those that are also armed with missiles and bombs and can be used for
attack. While armed drones were first used in the Balkans war, their
use has escalated massively in Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently in
the undeclared war in Pakistan.
Britain began using armed UAV’s in Afghanistan in Oct 2007 after purchasing three Reapers from General Atomics in 2007 at a cost of £6m each. On Dec 7th 2010 the Prime Minister David Cameron announced that that £135m had been approved to double UK Reaper capability, which among other commitments includes purchasing five new Reaper drones and four ground control units from the US government.
While the British and US Reaper and Predator UAVs are in physically in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are actually operated via satellite communication from Nellis and Creech USAF base just outside Las Vegas in Nevada. Ground support troops launch the UAVs from Kandahar airbase and then, once they have reached several thousand feet, control of the drones is handed over to a crew of three operators sitting in front of video screens in specially designed trailers in the Nevada desert. One person ‘flies’ the drone, another controls and monitors the cameras and sensors, whilst a third person is in contact with the “customers”, ground troops and commanders in the war zone.
Drones are the latest in a long line of new weapons used in the mistaken belief that they will provide a clean and tidy solution to a conflict – time and again history has proved that this is a myth. |
FoRE calls on the Government to make public the number of casualties resulting from British drone attacks and we urge that there is a serious, informed and open discussion about the use of armed drones by British forces in the very near future. We believe that there should be a ban on the use of armed unmanned drones. FoRE advocates nonviolent conflict transformation in order to bring about genuine and lasting peace. Drones are the latest in a long line of new weapons used in the mistaken belief that they will provide a clean and tidy solution to a conflict – time and again history has proved that this is a myth. |
FoR is developing information and campaigning resources on the use of armed drones.
If you would like to be notified when new resources are ready or informed about campaign events please contact dronecampaign@for.org.uk
