Little Satan UK unveils top secret drone base

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has opened the doors of its Royal Air Force (RAF) Waddington base, which is being used as a control centre for the country’s controversial drone strikes in Afghanistan.

The Raft Waddington airbase in Lincolnshire is home to XIII Squadron, the team that operates Britain’s largest and only armed drone known as the Reaper.

The first Reaper operations from British soil started on April 24 at the airbase.

According to figures released by the MoD, a total of 459 strikes have been carried out by RAF Waddington squadron personnel in over 54,000 hours of British-operated Reaper operations in Afghanistan.

This comes as critics believe that the use of armed drones increases the risk of civilian casualties.

Access to the airbase was granted after months of negotiation for transparency over the use of deadly British drones overseas.

British Defence Secretary Hammond said, “We get pretty fed-up with it. There is only incident where we are aware of casualties occurring. It is very regrettable but that is the nature of warfare and that can happen with piloted aircraft.”

Earlier in October, anti-drone campaigners said they would pursue an end to the “culture of secrecy” surrounding London’s drone attacks in Afghanistan despite losing an appeal calling for the UK involvement to be disclosed.

This came after the Information Tribunal agreed the MoD refusal to reveal information on the deployment of remote-controlled unmanned warfare in the Asian country.

War on Want, an anti-poverty charity that campaigns for justice for Palestine, also recently criticized the MoD for awarding a contract for 54 Watchkeeper UAV systems to a joint venture between the Israeli firm Elbit Systems and the UK’s second largest defence electronics supplier Thales UK.