[News] The Drone Surge
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jan 26 10:43:57 EST 2010
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175195/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_forty-year_drone_war_/#more
The Drone Surge
Today, Tomorrow, and 2047
By <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse>Nick Turse
One moment there was the hum of a motor in the
sky above. The next, on a recent morning in
Afghanistans Helmand province, a missile
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332847649526553.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_World>blasted
a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same
increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a
two-missile salvo that slammed into a compound in
<http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iO11PEDiP_MQ0JC72arbIluJmcHg>Degan
village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing three.
What were once unacknowledged, relatively
infrequent targeted killings of suspected
militants or terrorists in the Bush years have
become commonplace under the Obama
administration. And since a devastating December
30th
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175188/tomgram:_engelhardt_and_turse,_the_cia_surges/>suicide
attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA
forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned
aerial drones have been hunting humans in the
Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan,
an unprecedented number of
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/14/world/AP-AS-Pakistan-Missile-Surge.html>strikes
-- which have killed armed guerrillas and
civilians alike -- have led to more fear, anger,
and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with
help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most
public secret war of modern times.
In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft,
for years in short supply and tasked primarily
with surveillance missions, have increasingly
been used to
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332847649526553.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_World>assassinate
suspected militants as part of an aerial surge
that has significantly outpaced the highly
publicized surge of ground forces now
underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in
size and scope, the present ramping up of the
drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned
40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of
ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly
autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Todays Surge
Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the
upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review -- a
soon-to-be-released four-year outline of
Department of Defense strategies, capabilities,
and priorities to fight current wars and counter
future threats -- is already known to reflect
this focus. As the Washington Post recently
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011300465.html?hpid=sec-politics>reported,
The pilotless drones used for surveillance and
attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a
priority, with the goals of speeding up the
purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding
Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.
The MQ-1 Predator -- first used in Bosnia and
Kosovo in the 1990s -- and its newer, larger, and
more deadly cousin, the MQ-9 Reaper, are now
firing missiles and dropping bombs at an
unprecedented pace. In 2008, there were
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652372456526440.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>reportedly
between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of
the CIAs covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there
were
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/mehsud-drone-strike-missed-taliban>45
to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of
January 2010, there had already been
<http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/19/latest-us-attack-kills-six-in-north-waziristan/>11
of them.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has
instituted a much publicized decrease in piloted
air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as
part of Afghan War commander General Stanley
McChrystals counterinsurgency strategy. At the
same time, however, UAS attacks have increased to
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/afghan-drone-war-spikes-under-mcchrystal/>record
levels.
The Air Force has created an interconnected
global command-and-control system to carry out
its robot war in Afghanistan (and as Noah
Shachtman of Wireds Danger Room blog
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/us-military-joins-cias-drone-war-in-pakistan/>has
reported, to assist the CIA in its drone strikes
in Pakistan as well). Evidence of this can be
found at high-tech U.S. bases around the world
where drone pilots and other personnel control
the planes themselves and the data streaming back
from them. These sites include a converted
medical warehouse at Al-Udeid Air Base, a
billion-dollar facility in the Persian Gulf
nation of Qatar where the Air Force secretly
oversees its on-going drone wars; Kandahar and
Jalalabad Air Fields in Afghanistan, where the
drones are physically based; the global
operations center at Nevadas
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/08/60minutes/main5001439.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody>Creech
Air Base, where the Air Forces pilots fly
drones by remote control from thousands of miles
away; and -- perhaps most importantly -- at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a 12-square-mile
facility in Dayton, Ohio, named after the two
local brothers who invented powered flight in
1903. This is where the bills for the current
drone surge -- as well as limited numbers of
strikes in
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332847649526553.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_World>Yemen
and Somalia -- come due and are, quite literally, paid.
In the waning days of December 2009, in fact, the
Pentagon cut two sizeable checks to ensure that
unmanned operations involving the MQ-1 Predator
and the MQ-9 Reaper will continue full-speed
ahead in 2010. The 703rd Aeronautical Systems
Squadron based at Wright-Patterson signed a $38
million contract with defense giant Raytheon for
logistics support for the targeting systems of
both drones. At the same time, the squadron
inked a deal worth $266 million with mega-defense
contractor General Atomics, which makes the
Predator and Reaper drones, to provide management
services, logistics support, repairs, software
maintenance, and other functions for both drone
programs. Both deals essentially ensure that, in
the years ahead, the stunning increase in drone operations will continue.
