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Memri
03-07-2025
- Business
- Memri
The Qatar Air Force Monitor (QAFM) Project
The Qatar Air Force Monitor (QAFM) Project aims to present current trends in the development of Qatari air power, acquisitions, training and global cooperation. The project will expose the potential regional implications of a jihadi terror-sponsoring state – the emirate of Qatar – that is armed with the latest and most advanced American, European and Israeli combat aviation technology. The following is a preliminary background report on the Qatari Emiri Air Force. The Qatar Air Force Monitor Project The Qatari Emiri Air Force is one of the most rapidly evolving air forces in the world. Up until 2014, its operational backbone numbered only nine Mirage 2000-5EDA defense fighters. In a leap of military transformation that began around 2014 – focusing on enhancing airpower capabilities through acquisition of the most advanced non-stealth and stealth-enhanced fighters – Qatar was able to build one of the most powerful air fleets in the Middle East. Qatari Emiri Air Force badge. On April 11, 2025, Qatar participated in a multinational drill hosted by Greece, alongside France, India, Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Israel, Slovenia, Spain, UAE, and the U.S. The Qatari air force demonstrated the capabilities of its F-15QA fighter squadron.[1] The Qatari Emiri Air Force Active Fleet (2025) Source: The Three-Pronged Acquisition Model: Defense Relations Through Purchase In its expansion process, the Qatari air force had opted to purchase fighter jets from three different companies: The F-15QA, manufactured by the Boeing company The Rafale , manufactured by French Dassault Aviation The Typhoon Eurofighter, a combined multinational development of the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain. Each of these acquisitions came with complete maintenance and pilot training, thus enhancing and solidifying Qatari relations with the USAF, the French Air Force and the UK's RAF.[2] The photo above shows Boeing's state of the art F-15QA "Ababil," on its pre-delivery fueling mission before flying to Qatar, April 10, 2025. The "Ababil" (ابابيل), named after a mythical Quranic bird that protected the Kaaba by pelting the invading armies with stones, is currently one of the most advanced "stealth-enhanced" fighter jets.[3] According to the website of the Israeli company Elbit Systems, the F-15 is equipped with Elbit components, including "fuel tanks, pylons, horizontal stabilizers and adapters."[4] According to other media reports, Boeing's Qatari F-15QA is equipped with an Elbit "anti-jamming" system,[5] as well as the Israeli Rafael Sky Shield electronic warfare system.[6] Dassault "Rafale". The Qatari model could be also equipped with an optional Elbit component: the TARGO-II helmet-mounted target designation system. The Typhoon Eurofighter. The Qataris have formed a joint squadron of Typhoons with the RAF - the 12 squadron based in Coningsby. The 11 joint squadron of the RAF and Qatari air force, flying the "Hawk" training aircraft (see below), is based in Leeming airbase in North Yorkshire [7]. The Al-Zaeem Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al-Attiyah Air Academy In Al-Udeid Since 2009, the Qatari air force has been running its own pilot training program at the Al-Zaeem Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al-Attiyah Air Academy,[8] which is named after the former head of the Qatari armed forces, who later served also as chief of police.[9] The academy is located at the Al-Udeid airbase. The 12th class of the academy graduated on January 22, 2025. Training a cohort of cadets – among them female cadets – takes up to 4 years, including advanced training in the UK and Italy for pilots trained to fly the F-15 and Typhoon fighter jets. One hundred and nineteen graduates qualified as pilots and drone operators in the latest class of the Academy – 100 men and 19 women – among them 14 from "neighboring and friendly countries": Jordan, Tunisia, Somalia,. and Rwanda.[10] The Al-Zaeem Academy badge. Qatari basic flight training aircraft below include (left to right) the PC21, H125 (Helicopter), and the BAE Systems "Hawk." The academy also trains pilots to fly the Pilatus PC-24 (down), a Swiss-made light business jet (below). Classes in jet engine mechanics, like the one below, are conducted in English. In this class, cadets are expected to understand and be able to explain the mechanics of a gas turbine engine. A control tower simulator is used for training airfield personnel. Air traffic control training is conducted. The Qatari air force trains personnel in both ATC (Air Traffic Control) and DCI (Data Communications Infrastructure). Training for done operators is conducted. Below is a Qatari training drone. Lately, Qatar has opted to purchase eight MQ-9B "Skyguardian" UAVs , one of the most advanced UAV's in current manufacture in the U.S.[11] Skyguardian by General Atomics. Below, the Emir of Qatar, commander in chief of the Qatari armed forces, surveys the guard of the 12th class of cadets graduating from the Al-Zaeem Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al-Attiyah Air Academy,[12] on January 22, 2025. Qatar In The Sky – With American Technology Qatar is the foremost sponsor of Islamist terrorism worldwide, followed by its close ally, Iran. Israel and the U.S. were able to attack Iran, knowing how ineffective Iran's air force was (the IRIAF comprised mainly aging Cold War-era planes, largely ineffective in today's aerial battlefield).[13] However, a similar attack on Iran's ally, Qatar, would have posed much greater challenges for any attacking air force – given the bolstered strength of the Qatari air force, which is now equipped with the most advanced aircrafts, aviation technology and munitions, as well as deep knowledge of air combat tactics of the U.S and NATO states' air forces. U.S.