Peter Lee

Dr Peter Lee is a University of Portsmouth Reader in Politics and Ethics who specializes in the ethical and operational aspects of remotely piloted aircraft (drone) operations, as well as the politics and ethics of war and military intervention. He writes in various formats with a particular focus on the UK’s Royal Air Force Reaper drone squadrons.

Between July and December 2016 he was granted unprecedented research access by the Royal Air Force to British Reaper drone operations at both RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, UK and Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, Nevada. He was able to observe both surveillance and lethal missile strikes against Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq: in real time and in close-up detail. He has also conducted in-depth interviews with 70 members of the Royal Air Force Reaper drone community for his next book, Reaper Force: The Inside Story of Britain’s Drone Wars. Peter is regularly invited to lecture on this and other subjects to military, academic, political, religious, media and wider audiences.

From June 2015 to June 2016 he was a member of the Department for Transport Oversight Committee for the Sciencewise public dialogue: The Use and Development of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems and Small Drones in the United Kingdom, which preceded the current government consultation on drones. In 2012 he published Blair’s Just War: Iraq and the Illusion of Morality and in 2015 published Truth Wars: The Politics of Climate Change, Military Intervention and Financial Crisis, both with Palgrave Macmillan.