PROTESTERS have renewed their calls for an end to the testing of military drones at Parc Aberporth following last week’s disclosure that a multi-million pound Unmanned Aerial Vehicle had to be written off after crashing at the airfield almost two years ago.

The ‘spy in the sky’ came to grief during a test flight in October 2014, according to a declassified report into the incident.

The fate of the 450kg unarmed, unmanned air vehicle - part of the Army’s £1.16bn Watchkeeper surveillance drone programme due to come online in 2017 – only came to light in a Ministry of Defence (MoD) report last week.

Gill Gough, national secretary for CND Cymru, who have staged numerous demos at the airfield, said the secrecy surrounding the report into the incident was understandable.

“This highly-expensive, highly-dangerous and - it would appear - highly difficult-to-control flying ‘spy in the sky’ has always been presented as 100 per cent safe,” she told the Cambrian News.

“The MoD’s own report clearly admits that, whilst being flown in Ceredigion, this multi-million-pound white elephant just fell out of the sky.

“Luckily, very luckily, it did so over the runway, not over a school, homes or the main road, just metres away from the crash site.”

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