- Qatar Defense Contracts Despite Qatar's deeply embedded and unwavering support for extremist Islamist movements all around the globe, as well as its blatant incitement for terrorism and antisemitism through the Qatari owned Al-Jazeera media channel, the U.S. continues to sign defense contracts with Qatar through the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.[14] A U.S. State Department press release from January 2025 states:[15] "The U.S. has over $26 billion in active government-to-government cases with Qatar under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, making Qatar the second-largest FMS partner in the world. Recent and significant FMS sales include: Integrated Air & Missile Defense System, including the Patriot long-range missile system, the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, and the AN/FPS-132 Early Warning Radar; F-15QA fighter aircraft – the most advanced F-15 in production; and AH-64E Apache attack helicopters. Each of these programs includes facility construction and extended munitions, logistics, and training support." Qatar and Boeing The Boeing Company maintains both the Qatari Airways and the Qatari Air Force fleets of hundreds of Boeing Aircraft. Boeing also funds technological entrepreneurship and innovation programs in Qatar. From the "Boeing in Qatar" brochure, 2024 ( In 2024, Boeing and the Investment Promotion Agency Qatar (Invest Qatar) established a new legal entity called Boeing Aerospace Doha LLC, in Qatar.[16] A May 2025 video shows President Donald Trump's total and absolute trust in the air force of Qatar, a proven ally of Iran, as Air Force One is accompanied by F-15 "Ababils." The Apache AH-64E attack helicopter, manufactured by Boeing, currently the most advanced attack helicopter in the world. Qatari AH-64s flying in formation A Qatari air force C-17 "Globemaster" by Boeing. The Globemaster can carry 102 troops and their equipment, or 170,900 pounds (77,519 kilograms) of cargo ( Qatari air force M C-17 Globemaster. Currently, Qatar has eight C-17 aircraft in its fleet. Qatari C-130J. Four of them are in service. * The Qatar Air Force Monitor Project provides periodical updates on Qatari air strength development.
Straits Times
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
UK lawmakers approve ban of Palestine Action as terrorist group after jet damage
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Protesters from Palestine Action routinely target companies in Britain with links to Israel, including Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems, which the group has called its 'main target'. LONDON - British lawmakers voted on July 2 to ban pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, after its activists broke into a military base and damaged two planes in protest at what it says is Britain's support for Israel. Palestine Action, which describes itself as a direct action movement that uses disruptive methods, has routinely targeted companies in Britain with links to Israel, including Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems, which it has called its 'main target'. Britain's Labour government accused the group of causing millions of pounds of damage through action at a Thales factory in 2022, an Elbit site in 2024 and at the Royal Air Force base in southern England in June - the trigger for the decision to ban, or proscribe, the group. Proscription would officially designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation on a par with Islamic State or Al-Qaeda under British law, making it a crime to support or belong to the groups. Britain's proscription order will reach Parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords, on July 3. If approved by lawmakers there, Palestine Action's ban would become effective in the following days. The group, which has called its proscription unjustified and an 'abuse of power,' has challenged the decision in court and an urgent hearing is expected on July 4. United Nations experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council have urged Britain to reconsider its move, arguing that acts of property damage without the intention to endanger life should not be considered terrorism. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Singapore and Cambodia to expand collaboration in renewable energy, carbon markets and agri-trade World Trump announces Vietnam trade deal with 20% import tariff Singapore From camping to mentorship, Singapore Scouts mark 115th anniversary of the youth movement Singapore Ong Beng Seng's court hearing rescheduled one day before he was expected to plead guilty World Sean 'Diddy' Combs convicted on prostitution counts but cleared of more serious charges Singapore Teen, 17, to be charged with allegedly trespassing on MRT tracks Singapore Granddaughter of Hin Leong founder O.K. Lim fails to keep 3 insurance policies from creditors' reach Singapore Man on trial for raping drunken woman after offering to drive her and her friend home Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Britain's interior minister, says that violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest, and that a zero-tolerance approach was necessary for national security. On July 1, the group said its activists had blocked the entrance to an Elbit site in Bristol, southwestern England, and that other members had occupied the rooftop of a subcontracting firm in Suffolk, eastern England, it said had links to Elbit. An activist from Palestine Action spraying a military aircraft engine with red paint at Britain's RAF Brize Norton air base, on June 20. PHOTO: REUTERS Israel has repeatedly denied committing abuses in its war in Gaza, which began after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7, 2023. In addition to Palestine Action, the proscription order approved by Britain's Parliament includes neo-Nazi group Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group which seeks to create a new Russian imperial state. The vote on the three groups was taken together, meaning all three had to be banned or none of them. REUTERS
Straits Times
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
UK lawmakers approve ban of Palestine Action as terrorist group
