Gama Aviation: The company that helped Britain spy for Israel

Royal Air Force surveillance flights over Gaza have relied on technical support from Gama, Declassified has found.

16 January 2025
Gama Aviation maintains the RAF Shadow R1 planes that have spied on Gaza. (Photo: David Gowans / Alamy)

Gama Aviation maintains the RAF Shadow R1 planes that have spied on Gaza. (Photo: David Gowans / Alamy)

  • One of the spy planes was damaged at an RAF base and grounded for the last six months, Declassified can reveal
  • Ministry of Defence refuses to comment on whether spy planes shared live surveillance footage of Gaza with Israel
  • Future of spy flights is uncertain after ceasefire deal, with far more Israeli hostages freed through peace talks than military intelligence operations

Tucked away behind Bournemouth airport is a hangar emblazoned with the words Gama Aviation. This site in southern England has been a key node in the Royal Air Force (RAF) spy programme above Gaza.  

Gama provides “engineering services including design, maintenance and repair” for the RAF’s six-strong fleet of Shadow R1 surveillance planes.

Without Gama’s technical support and deep knowledge of the planes, the RAF would have struggled to maintain almost daily surveillance flights over the besieged Palestinian territory since December 2023.

These missions were ostensibly to help locate hostages, but have led to concerns that Britain is complicit in Israel’s relentless attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Declassified has found that the RAF’s Shadow planes have often stopped off at Gama’s site in Bournemouth on their way to or from Britain’s Akrotiri air base on Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean.

Once deployed to Akrotiri in pairs, these small, twin propeller planes have spent around four hours a day flying above Gaza, hoovering up intelligence with their state-of-the-art onboard surveillance systems.

The footage and other intercepts can technically be shared live via a satellite link with partners on the ground, raising concerns that Israeli forces may have had real time access to UK surveillance of the battlefield.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) told Declassified that Gama risks being “complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” CAAT spokeswoman Emily Apple said people in Bournemouth “will be horrified to know that this local company is responsible for ensuring these flights stay operational.”

Gama did not respond to repeated requests for comment via phone and email.

Amnesty International, in its report accusing Israel of genocide, called on Britain to “immediately suspend…military and security assistance” with Israel “in light of the clear risk that they would contribute to the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law”.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) refused to comment on whether it shared live surveillance footage of Gaza with Israel, stating: “The UK’s operational mandate is narrowly defined to focus on securing the release of the hostages only, including British nationals, with the RAF routinely conducting unarmed flights since December 2023 for this sole purpose.”

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Grounded without Gama

Whether the flights will continue after last night’s ceasefire deal remains to be seen, but hundreds of Shadow sorties over Gaza have taken their toll on the aircraft, requiring frequent maintenance to prevent the planes breaking down. 

Power-hungry onboard electrical systems place a huge demand on the aircraft, and caused particular problems in the past when the planes operated in hot climates like Oman and Afghanistan.

It is partly for this reason that the Shadow R1s were observed on flight tracking websites rotating between Cyprus and England every couple of months, in order to spend time being serviced by Gama.

This is a long-standing arrangement, with Gama knowing the planes inside out, having helped acquire and convert some of the original airframes.

Paul Bristow, who was Gama’s engineering director, said in 2012: “We appreciate the confidence the MoD have placed in the Gama team in supporting Shadow R1 operations.” 

The planes have been flown by the RAF’s 14 Squadron, based at Waddington in Lincolnshire, yet much of the maintenance appears to take place at Gama’s site in Bournemouth, with input from the company’s head office in Farnborough.

One of the planes, with tail number ZZ504, was grounded at Bournemouth from June until last week, following an accident at Waddington shortly after it returned from Cyprus, Declassified has found.

With this plane out of action, and another of the fleet (ZZ417) seemingly in long-term maintenance, the RAF had just four of the spy planes in service.

Not only have they spied for Israel, but they must also protect the UK mainland amid rising tensions with Russia – a demanding task especially since another surveillance fleet, the larger Sentinel plane, was scrapped entirely.

The MoD denies that its support for Israel has put UK security at risk. A spokesperson told Declassified: “The Royal Air Force conducts vital work across the Middle East to promote regional stability, locate hostages and support de-escalation efforts. 

“We have sufficient aircraft available to meet our operational requirements both in the Middle East and across the globe.”

Mission creep

Yet this alleged effort to locate hostages has little to show by way of results, and has apparently caused unease among some people familiar with the RAF Shadow programme.

Days after Britain’s then defence secretary Grant Shapps announced the flights in December 2023, one of the fleet (ZZ504) flew from Waddington to Bournemouth for six weeks of maintenance before deploying to Cyprus – a sign perhaps of Gama’s importance to the whole enterprise.

The start of the flights coincided with the collapse of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which had seen over 100 hostages released – the largest number of captives freed in the entire conflict so far.

David Cameron seemed to justify the flights in January 2024 when, as foreign secretary, he informed parliament that two of the hostages were in fact British nationals.

Yet by May, neither of them had been freed as a result of the flights, and one of the pair – Nadav Popplewell – had actually died during Israeli military operations in Gaza. 

Emily Damari, the last remaining British hostage – a 28-year-old dual national – remains in captivity. Last week Hamas included her name among 34 hostages they promised to release in the event of a ceasefire deal – suggesting she may now walk free, but thanks to peace talks rather than surveillance missions.

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‘Special missions’

In 13 months of RAF spy flights, between the collapse of the first ceasefire in December 2023 and the one reached yesterday, Israel only managed to rescue around eight hostages through military intelligence operations.

Even on those occasions, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed. Britain’s MoD refuses to comment on what information its spy flights shared in connection with those incidents.

Infamously, Israel’s military has also killed hostages itself, not just on 7 October but later on when three were waving white flags.

Last week, it emerged that an Israeli military investigation found their operations in Rafah influenced Hamas’ decision to execute six hostages in August.

Their deaths sparked major protests in Israel, with demonstrators demanding prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu make a deal with Hamas.

That call has finally been heeded, but the last year of total war on Gaza is likely to have been lucrative for Gama.

The company’s annual report, which calls this type of work “special missions”, said it was a “strategic imperative” to “prosecute and capture opportunities with the UK Government, particularly within the Ministry of Defence”.