Warfare by remote control: the RQ-1 Predators

Adapted from an article by Thomas E. Ricks in the Washingtom Post

Date: 18 October, 2001

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THE USE of the armed RQ-1 Predators is a revolutionary step in the conduct of . The slow-moving, propeller-driven aircraft have been flown by the Air Force for six years to gather , most recently in during the Kosovo war in 1999. But now the Air Force has outfitted them with Hellfire , powerful usually carried on helicopters, the officials said.

Not much is known about how the armed Predators have been used in Afghanistan, but a government official said they have fired their several times. The by the Predators mark a turning point in military history because they signal that the Air Force is now able to survey and then shoot at ground positions from lower altitudes without putting pilots at .

EXTENDING REACH, FLEXIBILITY

The armed drones also give the military enormous reach and flexibility, creating the real possibility that the United States could someday fly missions without having to put large numbers of military personnel on nearby land bases or aircraft carriers. Military said the Bush administration’s war on terrorism could lead to the use of additional new technologies and methods, some of them still secret.

“I think this war is going to give you the revolution in military affairs,” said Eliot Cohen, an expert in military strategy at Johns Hopkins University.

The Air Force is also believed, for example, to be trying to weaponize the RQ-4A Global Hawk, a much longer-range unmanned aircraft that might eventually be able to carry from the continental United States to around the world. In April, the craft — which has a longer wingspan than a Boeing 737 — flew 8,600 miles from California to Australia.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Predators are usually operated by the Air Force. But in the Afghanistan , the day-to-day operation has been handled by the Central Agency because of its ongoing effort tracking suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, according to a source familiar with the operation. After the Predators take off, control is turned over to Air Force personnel in the United States. In case the satellite link is lost, the CIA has backup operators standing by to take over control.

“The more bouncing you have to do off of satellites and relay stations, the more potential trouble you have to prepare for,” one official said.

SEPT. 11 CHANGED EVERYTHING

Cohen, who has written extensively on military innovation, said the Sept. 11 terrorist have altered the way the Defense Department thinks about technological change by injecting new funding and clearing bureaucratic obstacles. Most important, he said, the shock from last month’s has shattered the Pentagon’s sense of the United States’ military invincibility. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tried to force change on the military as part of a broad, strategic review. But he was rebuffed by top generals who argued essentially that the armed forces were so busy dealing with current that they did not have the resources to meet other, hazily defined future .

The deployment of the armed Predators was first reported in the Oct. 22 edition of The New Yorker magazine. At first Pentagon officials dismissed the report, saying that the Air Force was still experimenting with putting aboard the aircraft.

Publicly, that is still the Air Force’s position. Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, was asked at a congressional breakfast on Tuesday about putting on drones. “We will have armed unmanned air vehicles in due course,” he responded. “We don’t want to push it any faster than it can reliably perform.”

Tests on the unmanned aircraft run by the Air Force’s Air Command, which Jumper commanded until recently, culminated last February with a successful shot of a live Hellfire missile from a Predator against a discarded Army tank in the Nevada desert. At the time, officials said the test was artificial because the Hellfire is designed to be by an attack helicopter flying at treetop levels, while the Predator usually flies at 10,000 feet and would fire its from a relatively high altitude as well.

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