RAF deploys drones from Cyprus in preparation for Gaza after Starmer ‘ends’ spy flights

The UK has been rightly and heavily criticised for providing Israel with spy flights over Gaza almost since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began – RAF surveillance planes were over Gaza as Israel murdered UK aid workers and Palestinian journalists and operated almost daily throughout. Under scrutiny and pressure, the Starmer government announced the end of the spy flight mission earlier this month – but the flights continued anyway.

But the collaboration of the UK government and military in Israel’s genocide is entering a new phase – with the Starmer regime making efforts to minimise visibility and public awareness.

The Genocide-Free Cyprus (CFG) group has uncovered details of an extensive new mission involving the use of Reaper long-endurance drones – designated Protector RG1 for the RAF – that are already preparing for what is evidently a new surveillance mission over Gaza, with the drones already operating close to the Gaza coast.

RAF drones in Cyprus

The RAF drones, stationed at the RAF’s Akrotiri base in Cyprus and already engaged in what appear to be training or commissioning flights over the Mediterranean between Cyprus and the Gaza coast, are equipped with advanced electro-optical and infrared cameras, air-to-ground radar and precision ground-strike capabilities. They can carry Brimstone missiles – which can destroy armoured formations and were used by the RAF in NATO missions over Libya, where 2-3,000 civilians were killed by the bombing.

The drones can also carry Paveway IV 500lb  ‘bunker-busting’ bombs, pointing to the drones’ likely use to destroy resistance groups’ tunnels for the Israeli occupation. Notionally ‘precision’ bombs, Paveway IVs are inert and their immediate predecessors the Paveway II and III have been used to kill hundreds of civilians in war-crimes in Iraq and, in 2018, to kill a group of forty children in Yemen and injure seventy-nine others. Paveway IVs also have air-burst anti-personnel capabilities.

As GFC noted, after a series of initial preparatory flights out over the sea, the flights have begun to fly close to the Gaza coast:

Complicity

The GFC revelations come after the Starmer regime – only days after saying there were no plans to put British troops into Gaza, announced that it would be putting British troops into Gaza – with no opportunity for MPs to debate or vote on the plan.

They also come hot on the heels of revelations that the UK will begin producing attack drones for Ukraine – and certainly others – to use against Russia, in yet another example of Starmer’s hunger for war and escalation.

Despite outrage among the UK public over Israel’s mass slaughter of innocents in Gaza and the Starmer government’s active collaboration in the genocide, Starmer is clearly set to take Britain’s role in Israel’s crimes to new levels.

Featured image via the Canary