Lord Bingham made the comments to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in an interview which addressed the issue of the state being bound by the rule of law.

"Are there, for example, and this goes to conflict, not post-conflict situations, weapons that ought to be outlawed?" he said.

"From time to time in the history of international law various weapons have been thought to be so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance. I think cluster bombs and landmines are the most recent examples.

"It may be – I'm not expressing a view – that unmanned drones that fall on a house full of civilians is a weapon the international community should decide should not be used."

meanwhile...

from Wired

Tribesman in Waziristan are being paid to “plant the electronic devices” near militant safehouses, they tell the Guardian. “Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles.”

A veteran spy tells Danger Room that the use of these Taliban-tracking devices entirely plausible.

“Transmitters make a lot of sense to me. It is simply not possible to train a Pashtun from Waziristan to go to a targeted site, case it, and come back to Peshawar or Islamabad with anything like an accurate report. The best you can hope for is they’re putting the transmitter on the right house,” says former CIA case officer Robert Baer.

Herndon, Virginia-based defense contractor EWA Government Systems, Inc. is one of several firms that boasts of making tiny devices to help manhunters locate their prey. The company’s “Bigfoot Remote Tagging System” is a “very small, battery-operated device used to emit an RF [radio frequency] transmission [so] that the target can be located and/or tracked.”

The tag has sophisticated power management features to allow use over a long period of time (months)… Each tag can be installed on a witting or unwitting person, material, vehicle, ship, etc. Power is supplied by installed battery or host power source. The tag can be augmented with GPS to allow data logging for later exfiltration or geo-fencing functions (on/off when inside defined geographic boundaries). Bigfoot provides the warfighter with real-time tracking intelligence on potential adversaries conducting threat activities.

Word of these tiny transmitters has been circulating in militant circles for months. In early April, the Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Nazir said he had caught “spies” who were inserting into militants’ phones “location-tracking SIMs” — Subscriber Identity Module cards, used to identify mobile devices on a cellular network.

Ten days later, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft — America’s key weapons in its covert war on Pakistan’s jihadists and insurgents — may have been lead to the wrong targets.


Meanwhie...

ITT -EDO now make the CIA Predator B bomb rack
24.06.2009 21:13

BRU-71/A MQ-9 Reaper (Predator B)

 http://es.is.itt.com/BRU71A.htm

ITT’s BRU-71/A is a 14-inch pneumatic Bomb Release Unit (BRU) that has been developed for use with the MQ-9 Reaper Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). The BRU is based on ITT’s legacy BRU-46/A which is a proven design that has been in production for years. With BRU-46/A and BRU-47/A deliveries approaching 8000 units, the design represents a very reliable and stable design base for the BRU-71/A.

The BRU-71/A is capable of carrying and ejecting 1000 lb class weapons between 6 and 20 inches in diameter. Safety features include a Reversible In-flight Lock (RIFL), dual redundant arm and fire lines, and mechanical and electrical safety interlocks that allow for safe ground operations. With each release unit weighing less than 20 lbs, the BRU-71/A represents a formidable capability in a lightweight package.

Pneumatic ejection and actuation provides a clean, repeatable means of safely ejecting a wide variety of stores from the MQ-9. There is no maintenance operations required. This rack was developed for the MQ-9, but can certainly be used on other manned and unmanned platforms.

PRODUCT BROCHURE TEXT

27.4. 2009

 http://es.is.itt.com/DocumentationCenter/BRU71ADataSheet.pdf

ITT Corporation's BRU-71/A is a newly developed 14-inch
pneumatic bomb rack recently qualified for use on the
MQ-9 Reaper. It has completed qualification testing, and
units are presently being delivered.

The BRU-71/A offers users significant benefits over previous
generation bomb racks. These include ease of loading via
independent, self-latching hooks, pneumatic operation to
eliminate pyrotechnic impulse cartridges and the resultant
cleaning/maintenance actions, *zero retention force arming
units*, and a high reliability pneumatic in-flight lock.
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Sabre

 http://es.is.itt.com/Sabre.htm

The Sabre Carriage System addresses the need for lightweight, small, low cost single & multiple-station stores carriage and release equipment.

It is suitable for lightweight, 500lbs class and smaller stores including ground sensors, miniature UAVs, etc. It is compatible with MIL-STD-1760 interfaces, including miniature munitions. Each station utilizes a common, self-locking release module that simplifies loading and eliminates the need for cartridges and the associated time-consuming servicing cycle.


First line operation and maintenance is achievable without specialist skills, tools or equipment, and second line servicing is required annually. Currently available in a single or twin carriage configuration, however the high level of component commonality and modularity facilitates further variants to meet specific user applications.

____

Lightweight Stores Release Unit (SRU)

 http://es.is.itt.com/SRU.htm

ITT's Lightweight Stores Release Unit (SRU) is an entirely new design specifically developed for the carriage and release of small UAV payloads for utility and military applications such as sensors, resupply, search and rescue, and stores and weapons carriage.

For more information

Business Development Manager

EDO MBM Technology Ltd

Brighton, UK


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