These contracts, however, are only initial down
payments on an enduring drone surge designed to
carry U.S. unmanned aerial operations forward, ultimately for decades.
Drone Surge: The Longer View
Back in 2004, the Air Force could put a total of
only five drone combat air patrols (CAPs) -- each
consisting of four air vehicles -- in the skies
over American war zones at any one time. By
2009, that number was 38, a 660% increase
according to the Air Force. Similarly, between
2001 and 2008, hours of surveillance coverage for
U.S. Central Command, encompassing both the Iraqi
and Afghan war zones, as well as Pakistan and
Yemen, showed a massive spike of 1,431%.
In the meantime, flight hours have gone through
the roof. In 2004, for example, Reapers, just
beginning to soar, flew 71 hours in total,
according to Air Force documents; in 2006, that
number had risen to 3,123 hours; and last year,
25,391 hours. This year, the Air Force projects
that the combined flight hours of all its drones
-- Predators, Reapers, and unarmed RQ-4 Global
Hawks -- will exceed 250,000 hours, about the
total number of hours flown by all Air Force
drones from 1995-2007. In 2011, the 300,000
hour-a-year barrier is expected to be crossed for
the first time, and after that the skys the limit.
More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more
killing. According to
<http://edition.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/10/29/bergen.drone.war/>Peter
Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the
Washington-based think tank the New America
Foundation, in the Bush years, from 2006 into
2009, there were 41 drone strikes in Pakistan
which killed 454 militants and civilians. Last
year, under the Obama administration, there were
42 strikes that left 453 people dead. A
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/asia/14pstan.html>recent
report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace
Studies, an Islamabad-based independent research
organization that tracks security issues, claimed
an even larger number, 667 people -- most of them
civilians -- killed by U.S. drone strikes last year.
While assisting the CIAs drone operations in the
Pakistani tribal borderlands, the Air Force has
been increasing its own unmanned aerial
hunter-killer missions. In 2007 and 2008, for
example, Air Force Predators and Reapers fired
missiles during 244 missions in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In fact, while all the U.S. armed
services have pursued unmanned aerial warfare,
the Air Force has outpaced each of them.
From 2001, when armed drone operations began,
until the spring of 2009, the Air Force fired 703
Hellfire missiles and dropped 132 GBU-12s
(500-pound laser-guided bombs) in combat
operations. The Army, by comparison, launched
just two Hellfire missiles and two smaller GBU-44
Viper Strike munitions in the same time
period. The disparity should only grow, since
the Armys drones remain predominantly small
surveillance aircraft, while in 2009 the Air
Force shifted all outstanding orders for the
medium-sized Predator to the even more formidable
Reaper, which is not only twice as fast but has
600% more payload capacity, meaning more space for bombs and missiles.
In addition, the more heavily-armed Reapers,
which can now
<http://www.174fw.ang.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123182981>loiter
over an area for 10 to 14 hours without
refueling, will be able to spot and track ever
more targets via an increasingly sophisticated
video monitoring system. According to Air Force
Lt. Gen. David Deptula, Deputy Chief of Staff for
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance,
the first three Gorgon Stare pods -- new
wide-area sensors that provide surveillance
capabilities over large swathes of territory --
will be
<http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/12/16/many-headed-dragon-heads-to-af-pak/>installed
on Reapers operating in Afghanistan this spring.
A technology not available for the older
Predator,
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gorgon-stare/>Gorgon
Stare will allow 10 operators to view 10 video
feeds from a single drone at the same time. Back
at a distant base, a pilot will stare at a
tiled screen with a composite picture of the
streaming battlefield video, even as field
commanders analyze a portion of the digital
picture, panning, zooming, and tilting the image to meet their needs.
A more advanced set of pods, scheduled to be
deployed for the first time this fall, will allow
30 operators to view 30 video images
simultaneously. In other words, via video feeds
from a single Reaper drone, operators could
theoretically track 30 different people heading
in 30 directions from a single Afghan
compound. The generation of sensors expected to
come online in late 2011 promises 65 such feeds,
according to Air Force documents, a more than
6,000% increase in effectiveness over the
Predators video system. The Air Force is,
however, already overwhelmed just by drone video
currently being sent back from the war zones and,
in the years ahead, risks drowning in data,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11drone.html>according to Deptula.
