Category Archives: Military

Britain, Defence, Government, Islamic State, Military, Politics, Terrorism

RAF drone strikes on IS Britons

MILITARY

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Reaper: An RAF UAV killed two Islamic State terrorists in Syria back in August

Intro: Ministers must be more open and transparent about drones.

DEFENCE officials have been urged to come clean and reveal the full details about covert RAF drone strikes against British jihadists.

It came as a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan claimed it was “cowardly” not to publish information about UK jihadists killed while fighting overseas for Islamic State.

Colonel Richard Kemp said: ‘British citizens who have gone out there have become the enemy. Their death is something Parliament should be informed about unless there are security reasons.’

See also: Drones and the unproven efficacy of these weapons…

He argued there were a ‘number of benefits’ of informing Parliament, adding: ‘It shows IS are not supermen. It could well, in some cases, act as a deterrent because British forces will know that if they go there is a very good chance of us killing them.’

There is now a mounting backlash after it was revealed that drone pilots at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire and others flying jets had killed British jihadists in the Middle East but neither Parliament nor the public were informed.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers, including former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald, wrote to the Prime Minister urging the Government to publish the identity of Britons killed in RAF strikes.

The co-chairman of the group, Kirsten Oswald MP (SNP), said recent revelations that the RAF was ticking off a ‘kill list’ that included UK jihadists were ‘deeply concerning’.

Commons leader David Lidington faced calls to allow an urgent parliamentary debate on the existence of the list, which includes high-value British targets.

Defending the Government, he told MPs Britons tempted to join militant groups must know they risk losing their lives.

Miss Oswald, the SNP’s armed forces spokesperson, urged the Government to reveal how many UK citizens have been targeted.

She later added that there were ‘many questions unanswered’.

‘If the UK Government is conducting an operation designed to “take out” UK citizens without parliamentary scrutiny or public awareness, that is clearly unacceptable,’ she said.

Mr Lidington replied in the Commons: ‘The Defence Secretary has been very clear that we and the coalition against Daesh (IS) will pursue people who are a threat to our security and to the safety of British citizens wherever those people may come from.

‘We act, as always in our military operations, within the law, but the message to anybody tempted to join Daesh must be that they do so at great risk to themselves.’

David Cameron stunned MPs 18 months ago when he disclosed that a British drone had killed a jihadist in Syria who was plotting an atrocity in the UK. Shortly afterwards, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Britain would not hesitate to carry out more drone strikes against jihadists plotting ‘armed attacks on our streets’.

That December, MPs voted in favour of the UK joining a coalition of nations carrying out airstrikes on IS targets in Syria.

Since then the RAF has been tasked with taking out UK jihadists plotting attacks in Britain and other high-value targets. Parliament has not been informed of the British deaths.

Labour MP John Woodcock, formerly a member of the defence select committee, said the British jihadists were a ‘legitimate target of our armed forces’, but added: ‘The Government needs to be upfront about what is happening.’

Members of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, including Lord Macdonald, has now written a letter to Theresa May demanding details of UK jihadists bombed by RAF fighter jets.

Admiral Lord West, former head of the Royal Navy, said: ‘If someone from Britain breaks the law, if they get killed, then so be it. They are dead men walking.

‘If there is a policy of extrajudicial killings, that does need to be talked about. If we happen to kill them because we are targeting infrastructure, that is different.’

However, Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the RAF, said releasing details of Britons killed would be a ‘golden opportunity’ for claims by ‘crooked liberal lawyers’.

The Ministry of Defence said: ‘The UK is committed to the defeat of Daesh and publishes regular updates on airstrikes conducted by the RAF.’

OPINION

We should have no sympathy at all with Britons who joined Islamic State in Syria or Iraq who find themselves on the end of a deadly drone attack.

Anyone who allies themselves with this barbaric group is a traitor, an enemy to our way of life and a threat to this country. They deserve everything they get.

Nor should we join in the hand-wringing at the very idea of using remote-controlled planes operated from thousands of miles away. Is a drone strike really more barbaric than any other weapon of war?

No, our principal concern, following the revelation that the military is using targeted assassinations against jihadis on a ‘kill list’, is the distinct lack of transparency with which it is being operated.

Yes, David Cameron told Parliament in 2015 that two Britons had been killed in a drone strike. But since then the programme has been carried on in secret.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon would lose nothing by encouraging more openness about this new form of warfare.

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China, Donald Trump, Europe, Military, Poland, Russia, United Nations, United States

The United States and other global risks

UNITED STATES

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Poland and the Baltic states feel threatened by Russia’s recent deployment of nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian territory wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The U.S. has responded by sending troops and reinforcements to Poland.

Intro: We need to turn away from Donald Trump’s Twitter feed and concentrate on some of the more worrying developments that the United States are involved in.

Much of the attention in the United States over the past week has been on Donald Trump and what the Russians may or may not have got on embarrassing material about his business and private life. The revelations have been fascinating, the risk of Mr Trump being held for blackmail on any hidden agenda with Russia lurid, but, nevertheless, it is no wonder such news has dominated the headlines.

Beneath all of this, however, there has been much more serious global developments with US involvement, eclipsed by the shenanigans and salacious disclosures of the incoming president’s behaviour. But it is best that they do not go unnoticed.

