Interior view of a Ground Contol Station for the Remotely Piloted Air System (RPAS) Reaper at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire.Rui Vieira/ Press Association Archive. All rights reserved.Drones, like nuclear weapons, are here to stay. Unlike nuclear weapons, whose ostensible purpose is to deter, drones will be used more and more frequently as they get smaller and cheaper. They could be used by terrorists. There is talk of ‘suicide drones’.
The Ministry of Defence, true to form, was initially extremely reluctant even to admit the RAF was deploying drones, first in Afghanistan. Now, as they are used in Syria and Iraq, the MoD cannot avoid commenting on attacks by armed ‘remotely-piloted air systems’ (RPAS) as it insists on calling them.
The ministry is buying 20 American Predator B drones, at a cost of more than £400m. The aircraft, which can carry a range of bombs, cameras, and sensors, can fly for almost two days, will replace the RAF’s 10 Reapers. They will be operated, via satellite link, by RAF personnel at their base at Waddington in Lincolnshire. In an attempt to give them a better image, the MoD has renamed them Protector rather than Predator.
