Drone Against Drones

Drone Against Drones 2025

Saturday 13 September will see the third ‘Drone Against Drones’ in Hastings as, once more, people will arm themselves with musical instruments and take on the issue of armed drones. Report by John Enefer.

The brainchild of local musician, writer and veteran peace campaigner Rob Hill, the event was first held in 2014 at a time when the use of armed drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), was still a novelty.

Operated remotely by ‘pilots’ sitting before screens, sometimes thousands of miles from the field of conflict, they have been criticized as introducing a ‘Play Station’ mentality’ into war and of making war more likely as governments can deploy lethal force in a ‘risk free’ way, with zero danger to their own side.

Armed drones have been used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. They have been a feature of the Ukraine war and have been a major part of Israel’s war in Gaza.

They have been implicated in many ‘accidental’ deaths. In 2012/13, during Operation Haymaker (a US military campaign in the Afghanistan war), leaked Pentagon documents show that within a five-month period nearly 90% of those killed by drone strikes were unintended targets.

A still more disturbing picture has emerged from the use of armed UAVs by the Israeli military in Gaza, particularly concerning its use of quadcopters (UAVs with helicopter-style revolving blades).

In 2024 Professor Nizam Manode, a retired surgeon and former clinical lead of transplant surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in London, spoke of his experiences during a month of volunteering at Nasser hospital in Gaza. To an all-party Parliamentary committee he explained how, after Israeli bombing attacks, quadcopters would come down and target survivors. ‘The drones would come down and pick off civilians – children’, he explained.

He described how the children he operated on would say: ‘I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.’ Professor Manode observed: ‘That’s clearly a deliberate act and it was a persistent act – persistent targeting of civilians day after day.’

Drone Against Drones logo

Rob Hill describes Drone Against Drones as ‘a street action designed to highlight the menace of armed unmanned aircraft, which have caused widespread civilian deaths in recent years.

‘A group of people armed with musical instruments will gather on Hastings seafront and play, or sing, sustained notes for as long as they can. The resulting drone, drawing the attention of passers-by, will give an opportunity to raise awareness of this issue. No musical ability is required for this action, just concern about this way to wage warfare and the rising death-toll it’s causing.’

People will gather at 1pm on Saturday 13 September at Hastings Pier, and progress to the Royal Standard in Hastings Old Town.

Drone Against Drones is co-sponsored by Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Hastings Against War, which is now also known as XR Peace.

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