on 25 january 2013, the british government announced that the raf would deploy one sentinel aircraft from raf waddington, in support of french operations in mali. on 14 february 2014, it was reported that the sentinel was used to map the scale of flooding in southern england. on 18 may 2014, the mod announced that a sentinel had departed to ghana to assist in the search for the 223 schoolgirls abducted by the islamic militant group boko haram in nigeria on 14 april 2014. en route to ghana the sentinel was forced to divert to senegal due to a technical issue.