On Wednesday 20 November, the Defence Secretary John Healey announced in the House of Commons that the UK was scrapping its entire fleet of Watchkeeper drones bringing to an end to the sorry saga of this drone programme.

Anyone who has been following the Drone Wars blog over the last 14 years will be well aware of the failings of Watchkeeper. Based on the Israeli Hermes 450 drone, Watchkeeper was built by a joint venture company (U-TacS) owned 50-50 by the Israeli company Elbit Systems and Thales UK.

While the UK’s armed Reaper drones are operated by the Royal Air Force, the unarmed watchkeepers were bought for the British Army with the intention of undertaking short-medium range surveillance in order to conduct artillery strikes.

Fifty-four of the drones were built under a 2004, £1bn contract which was supposed to see “world-class” drones, operated by the army in Afghanistan by mid-2010. Long delays saw only four of the drones deployed to Afghanistan for four weeks in 2014, conducting around 140 hours of surveillance as British forces withdrew from Camp Bastion.

Since then, apart from one short deployment in the UK, the 50 plus Watchkeeper drones have either flown on training flight, mostly in the UK or Cyprus (despite being marketed as an all-weather system, it performs poorly in ‘adverse’ weather) or simply kept in storage. The UK deployment was to support Border Force operations to curb refugees crossings the channel. According to responses to our FoI requests at the time, a total of 21 flights were conducted in September and October 2022.

Crashes of Watchkeeper drones

Date

Type

Tail No.

Where

Source

Status

Nov 10, 2022

Watchkeeper

N/A

United States

Press

Destroyed

May 29, 2022

Watchkeeper

N/A

Off Cyprus

Press

Destroyed

Oct 14, 2020

Watchkeeper

WK044

Cyprus

Press

Unknown

Jun 13, 2018

Watchkeeper

N/A

Aberporth

Press

Destroyed

Mar 24, 2017

Watchkeeper

N/A

Irish Sea

Press

Destroyed

Feb 3, 2017

Watchkeeper

N/A

Irish Sea

Press

Destroyed

Nov 2, 2015

Watchkeeper

WK006

Salisbury

Press

Destroyed

Oct 16, 2014

Watchkeeper

WH031

Aberporth

FoI

Withdrawn

Watchkeeper crashes: Aberporth 2014; off Cyprus coast 2022 

Military Technophilia

While it would be fair to say that there have been particular problems with the Watchkeeper programme, the dominant narrative that sophisticated military technology is the answer to a wide array of political and security issues is also an important element here.  

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