No area of modern warfare is more misunderstood than the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in combat. Tim Ripley examines a new report revealing how the Royal Air Force’s Reaper crews manage their work and the affect it has upon them.
RAF REAPER FORCE
The Royal Air Force has operated General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for almost a decade. During that period, its Reaper crews have amassed a huge amount of combat experience over Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. However, when an RAF Reaper strike killed a pair of British jihadi fighters inside a so-called Islamic State-controlled city in Syria in 2015, UK UAV operations reached a new level of strategic importance.