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Watchkeeper deployment to Afghanistan ‘unlikely’

25th March 2014 - 09:23 GMT | by Beth Stevenson in London

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The British Army’s WK450 Watchkeeper is unlikely to be deployed to Afghanistan due to ‘significant delays’ to the programme, the UK House of Commons Defence Committee has revealed.

In a report released on 25 March, the committee also called upon the British government to provide greater transparency about UAV operations in order to increase public confidence in the use of military unmanned systems.

Despite an interim release to service being awarded to Watchkeeper on 5 March, which declared that the system was cleared for operations by UK forces, the committee noted that deployment to Afghanistan – the theatre for which

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Author

Beth Stevenson

Beth is a former senior reporter for Digital Battlespace and Unmanned Vehicles magazines. Beth graduated …

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