Britain has been stockpiling battlefield “drone” aircraft for more than 10 years at a cost to the taxpayer of £1,200 million. Disclosure of the secret air force came as Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed plans to double the active UK drone fleet in an escalation of the offensive against the so-called Islamic State.
He intends to buy 20 new drones, known as Protectors, which are able to stay airborne for much longer than the current fleet of unmanned Reaper aircraft, and which are judged more effective in Syria.
It follows a landmark Ministry of Defence order for 54 battlefield drone commissioned under the last Labour Government as an “affordable solution” to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
John Reid, Defence Secretary at the time, approved a budget of £800 million and said that Britain’s largest ever order for drones – in this case the French designed Watchkeeper – would be the “key to battlefield surveillance of the future”.
Yet while only three of the planes were ever used, the cost to the taxpayer while they remained boxed in storage rose by another £400 million. After the 2015 election, all references to the existence of the fleet officially disappeared.
The latest exposure of the deal by the independent Bureau of Investigative Journalism comes just three months after Mr Cameron ordered military chiefs to review how drones might be used to defeat IS.
Now, as the international situation in Syria reaches crisis point, he has confirmed a greater role for the aircraft under British control. The new drones will make significantly less noise, allowing them to operate near militant strongholds, and have high-definition cameras and infrared video used to target the location of jihadists under cover of buildings.
The Prime Minister did not rule out future drone strikes targeting British jihadist militants fighting for IS, such as Jihadi John, who is responsible for beheading a number of British hostages.
He said: “We have at the moment a drone fleet of 10 Reapers and what we are going to be doing is actually replacing that with twice as many with a new updated piece of equipment – called Protector – which will be more than doubling of our fleet to keep us safe and to give us the intelligence and information and potentially give us the capacity to hit people who are potentially planning to hit us.”
He said he supports extending airstrikes into Syria, but would not push ahead with a vote until he has a consensus in Parliament. “I think it’s the right thing to do. I think it may well become possible, but you know we will continue doing what we’re doing until it does”, Mr Cameron said, when asked if he believed he could obtain the consensus needed in order to carry out military action.
The Prime Minister also announced unspecified extra funding to support British special forces units. “One of the biggest threats we have to respond to is that terrorist threat and that means a lot of things in terms of obviously domestic security and our intelligence services but it also means making sure that we have the military equipment and resources we need”, he added.
Last month, the UK announced it had killed two British IS members in a drone strike in Syria, the first such strike the Government has acknowledged.
Mr Cameron also said Britain will take stern measures, including removing passports, to prevent extremists from traveling to Syria and then returning to Britain.
“What we try to do is stop people travelling to these regions, confiscate their passports, work with local government to have them arrested or detained. We try and take every step we can but at the end of the day we have to keep the British people safe from terrorist threats”, he said.
Latest official figures show that the total number of drone strikes under President Barack Obama in Pakistan, Somalia and Lebanon has passed 490,with scores of civilian casualties.
Picture from Ministry of Defence
