Week 22 in Review

Below is a short overview of the news this week. If you have events or updates to share with our network, you may forward them to info {at} efadrones.org.

 

We launched a country profile for Denmark, which can be found here.

Drone Wars UK is now eight years old. To mark the day, the most popular blogs are revisited in this twitter thread.

Osservatorio Mil€x, a watchdog on Italian military spending linked to Rete italiana per il Disarmo, brought out a report and was heard in the Italian parliament on the acquisition of military drones, their use, and their cost. It garnered attention in the media, but the outcome is obfuscated by political turmoil in Italy.

You can now RSVP for the Stimson Centre‘s event and launch of the report “An Action Plan on U.S. Drone Policy: Recommendations for the Trump Administration.”  It is scheduled for June 7, and a livestream will be available too.

Responding to questions from the European Parliament, Ms Bieńkowska on behalf of the European Commission stated that the Commission may assess the impact of drone-related research and projects on human rights after these where completed.

Out of the blue, MQ-9 Reapers will now be operating from a base in Poland. The aim might be to fill in a lack of ISR capacity in the Polish military, though it is unclear how much data or intelligence the Polish armed forces will directly recieve from the US Air Force.

More info behind last weeks’ news that Reapers would be based at Larissa air base in Greece. The drones are stationed there temporarily, as experts had previously suggested, before they are moved towards the drone base still under construction near Agadez, Niger.