UK plans to buy 20 new drones to fight Islamic State in Iraq and Syria 20510151

Defence & Security News - United Kingdom
 
UK plans to buy 20 new drones to fight Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to buy 20 new drones to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Britain is part of an international coalition of more than 60 countries, including the United States, Arab and European nations, working together to dismantle and destroy ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
     
UK plans to buy 20 new drones to fight Islamic State in Iraq and Syria 640 001UK actually has a fleet of 10 Reaper UAVs
     
"We have at the moment a drone fleet of 10 Reapers and what we are going to be doing is actually replacing that with twice as many with a new updated piece of equipment — called Protector — which will be more than doubling of our fleet to keep us safe and to give us the intelligence and information and potentially give us the capacity to hit people who are potentially planning to hit us," Cameron said in an interview with The Telegraph newspaper.

Cameron also stated he was going to enforce the process of obtaining a parliament permit for the UK operation in Syria. He added that Russia's decision to launch a military operation in Syria will not affect the UK 's intention to send its drones.

At the moment, the British government has a parliament approval for military operation against ISIL in Iraq, but no mandate for such an operation in Syria.

On Wednesday, Russia started carrying out pinpoint airstrikes on ISIL positions in Syria at the request of Syrian President Bashar Assad.