Can Europe Show Us the Way ? – The 2010 SDSR resulted in the destruction (quite literally) of the RAF Maritime Reconnaissance Force of NIMROD MR4 aircraft.   We are now “enjoying” a capability gap in this area much to the consternation of anyone familiar with our maritime history.  The “sell off” of the Search and Rescue services to private operators is another facet of concern to anyone interested is the state of British Maritime Power.

The European Commission, is reported in the British media, now has plans to spend £ 260 million on its ‘Eurosur’ project, which includes a plan for surveillance drones to patrol the Mediterranean coast.    The Eurosur project is about to go before the European Parliament and involves small drones being deployed along the Mediterranean coastline, and is a response to the large numbers of illegal immigrants crossing from North Africa in small boats.  The umbrella body for EC border agencies, Frontex, which came up with the idea, has hosted demonstrations by defence companies for member states to show them the range of drones available.    One of the craft, the Spanish built FULMAR which has a 10ft wingspan, cruises at 60 mph and can stay airborne for eight hours.    The larger Israeli manufactured HERON is 26ft long and has an impressive fifty two hours endurance (at 35,000ft.).    Frontex wants to set up the network, including satellites, next year, so only small drones will be used at first - current regulations mean the operator must maintain visual contact with the aircraft and keep it within 1,500ft horizontally and 400ft vertically of himself.

At the same time, several schemes are under way in Britain, aiming to develop civilian roles for aircraft based on the killer drones hunting for terrorists, smugglers and illegal immigrants and several British firms are testing sophisticated ‘sense and avoid’ systems on unmanned aerial vehicles over the Irish Sea.    BAE Systems has teamed up with British firms Cobham, Rolls-Royce and QinetiQ, along with German company Cassidian and French owned Thales UK, to develop a £62 million part government funded project called ASTREA with the intention to be able to safely open up UK airspace for these kinds of flights as there are many civilian applications.   A specially converted JETSTREAM aircraft is being tested over the Irish Sea to detect and avoid other aircraft as easily as a piloted plane.    The idea of unmanned drones humming around gathering data, identifying us through photo-recognition and making decisions about whether to fire missiles, sounds like an unhappy science fiction based society, characterised by negative, anti-utopian visions of the future, and opposition can be expected from many quarters at this proposal.

Meanwhile Kent Police are working on a £ 3 million project with partners in the UK, France and the Netherlands to explore the use of unmanned aircraft to patrol its coastline and the English Channel with the likely targets being organised criminals, and especially “people-smugglers”’.