BY IVAN KESIC
The findings of aviation enthusiasts and UK-based investigative journalists about British espionage activities in Gaza with aircraft stationed in Cyprus reveal only the tip of the iceberg of Western intelligence assistance to the Israeli regime amid the ongoing genocide.
Apart from supplying lethal weapons to the Tel Aviv regime to be used against Palestinians in the besieged coastal territory, Britain has been at the forefront of intelligence gathering for the Benjamin Netanyahu regime to aid his genocidal war, something that has not been adequately reported.
In October, it was revealed through military sources close to the British government that the country’s Royal Air Force (RAF) spy planes have been flying daily over Gaza to conduct surveillance of ‘vehicle convoys, streets and apartment blocks’ with information passed to Tel Aviv.
In mid-November, the British investigative journalism organisation Declassified UK released the first video evidence of a Shadow R1 spyplane taking off from Cyprus towards the Gaza Strip, confirming reports that London was spying on Palestinians on behalf of Tel Aviv.
These reports, however, did not emerge now. In the early weeks of the Israeli genocidal aggression on Gaza in October last year, there were reports about British spy planes taking off from their airbase in Cyprus daily and spending hours carrying out spying missions over the sea near the Gaza Strip.
The data initially surfaced thanks to aviation enthusiasts who track flights via internet-available flight trackers. These trackers also aggregate military spy flights, although not all of them.
Declassified UK conducted a more detailed analysis on the subject, which documented at least 50 such sorties by January, and then 200 by May 2024.
An independently constructed timeline showed that the number of flights was highest in March at 44, which increased later. One of these British spyplanes landed at the Israeli Nevatim airbase in February.
Despite repeated inquiries from journalists and British politicians, including Jeremy Corbyn, the British government refused to reveal the number of flights and their purpose, justifying its complicity in the Gaza genocide with tepid claims that they were helping to locate British citizens in Gaza.
Military experts, however, point out that British flights have been providing reconnaissance support to the Israeli regime, including preventing the transfer of weapons to the resistance forces.
This comes despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former military affairs minister Yoav Gallant, which has triggered calls for similar warrants against those directly or indirectly complicit in the ongoing genocide.
Legal experts also argue that intelligence assistance makes them participants in the Israeli genocidal campaign, so British officials could face prosecution for complicity in the genocidal war crimes.
Notably, the refusal of British authorities to provide any photographs or footage of the Shadow R1 spyplane in Cyprus made the case even stronger against London.
Declassified UK in November hired an experienced cameraman, Aleksandar Ljubojevic, who patiently waited for hours near the airbase and recorded the spyplane’s takeoff for the first time.
There was heavy military activity at the site that day, with Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, a US Black Hawk combat helicopter, RAF Typhoon fighter jets, and a Voyager KC.Mk refuelling tanker.
Shadow R1 flights continued regularly and last week alone tracker websites recorded five flights on five consecutive days, from November 24th-28th, for just an individual out of six operational aircraft.
The modus operandi of all five flights, as well as hundreds of previous ones, is identical: They take off from the British Akrotiri Airbase in southern Cyprus, fly towards Gaza and stay over the open sea in war-ravaged Gaza for two to six hours, after which they return with information.
As experts argue, this is the known case of British, American and Western intelligence and other assistance to the Israeli regime.
There are more unknown cases of assistance provided by the government in London to the Israeli regimes in terms of spy airplanes, drones and satellites.
These aircraft also take off from American carriers and other Western bases throughout the region and Europe, and major spying assistance is also provided by four British spy stations on the same island.
Shadow R1 is an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) aircraft based on the King Air 350CER civil utility aircraft model produced by the US company Beechcraft.
The basic model is not a highly sophisticated military aircraft by its capabilities and appearance, but part of the subsonic twin-turboprop family that has been produced for decades and used mainly for civilian purposes.
Although it gives the impression of a private VIP aircraft, it is an extremely versatile model, known for its good range and payload capacity in its class, operated by the armed forces of over 50 countries.
Shadow R1 has a length of 14.26m and a wingspan of 17.4m, a max take-off weight of 7,500kg, a max cruising speed of 453km/h, a max operating altitude of 35,000 ft, and can perform low-altitude surveillance sorties for over 7 hours.
Under an Urgent Operational Requirement, between 2007 and 2011 the British Royal Air Force (RAF) acquired four aircraft modified for ISTAR duties in then-occupied Afghanistan, designating them as Shadow R1.