The first was the biggest deployment of U.S. troops in Europe since the end of the cold war. Some one thousand troops (of a promised four thousand) were deployed to Poland, part of President Barack Obama’s response to the nervousness of central European states in the face of Russian aggression. Agitated concerns have been expressed in many European states ever since Russia’s belligerence and actions in Ukraine and the Crimea. Notably, this is the first-time U.S. troops have been permanently stationed along Russia’s western border.

More than 80 main battle tanks and hundreds of armoured vehicles have already arrived in Germany and are being moved into eastern Europe by road and rail.

The Kremlin has been angered by the deployment, branding the arrival of tanks and reinforcements as a threat to Russia’s security.

Last October Russia sent nuclear-adaptable Iskander missiles to the Polish border and in December deployed Bastion anti-ship missile launchers to the Baltic. America has now responded to that threat given its commitment to peace in Europe. An old-fashioned arms build-up is now taking shape.

This is not the only part of the world where Russia and the U.S. are squaring up to each other. In another scenario, Russia has a powerful partner – China. The Asian economic powerhouse has also said U.S. actions in the region, namely in the South China Sea, are a threat to its national security.

In recent days China has sent its only aircraft carrier into the Taiwan Strait, largely seen as a provocative move amid ongoing tensions between Beijing and Taiwan. China claims that Taiwan is its rightful province.

China is also deeply resentful about a joint plan between the U.S. and South Korea to deploy an advanced missile defence system, ostensibly a defence system against any missiles fired from North Korea. China is North Korea’s only ally.

It is understood that representatives from Beijing and Moscow met last week and that they had agreed to take ‘further counter-measures’ in response to the U.S.-South Korea plan. It is not known what those counter-measures will be but it is likely that will be from a range of economic, military and diplomatic relations they have at their disposal.

Mr Trump is already heightening tensions in the region, first with his earlier decision to break diplomatic protocol and call Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen, and then his secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson saying the U.S. should deny Beijing access to new islands it has built in the heavily disputed waters of the South China Sea. Many in China, reinforced by editorials in Chinese newspapers, believe such U.S. action could result in war.

Rather than being obsessed and preoccupied with Mr Trump’s Twitter feed we should be concentrating instead on the bigger, more pressing, issues.

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Britain, Defence, Government, Military, NATO, United States

British maritime surveillance of Russian submarines is weak

DEFENCE

smolensk

Danger: Smolensk nuclear powered submarine

BRITAIN is struggling to keep track of the growing number of Russian submarines in its waters.

The Russian president Vladimir Putin is increasingly using his fleet to hide off the coast to test the weaknesses of the Royal Navy.

The Navy has been forced to rely on NATO patrols since it scrapped its submarine-tracking aircraft in 2010, with replacements not due for at least two more years – a so-called security gap in Britain’s military power.

Figures on hostile incursions in British waters are kept secret, but of ten known incidents between 2005 and 2015, eight were in the past three years. In June, a Russian submarine was intercepted as it cruised towards the English Channel, while in October others were detected in the Irish Sea.

A defence analyst at the respected Henry Jackson Society, a security think tank, said: ‘Sadly, because of certain cuts, we don’t have the capacity to monitor Russian activity constantly. There is a security gap and doubtless the Russians are testing our reflexes and responses… We are now reliant until at least 2019 on our NATO allies to help us with the patrolling.’

Britain has not had its own submarine tracking aircraft since the Ministry of Defence scrapped its Nimrod maritime reconnaissance spy planes in 2010.

In November, last year, Downing Street announced the purchase of a fleet of Boeing P-8 Poseidon aircraft, but they are not expected to enter service until 2020. The UK has diminished its conventional war-fighting capabilities as it has faced the challenges of cyber warfare and terrorism. Intelligence initially suggested there would be no threat, but it has since transpired that there is a threat and from a rather traditional source. It will take time, once again, in building up our military capabilities.

At least twice in the past year a Russian submarine has been suspected of attempting to track one of Britain’s Clyde-based Vanguard-class submarines carrying Trident nuclear missiles in order to obtain the ‘acoustic signature’ it emits as it moves. Once this is obtained it can then be deduced where they are and tracked.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: ‘The Royal Navy maintains a vigilant watch in international and territorial waters and is always ready to keep Britain safe from potential threats. We do not comment on operational detail, for obvious security reasons.’

Dr Julian Lewis, the Tory Chairman of the Commons defence committee, said: ‘We should look on Russia as an adversary but not an enemy. By showing Russia that we are strong, we can ensure it decides it is not worth its while becoming our enemy.’

OPINION

Since the Berlin Wall fell, Europe’s leaders have wound down their armed forces, apparently thinking the world has changed so much that a major war is no longer possible. If only this were true.

Indeed, as Russia’s Vladimir Putin experiments with cyber warfare, flexing his military muscles in Syria and the Baltic – and daily probes the Royal Navy’s defences and our air defences – the threat of attack remains ever with us.

Donald Trump has sent a strong message that we can no longer rely on America to go on bearing its disproportionate share of defending Europe through NATO. Mr Trump wants other NATO countries to be contributing far more. Just five countries in the alliance meet the minimum 2% of GDP on defence spending.

Add the terrorist threat and there could surely be no more insane moment to countenance a real-terms cut in our defence spending.

Yet this is happening, as the weaker pound and creative accounting at the MoD threaten to reduce our frontline capability.

We drop our guard at our mortal peril.

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