Category Archives: Drones (military)

Foreign Office minister to visit Iran to call for ‘urgent de-escalation’

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Andrew Murrison will raise concerns about country’s conduct amid rising tensions

A Foreign Office minister is to visit Iran on Sunday and call for “urgent de-escalation in the region”, amid heightening tensions between Tehran and Washington after an unmanned American drone was shot down.

Andrew Murrison, the MP for South West Wiltshire who covers the Middle East as part of his brief, will raise UK and international concerns about Iran’s “regional conduct and its threat to cease complying with the nuclear deal to which the UK remains fully committed” during “frank and constructive” talks with the government in Tehran.

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Military drone crashes raise fears for civilians

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Safety warning as MoD pushes to fly the aircraft in Britain

Two military drones are crashing every month on average, according to research that raises questions about the safety of the technology, both in conflict zones and civilian environments.

Accidents Will Happen, a report published by the campaign group Drone Wars UK, reveals that there have been more than 250 crashes involving the large unmanned aircraft in the past decade. A Reaper drone has a maximum speed of 480kph, a range of 1,800km and is armed with up to four missiles and two 230kg bombs.

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The rise of the killer robots – and the two women fighting back

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Jody Williams and Mary Wareham were leading lights in the campaign to ban landmines. Now they have autonomous weapons in their sights

It sounds like something from the outer reaches of science fiction: battlefield robots waging constant war, algorithms that determine who to kill, face-recognition fighting machines that can ID a target and take it out before you have time to say “Geneva conventions”.

This is no film script, however, but an ominous picture of future warfare that is moving ever closer. “Killer robots” is shorthand for a range of tech that has generals salivating and peace campaigners terrified at the ethical ramifications of warfare waged via digital proxies.

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