The RAF’s Reaper drones work closely with US drone forces especially in the West Asia region

Britain’s secretive drone program has come under the spotlight with credible allegations that the UK is potentially complicit in US war crimes.

A new report by the specialist website Drone Wars UK has subjected the overt and covert cooperation between the UK and US in relation to armed drone operations to forensic scrutiny.

Entitled Joint Enterprise: An overview of US-UK cooperation on armed drone operations, the specialized report pours cold water on the British government’s insistence that its armed drone program is separate and independent to that of the US.

The key argument put forward by this specialized report is that in view of the close historic ties, shared use of infrastructure and tightly integrated operations, the two nation’s drone programs amount to joint enterprise and possibly joint liability.

More broadly, the report sets out in painstaking detail the areas in which the UK and US drone programs intersect, often in operational settings.

The close interoperability between the two drone forces is foundational in nature in so far as the UK’s current armed Reaper drone program has evolved directly from the US Air Force’s Predator drone program over the last two decades.

Separately, in an interview with the Russian news agency Sputnik, Chris Cole, the founder and director of Drone Wars UK, claims that the close drone-related cooperation between the two nations is deeply problematic - potentially in terms of war crimes - as the US is engaged in drone strikes which are widely seen as in violation of international law.