UK 'considers' deploying Eurofighter Typhoon jets in Persian Gulf region

Britain may deploy its warplanes in the Gulf region amid the mounting tension over a possible war between Israel and Iran and the overall turbulence in the wake of the Arab Spring, according to a British newspap

­The arrival of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets may be announced soon by Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been discussing the issue with rulers of the United Arab Emirates, says The Independent.

The warplanes may be deployed at the Al Dhafra airbase south of the capital Abu Dhabi, where American and French troops are already present. It’s not yet clear which country would pay for the Typhoons’ presence. The UAE foots operational costs for the French Mirage fighter-bombers stationed there, which is estimated at between 20 and 45 million euro annually.

The news comes as top Israeli politicians are touring European countries. Defense Minister Ehud Barak is in Britain, where he met military top brass in addition to politicians. He is said to be aware and supportive of the plan to deploy British warplanes in the region.

Barak earlier reiterated in an interview that Israel will attack Iranian nuclear facilities unilaterally when it feels it is necessary to prevent Tehran from creating a nuclear weapon. However, he said the deadline to launch such an attack will not come before spring or summer next year.

Israel’s Western allies, including the UK and the US, have been trying to restrain its hawkish ambitions, citing the mounting economic sanctions against Iran. The damage to the Islamic Republic’s economy appears significant ever since America and the European Union targeted its oil industry.

Tehran however remains defiant and defends its right to develop civilian nuclear program. It denies all allegations of secretly trying to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium.

UK’s Ministry of Defence insists the possible deployment of Typhoons has no connection with the tension around Iran’s nuclear program.

“We have a mutual interest with our GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] partners in ensuring peace and stability in the region, and exercises such as this allow us to practice working together,” it said.

However the warplanes may be needed to secure the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transportation waterway, which Iran threatened to block in case of an attack against it. The British government said it wanted to be prepared for any contingency, although it favors sanctions against Iran over a military intervention.

UK already has a significant military presence in the Persian Gulf, including a number of warships and a nuclear submarine. The key military player in the region, the US, also built up its forces in the region over the past year amid the tension.

In addition to maintaining three aircraft carriers on patrol, the US Navy doubled the number of mine sweepers assigned to the region, moved a converted amphibious transport and docking ship there. Its Air Force has deployed additional F-22 and F-15C warplanes capable of striking on Iran’s territory.

UK to double number of drones in Afghanistan

The UK military reportedly aims to double the size of its armed drone fleet in Afghanistan to ten by purchasing five US-made Reaper drones, which for the first time will be controlled from a UK base. The first five were controlled at US stations.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) announced the expedited purchase of the US-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), with operations set to begin in six weeks, AFP reported. The drones will be flown and operated from a tech hub built 18 months ago in the British region of Waddington in Lincolnshire, a leap forward in technological prowess for the UK.

The other five drones the UK operates in Afghanistan were controlled from a US Air Force base in Nevada, and target suspected insurgents in Afghanistan’s southwest province of Helmand.

"The new squadron will have three control terminals at RAF Waddington, and the five aircraft will be based in Afghanistan," an RAF spokesperson told the Guardian. “We will continue to operate the other Reapers from Creech though, in time, we will wind down operations there and bring people back to the UK.”

It is not known whether the drones will remain in Afghanistan following the NATO withdrawal in 2014.

Drone controversy deepens

The use of UAVs in Middle East is a controversial issue, as drones airstrikes frequently kill large numbers of innocent civilians.

Last month’s study from Stanford and New York universities titled ‘Living Under Drones’ claimed that only two percent of drone strike casualties in Pakistan are the top militants targeted in the attacks, and that the large number of collateral civilian deaths have turned Pakistanis against the US.

The “best available information,” according to the study, is that between 2,562 and 3,325 people were killed in Pakistan from June 2004 through mid-September of this year. An estimated 474 to 881 of those killed were civilians, including 176 children.

In early October, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that an overwhelming majority of those killed by US UAV strikes in Pakistan are innocent civilians. Malik asked the US to share its drone technology with Pakistan, claiming his government could do a better job at targeting terrorists than Washington.

"The Americans themselves often don’t know who they’ve hit,” anti-drone activist and filmmaker Carol Grayson told RT. “And this huge discrepancy over the figures… we’re finding out that a lot more civilians are being killed. But these are the people that the Americans don’t tell you about. And they actually class these people as ‘other.’”

The CIA has not responded to these calls for restraint, and recently asked the White House to increase the number of drones it employs, effectively transforming the program into a paramilitary force.

This summer, the UN lashed out against US drone policy, and asked Washington to clarify the legal basis for drone strikes against terror suspects rather than trying to capture them. The body argued that the airstrikes, which frequently kill innocent civilians, may be violating international law.

The US uses drone technology across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.