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox LONDON - British lawmakers voted on Wednesday to ban pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, after its activists broke into a military base and damaged two planes in protest at what it says is Britain's support for Israel. Palestine Action, which describes itself as a direct action movement that uses disruptive methods, has routinely targeted companies in Britain with links to Israel, including Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems, which it has called its "main target". Britain's Labour government accused the group of causing millions of pounds of damage through action at a Thales factory in 2022, an Elbit site last year and at the Royal Air Force base in southern England last month - the trigger for the decision to ban, or proscribe, the group. Proscription would officially designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation on a par with Islamic State or al Qaeda under British law, making it a crime to support or belong to the groups. Britain's proscription order will reach parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords, on Thursday. If approved by lawmakers there, Palestine Action's ban would become effective in the following days. The group, which has called its proscription unjustified and an "abuse of power," has challenged the decision in court and an urgent hearing is expected on Friday. United Nations experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council have urged Britain to reconsider its move, arguing that acts of property damage without the intention to endanger life should not be considered terrorism. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Britain's interior minister, says that violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest, and that a zero-tolerance approach was necessary for national security. On Tuesday, the group said its activists had blocked the entrance to an Elbit site in Bristol, southwestern England, and that other members had occupied the rooftop of a subcontracting firm in Suffolk, eastern England, it said had links to Elbit. Israel has repeatedly denied committing abuses in its war in Gaza, which began after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. In addition to Palestine Action, the proscription order approved by Britain's parliament includes neo-Nazi group Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group which seeks to create a new Russian imperial state. The vote on the three groups was taken together, meaning all three had to be banned or none of them. REUTERS
Telegraph
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The failure to crush other Left-wing extremists created Palestine Action
The Government is allegedly planning to proscribe Palestine Action, the direct action group, as a terrorist organisation – but is it only the tip of a far-Left iceberg? The group was set up in 2020 by Richard Barnard, a former Extinction Rebellion activist, and Huda Ammori, who worked for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Barnard is a classic crusty, with tattoos including an Irish Republican slogan and Buddhist chants. Ammori was born to Arab parents and grew up in Bolton. She has said her Palestinian great-grandfather was involved in the 1936 Arab Revolt there, and that he was killed by British soldiers. The alliance between these two individuals shows how the far-Left and causes in the Islamic world have combined. The group have primarily targeted Elbit, an Israeli defence firm with factories in Britain, in a five-year sabotage campaign which has involved ram-raiding gates and destroying machines with sledgehammers. In 2024 a police officer had to be taken to hospital after being hit with one of those hammers, in an attack on Elbit's HQ in Bristol, as commented on by Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley. The group has targeted any business with links to Elbit, including their lawyers and landlords, in an effort to drive them out of business. They've successfully caused several businesses to cut ties, and the model has been imitated by groups using their name in the USA, Italy, and Norway among others. In 2023 they published a manual on how to run an underground cell, which even included a recommendation that activists use Kelly's Solicitors in Brighton, who are well known for their focus on protest-related cases. The authorities have regularly failed to tackle the group, with activists regularly given desultory sentences. Shortly after the announcement that they were to be proscribed, Palestine Action posted a graphic on Twitter/X showing the logos of 35 groups who supported a protest against the proscription. It won't be a surprise to see groups like CAGE or Muslim Engagement and Development listed, but the graphic also includes seemingly unrelated groups such as No More Exclusions, who campaign against school exclusions, and Reclaim the Power, a direct action group who protest the use of fossil fuels. Nor is it only small groups. Campaigning organisations like Liberty and Amnesty International have also criticised the move, as well as lawyers from well-known chambers like Doughty Street, various Corbynista MPs, and even the Irish novelist Sally Rooney. The Prime Minister was himself a legal officer for Liberty in the 1980s and was a barrister at Doughty Street chambers for most of his legal career. Indeed, as some have pointed out, in 2003 Keir Starmer defended the Fairford Five, a group of anti-war protestors who broke into an RAF airbase to damage planes at the start of the Iraq War (working as a barrister, the PM was of course subject to the 'cab rank' rule). Palestine Action are just the latest in a long line of violent protest groups which have been nurtured and defended by institutions on the Left. The failure of the authorities to nip this in the bud has allowed the group to escalate to this dangerous level. Proscription might well end the threat of Palestine Action, but as the history of its founders shows, many of its activists will simply shift to new radical groups. Only taking a tougher line on all far-Left protest groups will prevent its place being taken by something similar.