The 40-Year Plan
When it comes to the drone surge, the years
2011-2013 are just the near horizon. While, like
the Army, the Navy
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4294104.html>is
working on its own future drone warfare capacity
-- in
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/can-killer-drones-land-on-carriers-like-human-top-guns/#more-18800>the
air as well
<http://www.gdrs.com/programs/program.asp?UniqueID=31>as
on and even under the water -- the Air Force is
involved in striking levels of futuristic
planning for robotic war. It envisions a future
previously imagined only in sci-fi movies like the Terminator series.
As a start, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency or DARPA, the Pentagons blue
skies research outfit, is already looking into
radically improving on Gorgon Stare with an
Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous
Surveillance-Infrared
(<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/new-army-camera-promises-total-surveillance/>ARGUS-IR)
System. In the obtuse language of military
research and development, it will, according to
DARPA, provide a real-time, high-resolution,
wide area video persistent surveillance
capability that allows joint forces to keep
critical areas of interest under constant
surveillance with a high degree of target
location accuracy via as many as 130
Predator-like steerable video streams to enable
real-time tracking and monitoring and enhanced
situational awareness during evening hours.
In translation, that means the Air Force will
quite literally be flooded with video information
from future battlefields; and every advance of
this sort means bulking up the global network of
facilities, systems, and personnel capable of
receiving, monitoring, and interpreting the data
streaming in from distant digital eyes. All of
it, of course, is specifically geared toward
target location, that is, pin-pointing people
on one side of the world so that Americans on the
other side can watch, track, and in many cases, kill them.
In addition to enhanced sensors and systems like
ARGUS-IR, the Air Force has a long-term vision
for drone warfare that is barely beginning to be
realized. Predators and Reapers have already
been joined in Afghanistan by a newer, formerly
secret drone, a low observable unmanned aircraft
system first spotted in 2007 and dubbed the
Beast of Kandahar before observers were sure
what it actually was. It is now known to be a
Lockheed Martin-manufactured unmanned aerial
vehicle, the
<http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=16001>RQ-170
-- a drone which the Air Force blandly notes was
designed to directly support combatant commander
needs for intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance to locate targets. According to
military sources, the sleek, stealthy
surveillance craft
<http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2914210>has
been designated to replace the antique Lockheed
U-2 spy plane, which has been in use since the 1950s.
In the coming years, the RQ-170 is slated to be
joined in the skies of Americas next wars by a
fleet of drones with ever newer, more
sophisticated capabilities and destructive
powers. Looking into the post-2011 future,
Deptula sees the most essential need, according
to an Aviation Week
<http://afpakwar.com/blog/archives/2505>report,
as long-range [reconnaissance and] precision
strike -- that is, more eyes in far off skies
and more lethality. He added, We cannot move
into a future without a platform that allows [us]
to project power long distances and to meet
advanced threats in a fashion that gives us an
advantage that no other nation has.
This means bigger, badder, faster drones -- armed
to the teeth -- with sensor systems to monitor
wide swathes of territory and the ability to
loiter overhead for days on end waiting for human
targets to appear and, in due course, be
vaporized by high-powered munitions. Its a
future built upon advanced technologies designed
to make targeted killings -- remote-controlled
assassinations -- ever more effortless.
Over the horizon and deep into what was, until
recently, only a silver-screen fantasy, the Air
Force envisions a wide array of unmanned
aircraft, from
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174912/nick_turse_the_Pentagon%E2%80%99s_battle_bugs>tiny
insect-like robots to enormous tanker size
pilotless planes. Each will be slated to take
over specific war-making functions (or so Air
Force dreamers imagine). Those nano-sized
drones, for instance, are set to specialize in
indoor reconnaissance -- theyre small enough to
fly through windows or down ventilation shafts --
and carry out lethal attacks, undertake
computer-disabling cyber-attacks, and swarm, as
would a group of angry bees, of their own
volition. Slightly larger micro-sized Small
Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (STUAS) are
supposed to act as transformers -- altering
their form to allow for flying, crawling and
non-visual sensing capabilities. They might fill
sentry, counter-drone, surveillance, and lethal attack roles.
