In a little-noticed response to an information request earlier in 2015, the United Kingdom's ministry of defence admitted that the Royal Air Force was undertaking more air-raids in Iraq using armed Reaper drones than the Tornado strike-aircraft. In itself this was a strong indication of how far "remote-control warfare" had come. It also became known that the drones were involved in reconnaissance flights over Syria. So far, drone-based air-attacks in Syria have not happened - no doubt because the House of Commons voted against this at the end of August 2013 - but the very use of reconnaissance flights is an indicator of how the mission is creeping.
Britain has only a small role in the coalition attacks against Islamic State. But its reluctance to facilitate a debate on the policy is in striking contrast to the Pentagon’s approach, which is reflected in the way that United States defence think-tanks such as the Institute for the Study of War are able to publish copious information on the war on a near-daily basis.
The current British penchant for discretion has taken a further turn because of considerable uncertainty over what the UK's Reaper drone force is actually doing. Initially the RAF had a squadron of five Reapers “flown” by operators based at the USAF Creech airbase, in Nevada. That has now been overtaken largely by a home base, RAF Waddington, south of Lincoln. The force was also doubled in size in 2014, in the closing months of UK military deployment to Afghanistan.
