Plans to test anti-personnel bombs using drones on Scottish world heritage site dropped by arms company

Plans to test anti-personnel bombs in the Flow Country, Scotland’s newly-designated world heritage site, have reportedly been dropped.

British arms company Overwatch applied for permission from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to carry out “live fire testing” of anti-personnel bombs dropped by drones on the vast area of peatland and blanket bog in Caithness and Sutherland.

The Flow Country, which straddles some 200,000 hectares, joined the likes of the Serengeti and the Grand Canyon in becoming a world heritage site by Unesco last month.

It is the first peat bog in the world to be granted such status, which was awarded because of its beauty and importance to conservation as it stores some 400 million tonnes of carbon in the north of Scotland.

The Flow Country is home to an abundance of flora and fauna and rare species including golden plover and greenshank | Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)

Overwerx had reportedly asked the CAA if it could fly a drone and drop its bombs over a 2km-diameter safety zone on land owned by the Liberal Democrat peer John Thurso, near Loch More, east of Altnabreac railway station.

But the bomb tests have now been cancelled after Overwatch was warned the area mapped for the activity included part of the Strathmore peatlands site of special scientific interest (SSSI), The Guardian has reported. The SSSI, which was given such status 20 years ago according to NatureScot, is an extensive area of blanket bog in central Caithness that is heavily protected and is home to rare and threatened species.

Overwatch’s chief operating officer Mark Melhorn told the national newspaper the firm had no idea the fragmentation bombs it planned to detonate were in the middle of the Flow Country, or included part of the Strathmore peatlands.

Mr Melhorn said Overwatch would immediately cancel its application to the CAA and postpone all further testing of its bombs in the UK, adding: “We had been put on to the area in question through the third-party provider we are using [and] at no time had it been flagged to us that the area had any protections in place, including when visiting the site for a recce.”

The application for permission from the CAA was done by OW Energetics, a subsidiary of Overwerx Ltd, an arms company that specialises in making anti-personnel bombs and military drones.

The company apparently chose Caithness on the advice of its test-firing contractor after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) refused to give it permission to test its devices at the Salisbury Plain live firing range in Wiltshire. This decision was reached because it was not an official MoD test.

Lord Thurso told The Guardian he did not know Overwatch had planned to use drones, nor that fragmentation bombs were involved.

He said while there was a deep quarry that he owned near the peatlands that had been used for “all sorts” of military and munitions testing, “there is absolutely no way” he would have approved the use of drones or explosives over Strathmore.

Overwerx is owned by a former army officer Drew Michael, who has featured in tabloid news after he began dating model Louise Redknapp, the ex-wife of the former footballer Jamie Redknapp.