Additionally, the Air Force envisions small and
medium fighter sized drones with lethal combat
capabilities that would put the current UAS air
fleet to shame. Todays medium-sized Reapers are
set to be replaced by next generation MQ-Ma
drones that will be networked, capable of
partial autonomy, all-weather and modular with
capabilities supporting electronic warfare (EW),
CAS [close air support], strike and multi-INT
[multiple intelligence] ISR [intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance] missions platform.
The language may not be elegant, much less
comprehensible, but if these future fighter
aircraft actually come online they will not only
send todays remaining Top Gun pilots to the
showers, but may even sideline tomorrows drone
human operators, who, if all goes as planned,
will have ever fewer duties. Unlike todays
drones which must take off and land with human
guidance, the MQ-Mas will be automated and drone
operators will simply be there to monitor the aircraft.
Next up will be the MQ-Mb, theoretically capable
of taking over even more roles once assigned to
traditional fighter-bombers and spy planes,
including the suppression of enemy air defenses,
bombing and strafing of ground targets, and
surveillance missions. These will also be
designed to fly more autonomously and be better
linked-in to other drone platforms for
cooperative missions involving many aircraft
under the command of a single pilot. Imagine,
for instance, one operator overseeing a single
command drone that holds sway over a small
squadron of autonomous drones carrying out a
coordinated air attack on clusters of people in
some far off land, incinerating them in small
groups across a village, town or city.
Finally, perhaps 30 to 40 years from now, the
MQ-Mc drone would incorporate all of the advances
of the MQ-M line, while being capable of
everything from dog-fighting to missile
defense. With such new technology will, of
course, come new policies and new doctrines. In
the years ahead, the Air Force intends to make
drone-related policy decisions on everything from
treaty obligations to automatic target engagement
-- robotic killing without a human in the
loop. The latter extremely controversial
development is already envisioned as a possible post-2025 reality.
2047: Whats Old is New Again
The year 2047 is the target date for the Air
Forces Holy Grail, the capstone for its
long-term plan to turn the skies over to
war-fighting drones. In 2047, the Air Force
intends to rule the skies with MQ-Mc drones and
special super-fast,
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/the-pentagons-8/>hypersonic
drones for which neither viable technology nor
any enemies with any comparable programs or
capabilities yet exist. Despite this, the Air
Force is intent on making these super-fast
hunter-killer systems a reality by
2047. Propulsion technology and materials that
can withstand the extreme heat will likely take
20 years to develop. This technology will be the
next generation air game-changer. Therefore the
prioritization of the funding for the specific
technology development should not wait until the
emergence of a critical COCOM [combatant command]
need, says the Air Forces 2009-2047 UAS Flight Plan.
If anything close to the Air Forces dreams comes
to fruition, the game will indeed be radically
changed. By 2047, theres no telling how many
drones will be circling over how many heads in
how many places across the planet. Theres no
telling how many millions or billions of flight
hours will have been flown, or how many people,
in how many countries will have been killed by
remote-controlled, bomb-dropping, missile-firing,
judge-jury-and-executioner drone systems.
Theres only one given. If the U.S. still exists
in its present form, is still solvent, and still
has a functioning Pentagon of the present sort, a
new plan will already be well underway to create
the war-making technologies of 2087. By then, in
ever more places, people will be living with the
sort of drone war that now worries only those in
places like Degan village. Ever more people will
know that unmanned aerial systems packed with
missiles and bombs are loitering in their
skies. By then, there undoubtedly wont even be
that lawnmower-engine sound indicating that a
missile may soon plow into your neighbors home.
For the Air Force, such a prospect is the stuff
of dreams, a bright future for unmanned,
hypersonic lethality; for the rest of the planet,
it's a potential nightmare from which there may be no waking.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of
TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009
Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as
well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice
Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los
Angeles Times,
<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse/single>the
Nation, In These Times, and regularly at
TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New
York University's Center for the United States
and the Cold War. He is the author of
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805089195/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>The
Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday
Lives (Metropolitan Books). His website is
<http://www.nickturse.com/>NickTurse.com.
Copyright 2010 Nick Turse
© 2010 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175195/
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