The American leasing company was awarded $472m contract by US Special Operations Command in June and is developing US military’s new long-range spy plane

Since December 2023, the Royal Air Force (RAF) had been flying the same Beechcraft King Air 350 plane over Gaza and sharing the intelligence with Israel, but now this programme appears to have ceased, and is instead being undertaken by the new US-leased private plane.

The British planes, which are called Shadow R1s in UK service, have flown near-daily from RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s sprawling airbase on Cyprus, for almost the entire duration of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

But the last RAF spy flight over Gaza from Akrotiri was on July 25, within days of the new US plane coming into operation on the same route. During the US plane’s first five trips over Gaza, it was accompanied by the RAF plane in an apparent training exercise.

For the 20 months of UK spy flights over Gaza for Israel, the planes had turned off their transponder about half way to Gaza so activity over Gaza had stayed secret.

On 28 July, however, the newly-trained US plane took off at 8pm and forgot to turn off its transponder. The flight path of a surveillance flight from RAF Akrotiri was visible for the first time. It shows the plane reaching Gaza at 9pm and circling over southern Gaza for an hour and half, concentrating its surveillance efforts over Khan Younis and surrounding areas.

The new US-leased spy plane, which flew from RAF Akrotiri on 28 July, circles over Khan Younis area for three hours.

  • FishFace@lemmy.world
    22·
    3 days ago

    I think I’ve done what I set out to do by showing your assumptions for what they are.

    You are trying to present a narrative where the UK is enabling Israel’s genocidal war by finding targets for them to bomb and that, knowing that the public wouldn’t go along with this, are concealing their role by handing the contract to a third party - but have presented no evidence for this narrative at all. Everything that we actually know is consistent with an appropriate role for the UK military in helping to return hostages, while also gathering information that could help prosecute Netanyahu and his government.

    All you have is spin, aspersions and name calling. Do better.