Righteous Drones

It seems that the Glorious Successor and the Upper Miliband may not be the only British-powered drones to support the Righteous State in its eternal quest for Lebensraum. UEL, alias UAV, an Israeli company based in Staffordshire, manufactures engines for the Hermes 450, an unmanned aircraft used by the IDF for spying and targeting Hamas guerrillas in the schools, hospitals and mosques where they so fiendishly congregate. The company is owned by a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, whose website states that "the Hermes 450 is the Israeli defence primary UAV system" and is powered by a "UEL AR-80-1010 rotary engine"; however, Elbit's head of corporate communications claimed that this was inaccurate and "strongly recommended" that her word of honour as a public-relations officer for an arms manufacturer be trusted. Nevertheless, anti-Semitic mischief-makers such as Flight International's Israeli correspondent and Jane's, the thinking person's Guns and Ammo, persist in perpetuating the calumny.

This trade in modern V-weapons is, of course, entirely legal. The Government's policy on arms sales is to assess the risk that weapons might "be used for internal repression; provoke or prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions or conflicts in the country of final destination; or be used aggressively against another country", rather than for peace-keeping, pre-emption or meritorious homicide. Accordingly, though the number of refusals for military export licenses to Israel has increased since 2001, the number of exports has also increased, thanks to the moral miracle of New Labour mathematics.