UK firm RCV Engines cancels supply of drone engines to Israel after exposure

Company was supplying Israel with engines powering drones attacking Palestinian civilians

UK firm RCV Engines has officially cancelled its agreement with Israel for the supply of drone engines, after the deal and the use of the drones to attack civilians in Gaza was exposed by Declassified UK in April.

A Declassified UK investigation exposed the company’s involvement in supplying the engines for the ‘APUS 25’ “long-endurance TactiQuad” drone manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for use by the occupation against the people of Gaza.

Israeli quadcopters have been filmed bombing Palestinian civilians and have been used to broadcast the noise of crying babies and children to draw people out before shooting or bombing them.

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. Retired volunteer surgeon Nizam Mamode described his experience of the drones’ attacks on children during his service in Gaza:

The drones would come down and pick off civilians – children. 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’.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) spokesperson Emily Apple told Declassified at the time of its revelations that:

It’s beyond time it ended its complicity in genocide and prioritised Palestinian lives over the profits of the arms industry.

The Starmer government has massively increased the scale of UK arms and weapons-component sales to Israel, licensing more exports in the last three months of 2024 than were licensed in the whole four years from 2020-2023, according to the latest government statistics. The government is fighting in court to maintain UK sales to Israel of components essential to the continued operation of Israel’s fleet of F-35 strike fighters, which have been responsible for most of Israel’s airstrikes against Palestinian civilians, hospitals, schools and refugee camps in Gaza, flying over 12,000 missions during the genocide so far.

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