In the first nine months of 2011, leading up to the ten-year anniversary of the Afghan War, US-led spy drones operating with NATO conducted nearly 23,000 surveillance missions in Afghanistan. At around 85 flights a day, this figure nearly doubles the rate of such missions from two years previous.

As the Pentagon increases the number of drones used in NATO missions in Afghanistan, insurgent attacks have risen nearly 50 percent since 2009, according to a media brief released in the fall of 2011 by the Afghanistan International Security Assistance force.

The UK has operated UAVs in Afghanistan since 2008 for combat missions and surveillance operations. According to the UK’s Ministry of Defense, Britain’s five drones were flown for 39,628 hours and fired 334 laser-guided missiles and bombs at suspected insurgents.

The Ministry of Defense said that it does not know how many insurgents have died from drone attacks because of the risks involved in verifying who has been hit. The ministry also said that it relies on Afghans to handle complaints of civilians killed by such strikes, and gather statistics.

Heather Barr, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch, believes this system of verification is flawed because it lacks uniformity, and not all Afghans have ready access to NATO military bases where such complaints can be made. For some Afghans, there is “a certain sense of futility in doing so [reporting civilian deaths] anyway,” due to lack of trust in the West, she said.

Medal of dishonor: UK bars WWII vets from receiving Russian award

British North Atlantic Convoy veterans

London has denied Moscow permission to honor UK veterans of the WWII Arctic Convoys by presenting them with the prestigious Ushakov Medal.

Between 1941 and 1945, the convoys formed a crucial supply route from the UK and North America to the northern Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk. Merchant vessels were escorted by British Royal Naval ships and aircraft carriers.

In April of this year, then-President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree awarding the Ushakov Medal – named after the seasoned Russian Admiral Fyodor Ushakov – to foreign veterans for exceptional contributions to Allied war efforts during WWII.

Under UK law, citizens are allowed to receive foreign medals and awards only if the British government gives them permission, and only if the award relates to the recipient’s activities within past five years.

In May 2012, Moscow officially asked London for permission. The Russian Embassy in the UK forwarded 813 letters from the veterans to Britain’s Foreign Office that detailed their public activities over the last five years.

The Foreign Office turned down the request, saying that the information provided ‘does not describe any relevant service specific to Russia within the last five years,’ the embassy’s press release said. The decision may be revisited if the Russian diplomatic service provides details of veterans who satisfy to the five year criteria.

“It is, however, difficult to imagine the persons in their late eighties and early nineties to do things similar to what they did at the time of the war 70 years ago,” the Russian embassy wrote in its statement.

“It does not diminish in any way our gratitude to them for their fighting for the common cause of defeating Nazism and delivering Europe and the whole of mankind from this existential threat,” the embassy said.

Moscow also vowed to contact each British veteran slated to receive the award.

Trident submarine missiles review to suggest 'stepping down nuclear ladder'

Ousted defence minister Nick Harvey claims military and Whitehall backing for cheaper alternatives

The government's review of the future of the Trident submarine nuclear missile system is likely to suggest a significant downgrading of the UK's nuclear deterrent, including the possibility of locking the warheads "in a cupboard" for delayed launch only after several weeks of mounting international tension.

The revelation was made by Sir Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat who was the defence minister leading the review until the government reshuffle this month. The MP for North Devon said he believed the policy could get support in Whitehall and from senior military figures and Labour.

Harvey said past policy on Trident had been dictated by the 1980s view that the only deterrent to a nuclear attack from the then Soviet Union was the belief that the UK could "flatten Moscow" in retaliation. This led to the UK building Trident and having at least one armed submarine at sea every hour of every day since.

Speaking in detail about the Trident review for the first time since he was sacked as minister, Harvey said: "If you can just break yourself out of that frankly almost lunatic mindset for a second, all sorts of alternatives start to look possible, indeed credible."

He continued: "The Russia of the 21st century – economically diverse, vaguely democratic, but definitely a very different sort of place from where it was in 1980 – might find all sorts of damage to be unacceptable short of flattening Moscow.

"Therefore to convince ourselves that the only point of having any deterrent at all is the capability of flattening Moscow is the wrong and distorting lens through which to view the debate."

Instead of replacing Trident with a like-for-like 24-hour nuclear armed submarine presence at sea after the current system is due to be taken out of service in 2028, cheaper alternatives are being considered. These range from stepping down the patrols, to designing missiles to be launched from aircraft, surface navy ships or land, to a delayed launch system.

The delayed-launch model would involve developing a nuclear warhead for a cruise missile that could be launched from existing Astute submarines, Harvey said, "but having perfected that technology simply put it away in a cupboard and keep it as a contingency in case there ever were to be a deterioration in the global security picture that might need the UK government to take it out of the cupboard".

In this situation, the UK would store the warheads in a secure military location, from where they could be removed, put on the tip of a missile and put to sea within weeks or months.

