British UAVs aren’t currently involved in the airstrikes against IS. US Predator drones are.

But the RAF was the first in the region. In 1929, five pilotless aircraft, built by the experimental Royal Aircraft Establishment and called the Larynx, were flown over the Middle East. All failed in the deserts of Iraq.

The Larynx — from ‘Long Range Gun with Lynx Engine’ — could fly at 200 miles per hour and was controlled by radio. It was intended to fly to a target and detonate on impact, making it an early cross between a drone and a cruise missile.

The tests were the leading edge of a radical new British doctrine: air control.

In 1920, the Iraq rebellion occupied 80 Indian and British Army battalions. According to Peter Norman, a Sky News producer and the author of a thesis called ‘Empires of the Air: A Comparative Analysis of Airborne Surveillance for International Security Between the Interwar Period and the Twenty-First Century’, Churchill demanded “frugality” in the response. Airstrikes — rather than boots on the ground — fit the bill.

As Hugh Trenchard, Marshall of the Royal Air Force, wrote in a 1922 memo:

The Air Scheme is based on the principle that, if the Arabs have nothing to fight against on the ground and no loot or rifles to be obtained and nobody to kill, but would have to deal only with aeroplanes which are out of their reach, they are certain to come in, and there will be no risk of disasters or heavy casualties such as are always suffered by small infantry patrols in uncivilised countries

And, just like today, drones promised to be safer and cheaper than manned aircraft.

Was that an effective strategy? Norman argues against it:

“…although mechanisation became a prophylactic to reduce political damage and increase economic benefits for the imperial subjugator, it dramatically reduced the probability of insurgency suppression.

History rhymes, again.