Spectator
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
How dare Sally Rooney ‘admire' Palestine Action
I'm old enough to remember when it was neo-Nazis who smashed up Jewish-owned businesses. Now it's so-called progressives. Not long ago, a Jewish business in Stamford Hill in London had its windows smashed and its doors kicked in and red paint sprayed all over its walls. Only it wasn't Combat 18 or the oafish dregs of the National Front that carried out this mini-Kristallnacht – it was Palestine Action. Israelophobia is the safest, most celebrated political position in Britain Yes, the lobby group that is gushed over by Sally Rooney in today's Guardian, and which is cheered by every bourgeois leftist with an X account, wielded its hammers against a Jewish-owned company. It was on 28 May. In the dead of night, three masked men laid waste to the offices of a landlord business in Stamford Hill, a part of London famous for its lively community of Orthodox Jews. Palestine Action says it targeted the business not because it is Jewish but because it rents out premises to Elbit Systems UK, an Israeli arms manufacturer. But the business said this isn't true. Speaking anonymously – because he feared anti-Semitic blowback – a spokesman for the company insisted it had 'no connection with Elbit'. To my mind, it's immaterial whether or not the business has connections with Elbit – Palestine Action's attack on it was disgusting regardless. You don't need a PhD in the horrors of the 20th century to understand how distressing it is for Jews in particular to see their businesses smashed to smithereens. Those shards of glass on the streets of Stamford Hill will have triggered the most traumatic memories among the local population. 'For Jewish people', this kind of destruction is 'very, very scary', said the business's spokesman. Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood security group, said it was horrifying to once again see 'the criminal harassment of Jewish-owned properties'. Whatever Palestine Action's political intentions might have been, the objective impact of its criminal assault on a business owned by Jews was to terrorise a Jewish population. Jews whose families came to the UK precisely to escape those 'nights of broken glass' in Russia, Germany and other nations that turned on their Jewish populations found themselves surrounded by shattered glass in Stamford Hill in 2025. Unforgivably, even the business's mezuzah – the scroll box some Jewish families attach to their front doors to remind them of their faith – ended up stained with the blood-coloured paint that Palestine Action splashed around. It's worth reminding ourselves of this woke Kristallnacht today as pompous leftists gather in Trafalgar Square to defend Palestine Action. The government has announced that it plans to proscribe the group under anti-terrorism laws following its trespassing and vandalism at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire last week. And the anti-Israel left is up in arms. Palestine Action are heroes, they say. Really? It's a shame that it is Palestine Action's incursion into Brize Norton – serious as that was – that has hogged the headlines. Because for me, its incursion into Stamford Hill was far more indicative of what a morally dubious movement this is. That horrendous attack confirmed that when the self-righteous of England's radical middle classes become feverishly obsessed with the 'evil' of the world's only Jewish state, then there's likely to be blowback for Jews here in the UK. All Palestine Action did was 'spray-paint a plane', says Sally Rooney in the Guardian. No it isn't. They also spray-painted a Jewish-owned business. They also got paint on a mezuzah. They also made Jews 'very, very scared' by smashing a shopfront in a Jewish suburb. Does she still 'admire Palestine Action wholeheartedly'? If so, then I humbly venture she is not on the right side of history in the way she seems to imagine. Independent MP Zarah Sultana has also offered her solidarity to Palestine Action. Their direct action is not a big deal, she suggests, because 'you can repair a plane, you can replace a broken window'. I sincerely hope Ms Sultana is not minimising the broken windows of Stamford Hill. I hope she is not downplaying the moral injury caused to Jews when they see the shattered glass their ancestors also saw. Perhaps she can clarify what she meant. This is important, Ms Sultana. Some are saying the clampdown on Palestine Action is an attempt to silence criticism of Israel. Get over yourselves. Hating Israel is the dinner-party prejudice du jour. It's the moral glue of the cultural establishment. You're no one in polite society unless you pull on a keffiyeh and defame the Jewish state as the most bloodthirsty state. Quit the faux-radicalism – Israelophobia is the safest, most celebrated political position in Britain right now. What worries me is its consequences. It seems unquestionable to me that when the influential single out the Jewish nation as the wickedest nation, the most twisted, genocidal 'entity' on earth, then ordinary Jews will get some heat. It's already happening. Should Palestine Action be branded a terror threat? I don't know. But I do know that, wittingly or otherwise, they terrorised the Jews of Stamford Hill last month.
