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<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175195/tomgram:_nick_turse,_the_forty-year_drone_war_/#more" eudora="autourl">
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175195/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_forty-year_drone_war_/#more<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=4>The Drone Surge <br>
</font><font size=3>Today, Tomorrow, and 2047 <br>
</b>By <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse">Nick
Turse</a><br><br>
One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next,
on a recent morning in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, a missile
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332847649526553.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_World">
blasted</a> a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same
increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that
slammed into a compound in
<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iO11PEDiP_MQ0JC72arbIluJmcHg">
Degan village</a> in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan,
killing three.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175188/tomgram:_engelhardt_and_turse,_the_cia_surges/">
suicide attack</a> 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
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/14/world/AP-AS-Pakistan-Missile-Surge.html">
strikes</a> -- 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. <br><br>
In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply
and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been
used to
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332847649526553.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_World">
assassinate suspected militants</a> 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).<br><br>
Today’s Surge<br><br>
</b>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</i> recently
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011300465.html?hpid=sec-politics">
reported</a>, “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.”<br><br>
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
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652372456526440.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">
reportedly</a> between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of the CIA’s
covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/mehsud-drone-strike-missed-taliban">
45 to 53</a> such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010,
there had already been
<a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/19/latest-us-attack-kills-six-in-north-waziristan/">
11</a> of them.<br><br>
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 McChrystal’s
counterinsurgency strategy. At the same time, however, UAS attacks
have increased to
<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/afghan-drone-war-spikes-under-mcchrystal/">
record levels</a>. <br><br>
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 Wired’s</i> Danger Room blog
<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/us-military-joins-cias-drone-war-in-pakistan/">
has reported</a>, 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 Nevada’s
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/08/60minutes/main5001439.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody">
Creech Air Base</a>, where the Air Force’s “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
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332847649526553.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_World">
Yemen</a> and Somalia -- come due and are, quite literally, paid.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
Drone Surge: The Longer View<br><br>
</b>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%.<br><br>
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 sky’s the limit.
<br><br>
More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing. According to
<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/10/29/bergen.drone.war/">
Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann</a> 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
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/asia/14pstan.html">
recent report</a> 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. <br><br>
While assisting the CIA’s 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.
<br><br>
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 Army’s 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.<br><br>
In addition, the more heavily-armed Reapers, which can now
<a href="http://www.174fw.ang.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123182981">
loiter</a> 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
<a href="http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/12/16/many-headed-dragon-heads-to-af-pak/">
installed</a> on Reapers operating in Afghanistan this spring. <br><br>
A technology not available for the older Predator,
<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gorgon-stare/">Gorgon
Stare</a> 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. <br><br>
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 Predator’s 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,”
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11drone.html">
according to</a> Deptula.<br><br>
The 40-Year Plan<br><br>
</b>When it comes to the drone surge, the years 2011-2013 are just the
near horizon. While, like the Army, the Navy
<a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4294104.html">
is working</a> on its own future drone warfare capacity -- in
<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/can-killer-drones-land-on-carriers-like-human-top-guns/#more-18800">
the air</a> as well
<a href="http://www.gdrs.com/programs/program.asp?UniqueID=31">as on</a>
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</i> series.
<br><br>
As a start, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the
Pentagon’s blue skies research outfit, is already looking into radically
improving on Gorgon Stare with an “Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous
Surveillance-Infrared
(<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/new-army-camera-promises-total-surveillance/">
ARGUS-IR</a>) 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.” <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=16001">
RQ-170</a> -- 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
<a href="http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2914210">has
been designated</a> to replace the antique Lockheed U-2 spy plane, which
has been in use since the 1950s.<br><br>
In the coming years, the RQ-170 is slated to be joined in the skies of
America’s “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</i>
<a href="http://afpakwar.com/blog/archives/2505">report</a>, 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.” <br><br>
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. It’s a
future built upon advanced technologies designed to make targeted
killings -- remote-controlled assassinations -- ever more
effortless.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174912/nick_turse_the_Pentagon%E2%80%99s_battle_bugs">
tiny insect-like robots</a> 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 --
they’re 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.<br><br>
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. Today’s 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.” <br><br>
The language may not be elegant, much less comprehensible, but if these
future fighter aircraft actually come online they will not only send
today’s remaining Top Gun pilots to the showers, but may even sideline
tomorrow’s drone human operators, who, if all goes as planned, will have
ever fewer duties. Unlike today’s drones which must take off and
land with human guidance, the MQ-Ma’s will be automated and drone
operators will simply be there to monitor the aircraft. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. </i>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. <br><br>
2047: What’s Old is New Again<br><br>
</b>The year 2047 is the target date for the Air Force’s 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,
<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/the-pentagons-8/">
hypersonic drones</a> 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 Force’s 2009-2047 UAS “Flight
Plan.”<br><br>
If anything close to the Air Force’s dreams comes to fruition, the “game”
will indeed be radically changed. By 2047, there’s no telling how
many drones will be circling over how many heads in how many places
across the planet. There’s 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. <br><br>
There’s 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 won’t even be that
lawnmower-engine sound indicating that a missile may soon plow into your
neighbor’s home. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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
</i>Los Angeles Times,
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse/single">the
Nation</a>, 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
</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805089195/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20">
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives</a>
(Metropolitan Books). His website is
<a href="http://www.nickturse.com/">NickTurse.com</a>.<br><br>
</i>Copyright 2010 Nick Turse<br><br>
<br>
</font><h5><b>© 2010 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.<br>
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