The commander who oversaw the use of Reaper drones in Syria has said the relentless demand to deploy the unmanned aircraft means the RAF needs to test recruiting “18- and 19-year-olds straight out of the PlayStation bedroom” to operate the weapons.

Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, a former RAF deputy commander of operations, disclosed that the psychological pressure on drone operators in the UK was such that some had quit due to mental stress or illness.

He said the law governing the use of drones needed to be recast due to advances in technology that would lead inexorably to the greater use of remote and autonomously operated weaponry.

Bagwell, who retired this year, oversaw RAF Reaper operations, including two controversial drone strikes in 2015 on two UK citizens supporting Islamic State in Syria. Bagwell insisted the strikes were legal but argued the law needed to be revisited to give drone operators greater confidence that they were acting legally. The controversy over the attacks led to some of the operators needing repeated assurance that they had acted legally.

Explaining the demand for drone operators, Bagwell said: “We need to test harder whether we can take a young 18- or 19-year-old out of their PlayStation bedroom and put them into a Reaper cabin and say: ‘Right, you have never flown an aircraft before [but] that does not matter, you can operate this’.”

He added: “In order to be a very good Reaper operator you need that three-dimensional view of what is going on around you, even though you are 3,000 miles away. You are playing three-dimensional chess in your mind, so you understand how the various pieces fit together in terms of prosecuting a target.”

A view from a Reaper drone camera. Operators need to have a ‘three-dimensional view of what is going on around you’. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Reaper drones have carried out more than a third of the coalition airstrikes against Isis in Iraq and Syria.

Bagwell’s call for a rethink of the law governing drones was echoed by Gen Sir Richard Barrons, the joint forces commander until his retirement in April.

Barrons said: “We need to set ourselves up for a future where a combination of robotics, autonomous systems and artificial systems will create capabilities that our enemies may have before we do – where machines kill on the basis of an algorithm without a human in the room.

“That is not science fiction and it will not be very long before western armed forces are acquiring capability like that, and they will need to be absolutely clear what rules we have and when they apply.”

He added he was concerned that “we have not thought through the application of current technology in the setting … where you cannot necessarily have such a high-level control of the targeting process, allowing rigour and advice at every stage. You cannot apply that in a more cyclical, dynamic conflict. It will not work.”

Both men were giving evidence to the all-party committee inquiring into the law governing the use of drones, especially their joint operations. The committee has released a new memorandum of understanding on the use of drones reached by the UK and the US.

A joint select committee argued earlier this year that the law on drones needed clarifying. The joint committee launched its inquiry after David Cameron announced that UK drones had targeted and killed a 21-year-old Briton, Reyaad Khan, in Syria in August 2015. Another Briton, Ruhul Amin, and a Belgian, Abu Ayman al-Belgiki, who were travelling in the same vehicle, also died.

Reaper drones have carried out more than a third of the coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. Photograph: Cpl Steve Bain ABIPP/PA

Revealing the pressure on drone operations, Bagwell said: “The problem we have had is that in seven years of constant operations we have not been allowed to have a break point, to step back and take stock without having to keep pushing crews.”

He said it was stressful for the operators to mount complex attacks over Syria and Iraq and then to return at night to a family home in the UK.



Barrons said he was comfortable about the law governing the existing use of drones, but the pace of change required a rethink. He said the technology being used in aerial drones could equally be applied to underwater warfare, requiring a new legal framework.