Challenged as to why the review did not consider nuclear disarmament, Harvey said: "I think you might struggle to persuade the British public to do that, but I think you might persuade them to go down to the penultimate step: you keep something for a rainy day, but putting it away and not having it as part of your everyday activity."

Harvey told a fringe debate at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton that the idea of moving "down the nuclear ladder" had support across all three armed services: the army, the Royal Navy and the RAF.

He said one reason for growing support for the review's alternatives was a "perfect storm" of defence capital costs around 2020, including building the new joint strike fighter aircraft and Type 26 frigates, a new generation of unmanned aircraft, and amphibious craft for the navy.

The army, he said, was "driving around in vehicles which are literally about to fall to pieces".

If defence ministers in 2020 were not to be put in an impossible position, the defence ministers of the next couple of years would have to take the necessary decisions to avert a crisis.

He said: "Believe you me there are very senior figures of all three services who are highly aware of that perfect storm of these costs, who don't believe the Treasury is going suddenly ride to their rescue with a cheque and who are asking, 'Is the opportunity cost of having another generation of nuclear weapons too high, in terms of of what it would prevent us doing on other fronts?'"

He added: "I can't say with certainty how they [military chiefs] will respond, but a number of them made the point to me to not portray it [the report] in such a political and party way that you don't create the space for some of us to support you and try and help."

It was not impossible that the review could get support from the Whitehall security sector, said Harvey, who was also hopeful that Labour, or parts of the party, would support the review's conclusion.

He added: "The UK national security strategy no longer even identifies the nuclear menace as a tier one threat."

In a sign of the potential political row brewing over Trident, John Woodcock, the Labour MP for Barrow in Furness, where new Trident subs would be built, this week accused the Lib Dems of being in a "hopeless muddle" over the issue.

"The Lib Dems are either cosmically ill-informed or seeking to pull the wool over the eyes of many thousands whose jobs depend on a thriving shipyard," he said.

Harvey's response was that creating jobs in Barrow should be the last consideration. "The idea that you should produce weapons of mass destruction in order to keep 1,500 jobs going in the Barrow shipyard is palpably ludicrous. We could give them all a couple of million quid and send them to the Bahamas for the rest of their lives , and the world would be a much better place, and we would have saved a lot of money," he said.

"I had wanted my legacy to be bringing the UK down the nuclear ladder," added Harvey, who was knighted after his dismissal in the reshuffle.

However, Professor Malcolm Chalmers, research director at the defence think-tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), raised concerns about possible savings by scrapping a Trident replacement, saying he was not yet convinced by the figures.

"If you end up going for an option which steps down the ladder but you don't save any money it's a political non-starter," he said.

The review was made part of the coalition agreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives after the 2010 election because the two parties disagreed strongly on the issue. After Labour decided in 2007 to replace Trident with a like-for-like system, the Lib Dems went into the 2010 general election opposing that policy while the Tories supported it.

The review is now being headed by Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, who is a Lib Dem.

Heir-razing threat: British-born Muslims ready to target Prince Harry

After attacking the base where Prince Harry was stationed in Afghanistan last week, the Taliban announced that he is still in danger. This time from fellow UK citizens trained as turncoat fanatics ready to kill him

­Taliban Spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Daily Star in an interview “We have thousands of attackers ready to give up their lives for the Prophet Mohammed and kill the prince. That is our intention. They come from all over the world – from England, Pakistan.”

“They will lay down their lives so that the world will know our anger. The British and American invaders are not welcome in this land and must leave,” he said.

That the Taliban has been luring foreign nationals to train with them in Afghanistan is no secret; several Taliban combatants have been captured of European, British, and American origin.

This is, however, the first direct insinuation that homegrown UK citizens could be used in a turn-around suicide mission against the prince.

Prince Harry survived a Taliban attack on Camp Bastion on September 14, where he is currently serving a four-month tour of duty. Although failing to kill the prince, the Taliban claimed a moral victory, killing two marines and destroying or damaging eight US fighter jets. The attack cost the base a stunning US$200 million in damage. It was also the start of a new Taliban campaign called “Harry Operations” that would specifically target the prince.

“We attacked that base because Prince Harry was also on it, and so they can know our anger,” Ahmadi told the Associated Press after the attack.

“Thousands more suicide attackers are ready to give up their lives for the sake of the prophet.”

Insurgents with Premier League football tattoos have already been found by British soldiers, and British surveillance has already picked up Yorkshire and Midland accents on Taliban radio frequencies, The Daily Star reported.

However, after the September 14 attack, NATO and the British Defense Ministry were quick to dispel any notion that the prince could actually have been killed.

"Prince Harry was never in any danger,” said NATO spokesman Martyn Crighton following the attack. Camp Bastion is one of the most heavily fortified bases in the world, and the prince was 2 kilometers from the attack site.

Prince Harry flies an Apache helicopter, working on support missions. Britain has not lost any of its 67 Apaches in Afghanistan, and the Defense Ministry has claimed that the risk to the prince is “low.”