LONDON -- Four anti-drone protestors have been arrested after cutting through a wire fence at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.
The group, calling itself End The Drone Wars, were protesting against the use of armed drones operated from the base.
This morning at 8 am 4 activists entered RAF Waddington to call for an end to the drone wars. They have been arrested and taken into custody
— End The Drone Wars (@EndTheDroneWars) January 5, 2015
The four, who hail from Oxford, Nottingham, Leicester and Coventry, were attempting to make their way to the ground control station of the Reaper drone, according to an announcement on their Facebook page.
In a statement they said of their actions: “We come to RAF Waddington today to say a clear ‘no’ to the growing normalisation and acceptability of drone warfare."
"Thanks to the marketing of drone war as ‘risk free’, ‘precise’ and above all ‘humanitarian’, war has been rehabilitated and accepted as virtually normal by those who see little or nothing of the impact on the ground thousands of miles away."
"Remote wars mean most no longer hear, see or smell the impact of bombs and missiles. But behind the rebranding, war is as brutal and deadly as it has always been."
The RAF said that operations remained unaffected by the incident.
"RAF Waddington, like all large airfields, has a large perimeter fence that is protected by a variety of security measures. Whilst some protesters did breach the perimeter fence, Reaper operations continued completely unaffected".
Waddington is home to the RAF's 13 Squadron, which flies the Reaper drone, the only UK drone that is armed. Several Reapers have been deployed in Afghanistan, and each can carry Hellfire missiles. More recently, they were used against ISIS in Iraq.