Drones & autonomous weapons

1 June 2011News

On 23 April, thousands of Pakistanis, “led” by ex-cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan blocked the Khyber pass, the route for 70% of supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The sit-down protest, which closed the route for two days, was against US drone strikes in north-west Pakistan, and was organised by Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf party, with the support of other opposition and Islamist groups as well as tribal elders. It came a day after two drones were reported to have killed 25 people, including women and children in the North Waziristan tribal region.

Khan has demanded that drone strikes end by June, threatening a permanent closure of the Khyber pass and…

1 May 2011News

PN examines a new MoD report on the growing use of armed drones

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…

3 May 2010News

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…

1 May 2010News

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…