One in seven of Britain's 54 Watchkeeper drones crash
Under the gentle New Mexico November sun, British soldiers are happy. They were going to demonstrate to a key UK ally what their £5m Watchkeeper drones are really capable of. over the bushes of the range at over 70 miles per hour.
His high-definition cameras broadcast footage of targets on the Fort Irvine ranges, ready to wait for artillery batteries to hit them.
Inspired Watchkeeper, the Americans treated their British guests to a helicopter tour of the local area. Official photos show grinning Royal Artillery soldiers sitting in the back of a Black Hawk.
British soldiers from the 47th Royal Artillery were in New Mexico to demonstrate the capabilities of the Watchkeeper drone
However, on November 10, 2022, disaster struck when WK036 crashed. The loss of the drone was reported today for the first time.
Shadow Secretary of Defense Luke Pollard says his fellow Conservatives tried to cover up the incident.
“As the number of Watchkeeper crashes has reached eight since 2014, it is a major concern why ministers covered up the latest crash and failed to learn from previous mistakes to ensure these drones can keep Britain safe at a time when threats are on the rise,” says Member of Parliament for the Labor Party. /p>
The Department of Defense says the cover-up allegation is «completely baseless and shows a complete misunderstanding of what really happened.»
One in seven of Britain's 54 aircraft accidents Watchmen, who were supposed to remain in service until the 2040s, have died untimely.
Anti-drone campaigner Chris Cole, whose Drone Wars team shed light on the November crash of WK036, says there are «serious questions» to be asked «about the value for money of the Watchkeeper program.»
Meanwhile, military observers warn that battlefield reconnaissance is now being done with cheap consumer-grade drones, and inexpensive UAVs the size of an airplane, as shown in Ukraine.
“One has to wonder if these large drones survived to the end, on the grounds that they are too easy to ban and destroy,” says Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former army officer.
Ukraine’s combat experience shows how small and inexpensive drones like the DJI Mavic can be used in the hands of frontline troops.
Even cheaper DIY drones that don't rely on GPS or satellites for searching. thus, prove to be just as useful.
Defense Secretary James Cartlidge confirmed in June that Watchkeeper had cost £1.351bn, which includes airfield upgrades at Aberport and Boscombe Down.
A source who contacted the Parliamentary Defense Committee earlier this year pointed out that Watchkeeper is «purchased exclusively from Thales.»
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A company headquartered in France, which manufactures drones at a factory near Leicester, and also has a contract for their maintenance, does not responded to a request for comment.
While the questions are about its costs, other questions arise. on whether the Watchkeeper is suitable for use in the modern age.
De Bretton-Gordon, a retired colonel, says low-cost drones costing several thousand pounds each (as opposed to the Watchkeeper's £5.2 million price tag ) proved to be very capable in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
“Ukrainian artillery is so effective these days because virtually every Ukrainian artillery shell fired at the other end has a strike-marking drone,” he notes.
Labour MP Kevan Jones adds: “Ukrainian forces have shown that many Watchkeeper capabilities can be provided at a fraction of the cost.»
Performing unarmed surveillance of artillery targets is a niche the Watchkeeper had to fill.
However, military sources confirm that the drone cannot fly in less than ideal weather.
The Watchkeeper is only suitable for visual meteorological conditions, but wars don't wait for the sun to rise. .
The drone that crashed in November was flying from an airstrip a few miles southeast of the Organ Mountains in New Mexico.
Details of the latest crash were not released by the Department of Defense ( MO), who confirmed that the internal investigation was still ongoing eight months later.
“As a result of the incident, no one was injured and no infrastructure was damaged,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman.
“As usual in the case of any aviation accident, an investigation is underway. It would be inappropriate to speculate further.»
Francis Tusa, editor of the Defense Analysis newsletter, explains that the origins of the Watchkeeper were closely tied to the interagency politics of the Afghanistan War era.
Because the Taliban had limited access to anti-aircraft missiles, he said, the use of drones was of no interest to the RAF until military thinking began to favor drones, he says.
Such drones could sit idle for hours on end. place. were of interest and were to be cheaper to operate than traditional RAF fast jets such as the Tornado.
«The kind that killed the Overseer,» says Tusa, «because the RAF said, 'Instead of spending more money on the Watchman, give us money and we'll buy a [armed MQ-1] Predator.»
He jokes that the £1.35 billion spent on an unarmed surveillance drone could instead be spent on 275,000 consumer-grade aircraft, similar to how Ukrainian and Russian soldiers use drones today.
< p>Watchkeeper's promises of cost — efficiency did not materialize.
Part of the original plan for the project was to allow junior soldiers in the Royal Artillery to fly drones, saving money on pilot training and wages.
This stinginess backfired. The 47th Artillery Regiment has been short of pilots since 2019.
Attempts to recruit 47 men have not been successful. The regiment is filled to capacity. Photo: Corporal Anil Gurung.
The Armed Forces Pay Authority has called on army commanders to pay a £30,000 bonus to the pilots of the regiment to address the shortage.
“The Department of Defense concluded that an increase in workforce would be unattainable no additional remuneration measures,” says the APRB 2022 Annual Report.
Even as defense chiefs grapple with understaffing, unarmed UAVs can struggle on today’s battlefields.
The Watchkeeper was optimized for use against enemies who couldn't bring it down, recalls de Bretton-Gordon, contrasting with the lack of air opposition in Afghanistan with the mass of anti-aircraft assets in Ukraine.
«You could operate almost unhindered in a clean skies over Afghanistan and Iraq,” he says.
«It goes back to the old British emphasis on counterinsurgency over the past 20 years rather than fighting, where you were fighting an enemy that didn't have sophisticated air defenses.»
Even the lack of enemy air defense did not prevent the destruction of the Watchkeepers.
None of the air crashes in the last nine years were caused by hostilities, or even occurred in a war zone.
During a symbolic deployment to the Afghan Camp Bastion at the end of 2014, three Watchkeepers flew 146 hours over three weeks—an average of four and a half days of operations per machine.
Consensus is emerging in Westminster that the drone program needs public scrutiny.
“Theoretically, Watchkeeper is a high-performance system and an important asset for the future British Army,” says Marc Francois, Conservative MP and chairman of the parliamentary subgroup. Defense Purchasing Committee.
“However, it was so overwhelmed in development that it was years late with commissioning, and also has an unfortunate tendency to crash; which is clearly sub-optimal from a military point of view.»
An informant from his committee suggested that there were 1,910 individual requirements that the troubled aircraft had to meet.
Lamenting how much government money was spent Kevan Jones, a Labor MP, said the MoD has «serious questions to answer why the Watchkeeper cannot fulfill its most basic requirement, to fly.» these questions won't go away anytime soon.
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