A shocking investigation by Palestine Deep Dive has exposed the UK’s deepened involvement in Israel’s war on Gaza, revealing that Britain has outsourced its surveillance flight operations over the Palestinian territory to a US-based private military contractor, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC).

The move, conducted through SNC’s subsidiary Straight Flight Nevada Commercial Leasing LLC, marks a significant escalation in the UK’s role in supporting Israel’s military campaign, which has killed over 60,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since October 2023.

According to the report, the UK Royal Air Force (RAF) had been conducting near-daily surveillance missions over Gaza using Shadow R1 aircraft—Beechcraft King Air 350 planes—launched from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus since December 2023. These missions provided critical intelligence directly to Israeli forces. However, the operations have now been handed over to SNC, a major US defense contractor, in a "contractor-owned, contractor-operated" (COCO) arrangement that operates with minimal oversight and transparency.

The covert program was inadvertently exposed on July 28, 2025, when one of SNC’s leased aircraft failed to deactivate its transponder, revealing a surveillance mission circling Khan Younis in southern Gaza for over 90 minutes. The following day, Israeli airstrikes targeted the same area, resulting in civilian deaths and further devastation.

“For 20 months, UK spy planes operated in secrecy over Gaza,” the Palestine Deep Dive report stated. “On July 28, a mistake laid bare the truth: Britain’s intelligence operations continue, now outsourced to US war profiteers, directly supporting Israel’s deadly campaign.

”Sierra Nevada Corporation, a key player in the US defense industry with billions in Pentagon contracts, is now profiting from surveillance missions that guide Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s densely populated neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals. The campaign, launched after the Palestinian resistance operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, has left over 150,000 Palestinians injured and reduced entire communities to rubble, with widespread hunger and starvation compounding the crisis.Critics argue that the UK’s actions—providing intelligence, airbases, and now taxpayer-funded contracts to private US firms—amount to direct complicity in what many describe as a genocidal war. The British government has justified its involvement under the guise of “national security” and “counter-terrorism,” but the lack of transparency and accountability has sparked outrage among human rights groups and activists.

As calls for accountability grow louder, the UK faces mounting pressure to address its role in enabling Israel’s actions. The question remains: how many more lives must be lost before Britain ends its support for the war in Gaza? (ILKHA)