Two more models, categorised as ‘offensive support’ assets on the RAF website, were delivered by 2013 when it was estimated that £72 million ($108 million) was spent on the first five aircraft.
One of the aircraft retired in 2017 and the fleet is currently being upgraded and expanded to eight aircraft, under the Shadow Mk2 Upgrade Programme, which the UK Ministry of Defence entrusted to the military company Raytheon UK in 2021 for £110 million.
Last year, Raytheon passed a critical design review and the first Shadow Mk2 is expected to be delivered this year, while the fleet will be complete with delivery of two more by the end of next year.
The company didn’t provide any technical details about the programme, but described the new model as an ‘exceptionally capable ISR asset’ and ‘one of the world’s most modern and capable intelligence gathering aircraft’.
What really makes the British modified version an asset, according to military experts, is an under-fuselage sensor turret containing a variety of integrated sensors with highly classified performance.
The aircraft is fitted with cutting-edge electro-optic and infrared systems, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), as well as missile warning systems and counter-measures.
Its sensors complement other platforms and capabilities, helping analysts prepare comprehensive intelligence products, and it can be integrated with signal intelligence (SIGINT) platforms and other advanced mission systems.
Shadow R1 also features an extensive communications capability, managed from operator consoles in the cabin. Any gathered data can either be analysed on board the R1 during a mission or transmitted elsewhere via satellite.
More specifically, the aircraft provides the ability to intercept Palestinian radio communications and phone calls, as well as zooming of what’s left of buildings in Gaza, all from a distance of several tens of kilometres.
In addition to the UK, variants of the Beechcraft Super King Air aircraft are also used for similar ISTAR, SIGINT and ELINT duties by the armed forces of France, Italy, Canada, the United States and the Zionist regime.
The Shadow R1 fleet is currently operated by the 14th Squadron from the RAF’s ISTAR hub at Waddington in Lincolnshire, nicknamed ‘the Crusaders’, and they fly to Gaza from Akrotiri Airbase on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
Akrotiri, also known as the Western Sovereign Base Area, is one of two British Overseas Territories on the island, the remnants of the colony of British Cyprus.
Both zones are primarily military-intelligence in nature and are of great strategic importance as they provide London and Washington with surveillance over the Eastern Mediterranean, West Asia and North Africa.
Despite local opposition and long-standing calls to close the military bases and return the territory to Cyprus, these plans were rejected with American pressure and funding, and in recent years there has been a significant intelligence upgrade.
In addition to British aircraft, US spyplanes like Lockheed U-2 also operate at Akrotiri Airbase, and nearby there are two of their measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) bases.
In Dhekelia, or the Eastern Sovereign Base Area, there’s a joint communications interception (COMINT) facility at Ayios Nikolaos base, which also hosts another MASINT station.
Outside the two aforementioned neo-colonial territories, the duo also operates RAF Troodos Station on a Cypriot mountaintop, which is used as an ELINT base.
COMINT bases intercept phone calls, texts, and emails across the region, and MASINT bases detect and describe the specific characteristics of target objects and sources.
This close cooperation between the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the US National Security Agency (NSA), namely the joint use of four Cypriot bases with joint funding, was exposed in 2013 thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The exposed top secret documents showed that the NSA maintains a ‘far-reaching technical and analytic relationship’ with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU) in daily ‘sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting’.
In 2014, it further disclosed that there was a secret agreement allowing the Israeli regime to share all intelligence data produced as part of the Five Eyes network, a powerful intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
British bases in Cyprus provide Tel Aviv with much more than just intelligence assistance, as it was revealed last year that UK military transport aircraft had made dozens of flights from Akrotiri to Israeli Ben Gurion Airport since the start of the Gaza genocide.
Akrotiri Airbase was used for the same purposes by the US forces, which transported tons of arms from around Europe to the Zionist entity through it, and the British authorities refused to tell the public what US aircraft were flying or what weapons were on board.
The UK also used Akrotiri for direct military assistance to the Israeli regime during Iran’s retaliatory Operation True Promise in April, when local Cypriot media reported that British jets took off from the airbase with the aim of shooting down Iranian drones.
The role of British bases in pro-Israel military-intelligence operations is well known to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, which in June warned Cyprus through the highest channels that it could become part of the frontline.
