Thales Watchkeeper drones are used to kill civilians

INNATE introduction

Arms company Thales is a large-scale employer in East Belfast (manufacture) and Co Down (testing) with plans to open a third site elsewhere in Northern Ireland. It is the largest arms manufacturer on the island of Ireland. Here John Eversley shares some facts about Thales – much more in general can be found in his hyperlinks in the text as well as searches online and in books on the arms trade – and more could be added about the current war in Gaza.

There are some photos of protests at Thales sites in Northern Ireland in the album “The arms trade in Ireland including Thales missile company, Belfast” at

https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/albums/72177720297420924/

The irony of Thales being the largest ‘bomb factory’ in the North throughout the Troubles seems to be lost on most people. That a society which has undergone – and still suffers from – the trauma, collective and individual, of thirty years of political and sectarian violence should look to an arms company to provide employment beggars belief.

Thales

A fact file compiled by John Eversley

Thales has a joint venture with Elbit, an Israeli arms manufacturer to make Watchkeeper drones. Thales will say that these drones are for surveillance only so that only military targets are hit by other weapons. This is misleading:

• The Border Force used Watchkeepers in 2020 in the English Channel. These were not used to rescue refugees trying to reach safety but to detect them before they were in international waters. Using drones avoids the obligation which sea vessels have to aid a vessel in distress.

In November 2024 the UK government announced that it would spend money on surveillance equipment to deter small boats from crossing the English Channel. In September 2024 they trialled a number of. surveillance drones in a NATO exercise. These included the uncrewed aerial vehicle Peregrine for which Thales is the prime contractor ; surveillance drones Puma manufactured by AeroVironment, and Ebee Vision made by AgEagle Aerial Systems. The Peregrine was originally bought by the MoD for .“protecting British interests in the Gulf”

• The Torch 750 command and control software, Iron Sting and many of the IDF’s drones are made by Elbit Systems according to Forbes

• Surveillance drones are used on civilian populations. Israel has used surveillance and armed drones in Palestine. One of the main drones Israel uses is the Hermes 450 which the Watchkeeper is based on. These drones have killed including, infamously, a group of boys playing football on a beach in 2014

• In May 2021 Israeli air attacks including by drones damaging

• 53 school buildings

• 11 health centres and six hospitals, including Gaza’s only Covid testing and vaccination centre, and a Red Crescent headquarters

• including electricity and sewage pipes

• Killing dozens of civilians The leader of Gaza’s Covid-19 campaign was killed in this attack on his apartment building.

• Destroying Gaza’s largest bookstore

• Disabling a desalination plant which converts salt water into drinkable water

When these things happen in Ukraine, we rightly say that they are war crimes

• In 2020 the UK’s National Police Air Service said that it had made use of the Elbit Systems Hermes 900 as part of a wider trial’ presumably for controlling demonstrations

• Thales makes biometric and identification equipment used by American and European immigration agencies. Thales funded research at Queen’s University Belfast on ‘object detection in cluttered urban scenes’. Such methods were used in policing the Black Lives Matters demonstrations in the USA.

• In 2015 Thales entered into a partnership with WB Electronics in Poland manufacture ‘Gryf’ drones with a ‘strike capability’ based on the Watchkeeper and the Thales FreeFall Lightweight Multi-role Missiles (FFLMMs) which are made in Belfast – see below. Thales hoped that the British government would underwrite sales. Thales is currently trying to sell its Watchkeeper X drone to Poland. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is totally unjustified but not unprovoked. However, the sale of arms to eastern European members of NATO and armed drones to Ukraine are part of the narrative which Putin has used to justify the invasion.

• In 2024 it was announced that the Royal Navy was ordering £176m of Lightweight Multirole Weapons (LMM) from Thales. In March 2025 the Government announced that it would buy 5000 LMM for Ukraine. Thales makes the detonators use to fire weapons on the RAF’s Typhoon aircraft

• Thales has also developed a system for detecting drones called Eagle Shield .

Thales weapons are intended to be used against ‘soft’ targets too

In January 2022 the Royal Air Force flew 18 Next Generation Light Antitank Weapons, or NLAWs, made by Thales, to Ukraine. They are often described as anti-tank weapons. According to defence experts they are only useful at less than 6-800 metres when Russian strategy is generally to use tanks for long- distance barrage. However, NLAWs primary manufacturer, Saab says that ‘In Direct Attack (DA) mode NLAW can be used for non-armoured opponents and troops inside buildings, NLAW fires perfectly in confined spaces. It can be used against soft targets like trucks, buses, cars and helicopters. When fired directly through a window into a building, fragments will cause significant damage’.

People in Northern Ireland might be uneasy about these powerful weapons being used against buses, for instance, whether they have soldiers on board or not.

Thales makes Lightweight Multirole Missiles in Belfast. They are designed to be fired from Tactical and MALE (medium altitude, long endurance) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs), helicopters and ‘low cost’ fixed wing aircraft. Like the NLAWs they are designed to be used against soft targets too. Thales own publicity talks about using them against Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs) and jet skiers.

Damocles kills civilians in Yemen

Thales makes a laser-targeting system called Damocles. Thales says it has been used in Afghanistan, Mali, Sahel, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Thales itself says it is in service with the SU30, used by the Russians in Ukraine. There are various reports (mainly from the Ukrainian side) which say that Ukraine shot down to Russian SU30s.

One source says Russia is not using Damocles source says this never happened.

Thales mentions that the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in Yemen use Damocles and it is implicated in many attacks on civilians, including on a bus.

Academic links

Thales boasts of the research and training it supports at Queen’s and Ulster universities.

Alternative jobs: necessary and possible

The Watchkeeper has largely been a failure. The British Army originally ordered 54 of them. It is not clear that they were all delivered. According to the Ministry of Defence, five have crashed. Since 2010, Watchkeeper has only flown 3,000 flying hours or so. In 2020 a government minister said only ‘5 Watchkeeper airframes were in service as at 23 July 2020. 13 have flown in the past 12 months and 23 have been in storage for longer than 12 months’. In November 2024 the government announced that it would ‘‘retire’ the Watchkeeper drones which had proved unreliable.

In August 2021 Thales announced that it was selling its ground transportation (rail) division to Hitachi in order to ‘accelerate EBIT margin accretion and further deleveraging’. In English that means to increase its profits and reduce its debt.

Thales workers are highly skilled. Their skills could be used for work in which Northern Ireland excels, such as fossil free transport and medical equipment.

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