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• Taxpayer-funded Parc Aberporth, near Cardigan, has been testing military drones over the heads of Welsh residents since its launch in 2005.
• One of the most prominent drones tested in the area has been the Watchkeeper drone, a joint Israeli-French venture involving Elbit systems that has helped to kill civilian Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians.
• Recent aerial bombardment leaving hundreds dead in Gaza, and 66 children, has led groups to try and shut down Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems and their work in the UK.

In Gaza, Palestine, people live under the constant hum of Israeli drones, surveying them from the clouds above – but some of those drones started their life practising aerial reconnaissance over the residents of Cardigan, in west Wales.

voice.wales has been looking into the role of the military in Wales, backed by Welsh Government, in Israel’s recent aggression towards Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and has found links to a government funded drone-testing site in south west Wales with missile testing capability.

Parc Aberporth is an ex-military base that now serves as a technology park run by QinetiQ, one of Britain’s biggest private arms companies, and used to test killer drones over Welsh airspace despite opposition from local residents.

Tory MS stalwart Andrew RT Davies spoke gladly of Parc Aberporth back in 2007, telling the Welsh Affairs Committee that he welcomed the Welsh Labour administration’s assistance in creating an industrial centre for the testing of military drones.

One of the most lauded projects on site was the testing of the Watchkeeper unmanned aerial system (UAS), a joint-venture between Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems and French arms company Thales, a vehicle ready to be fully rigged with whatever weapons of war the client desires. 

Watchkeeper was pushed to clients at the London Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in 2011 by flaunting all of its destructive capability, with an early model of the drone hung from the ceiling having had dummy missiles glued to the underside of its wings for shopping buyers.

Elbit has been the target of direct action group Palestine Action’s latest protests, where activists braved heights to climb on top of their manufacturing plants making Watchkeeper drones in Leicester, Tamworth, and most recently Runcorn.

It was first tested over Welsh skies in April 2010 and has since seen use during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as bombing the citizens of Gaza with rocket attacks.

This is not the case of just a handful of flights conducted from West Wales Airport near Parc Aberporth. The British Army have described Watchkeeper as having “undergone rigorous flight testing” in Wales at a site custom-built to serve as the UK’s premier drone testing facility.

In 2018, a £6million Watchkeeper drone crashed during testing less than a mile away from a local school hosting a sports day at the time. 

The Welsh Government are complicit in helping Watchkeeper get off the ground by hoping to stimulate the economy through the arms industry.

The government had hoped to exploit arms companies’ blossoming love for drone warfare, due to an emerging trend within modern conflicts to use UAVs for observation and killing.

It was opened by then-First Minister Rhodri Morgan in September 2005 to get Wales “at the heart of the growing UAV sector” as war raged in the Middle East, after the government spent £21 million on the development. 

The government told the press a year before the launch an outlandish estimate of a thousand jobs over 20 years would be created from the technology park. This was quietly reduced to 250 jobs in 2009, and in 2012 it was revealed that the investment had only resulted in around 45 jobs.

The test area for the military drones was increased considerably and made permanent in 2011, with the zone reaching as far inland as the Brecon Beacons and a large swath of the Irish Sea being designated a Danger Zone.

Watchkeeper is based on a previous drone created by Elbit, the Hermes 450 drone, which has terrorised the people of Palestine during years of missile bombardment by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).

The same Hermes drones that killed four teenage Gazan boys on a beach in 2014 were the same ones that made a triumphant flypass at the Parc Aberporth ribbon-cutting event attended by First Minister Morgan. 

In September 2013 the MOD gave evidence to the Defence Select Committee telling officials that Watchkeeper “planned to replace” Hermes – the same testimony revealed that despite massive taxpayer funding the project still overran its schedule.

In fact the 54 killer drones cost the UK public £1.2 billion, which could have extended free school meals provisions to every child in poverty in Wales for three-and-a-half years.

Israeli forces have a long history of using drones in warfare, with some of the earliest examples being their use of unmanned air vehicles during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Ceredigion Palestine Action told voice.wales: “The Welsh Government must name and shame Israel as a colonialist state which is repeatedly breaking international and humanitarian law.”

“If the Welsh Government truly wishes to be ‘internationalist, not nationalist,’ then it must commit to speaking up to condemn the human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing and apartheid that Palestinians are subjected to by the Israeli state.”

“Further, Welsh Government investments in Parc Aberporth and QinetiQ, at Ceredigion’s Parc Aberporth, are a matter of great concern to Ceredigion Palestine Action. 

“Although the amount of investment is not public knowledge, it is public knowledge that QinetiQ designs and tests Elbit artificial intelligence and weapons systems that the Israeli military then use to kill and maim Palestinians, including children, and those systems are tested in Parc Aberporth airspace. 

“If Wales is to be truly a Nation of Sanctuary, then those investments must be firstly made visible, and then swiftly be divested from.”