A British firm is supplying engines for Israel’s newest generation of killer drones, Declassified has discovered.
The APUS 25 is a “revolutionary long-endurance TactiQuad” produced by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), an Israeli state-owned company which manufactures fighter aircraft and drones.
It is “set to redefine tactical drone operations for ground and maritime forces worldwide” given it can fly for longer and hold a range of payloads, according to IAI.
The drone’s versatility extends to “offensive operations”, meaning it can “effectively deploy… weapons systems, adding a new dimension to tactical air support in combat scenarios”.
Images published on IAI’s website reveal that the APUS 25’s engine is supplied by RCV Engines, a British engineering company based in Dorset.
The revelation offers further evidence that UK-made drone components are being exported to Israel, where they might be used to commit war crimes in Gaza.
Over recent months, Israeli remote-controlled quadcopters – which are small unmanned vehicles with four rotors – have been filmed dropping bombs and firing on Palestinians in Gaza.
“The drones would come down and pick off civilians – children”, retired surgeon Nizam Mamode told British MPs in November.
“We [were] operating on children who would say: ‘I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me’”, he added.
Israeli quadcopters have also been used to broadcast the sound of crying babies in order to lure Palestinians out of their homes and onto the killing fields.
RCV Engines admitted in 2022 that it had been granted an export licence exemption to ship its equipment worldwide, suggesting that its exports to Israel might not be subject to the Labour government’s recent arms restrictions.
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) spokesperson Emily Apple told Declassified: “Labour urgently needs to reverse this decision and close this loophole. It’s beyond time it ended its complicity in genocide and prioritised Palestinian lives over the profits of the arms industry”.
RCV Engines produces internal combustion engines and describes itself as a “specialist in multi-fuel engine technology”.
Established in 1997, one of its longstanding directors, Lawrence Gould, is the brother of Britain’s former ambassador to Israel (2010-15), Matthew Gould.
Until now, the company’s links with the Israeli arms industry have remained hidden from public view.
RCV Engines’ website hosts no information about its links with the APUS 25 programme, and IAI has not publicly stated where its new quadcopter’s engine is produced.
But promotional content for the drone clearly shows RCV Engines’ characteristic logo on the underside of the drones, where the engine is located.
This UK-made engine is crucial to the drone’s “groundbreaking” performance.
IAI boasts that “at the heart of the APUS 25’s innovation is its propulsion system. Unlike conventional electric quadcopters that rely on multiple electric motors, the APUS 25 utilizes a single, centrally located internal combustion engine”.
The result of this is “a dramatic increase in flight endurance – up to 8 hours, compared to the mere tens of minutes offered by electric counterparts”.
It also means the APUS 25 “punches well above its weight class” in terms of payload, allowing the drone to conduct “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations, as well as potential combat support roles”.
IAI clearly envisions a combat role for the new drones in Gaza.
At a conference in Tel Aviv last year, IAI’s head of multi-domain systems, Eli Neeman, said the drone would be “especially valuable for ground forces, providing immediate support without requiring air force assistance, as demonstrated in the recent drone strike on Yahywa Sinwar”, referring to the Hamas leader who was killed by Israel last year.
IAI also plans to expand the drone’s capabilities with a future APUS 60, which will feature more endurance and payload capacity. It is unclear whether these drones will also be powered by RCV Engines.
Last September, UK foreign secretary David Lammy announced arms export restrictions on Israel amid concerns over violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Around 30 arms export licences were suspended, including components which are used in military aircraft, helicopters and drones as well as items which facilitate ground targeting.
Remarkably, however, drone components made by RCV Engines may have been exempted from the recent restrictions.
In 2022, it was reported that RCV Engines’ heavy fuel and gasoline 4-stroke drone engines, similar to those seen in the APUS 25 drones, had “been removed from the export control list” in Britain.
The same year, RCV Engines confirmed on its LinkedIn page that it had received an export licence exemption for global shipping of its equipment.
This significantly improved “lead times, reduced the admin burden and enabled the securing of more orders worldwide”, the company said.
The exemption was made possible through political lobbying.
RCV Engines personally thanked its local Conservative MP Sir Christopher Chope for helping “us remove the need for an export licence when shipping worldwide”.
“The success that we have seen since 2022, which is directly linked to the export control status, has meant RCV has been steadily growing”, the company declared.
This suggests that the company’s engines could be being exported to Israel without any requirement to apply to the government for what is called a Standard Individual Export Licence (SIEL).
If this is the case, it would represent a gaping loophole in Britain’s arms export licensing regime, allowing UK-made components to be supplied to states which could use them for external aggression or internal repression.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) was approached for comment but said it would not comment on individual companies. RCV Engines was also approached for comment.
Emily Apple from CAAT added: “Removing RCV Engines from export licence controls is utterly outrageous. This makes a mockery of Labour’s already flimsy decision to suspend just 30 export licences to Israel and appears to create a massive loophole in the export licensing regulations.
“As CAAT’s 2024 report into political influence shows, UK arms companies have unparalleled influence over the government. On average, between 2009-19, senior government officials and ministers met with their arms industry counterparts 1.64 times a day”.
Source: Declassified