ktlight
16th July 2011, 09:12
FYI:
The UK Royal Air Force's (RAF) commanders feel legally comfortable to kill civilians in Afghanistan using drone attacks , according to media reports.
The RAF has deployed one of its units called '39 Squadron' in Creech air force base near Las Vegas to commission unmanned drone attacks inside Afghanistan.
The drones were deployed to help occupation forces in Afghanistan defeat insurgency but they are killing a dozen civilians on a daily basis, yet Royal Air Force commanders say, "we are comfortable legally with what we are doing."
The RAF's elite unit was formed hastily in 2007 and stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada, to use technology to seek, track and attack Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away.
As recently as last week, on July 6, the UK military confirmed that one of its Reaper drones has mistakenly killed four Afghan civilians and injured two others.
The military blamed the killing of civilians on intelligence failure, refusing to acknowledge that one cannot claim to be conducting this high precision bombing from other side of the globe without inflicting casualties on the innocent.
While officials said the deaths are deeply regrettable, there was little prospect the use of the aircraft will be curtailed.
In just four years, the five Reapers at Creech have become an essential part of Britain's 21st-century weaponry, and there are already plans to buy a new fleet of a successor aircraft for use in the UK.
By 2030, almost a third of the RAF could be made up of remotely controlled planes - a remarkable increase and testament to the faith that commanders have in them.
But ethical issues will not go away, and senior members of the military establishment admit being troubled by their deployment.
Sir Brian Burridge, a former air chief marshal, once described the use of remote-controlled aircraft as a "virtueless war".
And the way they have been used in Pakistan by the Americans has been of particular concern, raising fears that the CIA is essentially running a targeted assassination programme, which is not as targeted as the agency would have you believe.
The Pakistanis have complained that US strikes killed almost 700 civilians between 2006 and 2009 in their efforts to kill 14 al-Qaida insurgents.
The American author James Bamford, a respected security expert who has written extensively about the US intelligence agencies, believes drones are being used indiscriminately by the Americans, and that many innocent people, including women and children, have been killed by them.
Numerous reported studies over the last three years suggest he is right.
According to the New America Foundation thinktank, one in four of those killed by US drones since 2004 was an innocent civilian. The Brookings Institute says the ratio is higher.
At the CIA, Bamford said, they call the use of drones the age of the "kill chain".
"Death warrants for targets are signed by mid-level bureaucrats, and soccer moms and dads double as joystick killers. They operate in comfort and safety, half the Earth away from their targets and close enough for many to run home for lunch between kills," Bamford said.
"Today there are more than 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 50 can be flown at the same time. The Pentagon and CIA will purchase more unmanned aircraft than manned ones this year, and they will train more drone aircraft pilots than those who fly all of the bomber and fighter jets combined."
The use of these aircraft is not only potentially unethical, he argues, but also counterproductive.
"Most of the recent acts and attempted acts of domestic terrorism [in the US], for example, are generated by America's wars in the Middle East, and especially the high civilian death toll caused by the drone attacks."
source
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189167.html
The UK Royal Air Force's (RAF) commanders feel legally comfortable to kill civilians in Afghanistan using drone attacks , according to media reports.
The RAF has deployed one of its units called '39 Squadron' in Creech air force base near Las Vegas to commission unmanned drone attacks inside Afghanistan.
The drones were deployed to help occupation forces in Afghanistan defeat insurgency but they are killing a dozen civilians on a daily basis, yet Royal Air Force commanders say, "we are comfortable legally with what we are doing."
The RAF's elite unit was formed hastily in 2007 and stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada, to use technology to seek, track and attack Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away.
As recently as last week, on July 6, the UK military confirmed that one of its Reaper drones has mistakenly killed four Afghan civilians and injured two others.
The military blamed the killing of civilians on intelligence failure, refusing to acknowledge that one cannot claim to be conducting this high precision bombing from other side of the globe without inflicting casualties on the innocent.
While officials said the deaths are deeply regrettable, there was little prospect the use of the aircraft will be curtailed.
In just four years, the five Reapers at Creech have become an essential part of Britain's 21st-century weaponry, and there are already plans to buy a new fleet of a successor aircraft for use in the UK.
By 2030, almost a third of the RAF could be made up of remotely controlled planes - a remarkable increase and testament to the faith that commanders have in them.
But ethical issues will not go away, and senior members of the military establishment admit being troubled by their deployment.
Sir Brian Burridge, a former air chief marshal, once described the use of remote-controlled aircraft as a "virtueless war".
And the way they have been used in Pakistan by the Americans has been of particular concern, raising fears that the CIA is essentially running a targeted assassination programme, which is not as targeted as the agency would have you believe.
The Pakistanis have complained that US strikes killed almost 700 civilians between 2006 and 2009 in their efforts to kill 14 al-Qaida insurgents.
The American author James Bamford, a respected security expert who has written extensively about the US intelligence agencies, believes drones are being used indiscriminately by the Americans, and that many innocent people, including women and children, have been killed by them.
Numerous reported studies over the last three years suggest he is right.
According to the New America Foundation thinktank, one in four of those killed by US drones since 2004 was an innocent civilian. The Brookings Institute says the ratio is higher.
At the CIA, Bamford said, they call the use of drones the age of the "kill chain".
"Death warrants for targets are signed by mid-level bureaucrats, and soccer moms and dads double as joystick killers. They operate in comfort and safety, half the Earth away from their targets and close enough for many to run home for lunch between kills," Bamford said.
"Today there are more than 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 50 can be flown at the same time. The Pentagon and CIA will purchase more unmanned aircraft than manned ones this year, and they will train more drone aircraft pilots than those who fly all of the bomber and fighter jets combined."
The use of these aircraft is not only potentially unethical, he argues, but also counterproductive.
"Most of the recent acts and attempted acts of domestic terrorism [in the US], for example, are generated by America's wars in the Middle East, and especially the high civilian death toll caused by the drone attacks."
source
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189167.html