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Cargo drone makes debut in Afghanistan

Cargo drone makes debut in Afghanistan

By SLOBODAN LEKIC

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. military is testing a revolutionary new drone for its arsenal, a pilotless helicopter intended to fly cargo missions to remote outposts where frequent roadside bombs threaten access by road convoys.

Surveillance drones for monitoring enemy activity and armed versions for launching airstrikes have become a trademark of America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. But this is the first time a chopper version designed for transport has ben used operationally.

Two unmanned models of the Kaman K-MAX helicopters and a team of 16 company technicians and 8 Marines are conducting a 6-month evaluation program for the new craft at Camp Dwyer, a Marine Corps airfield in the Garmsir district of southern Helmand Province.

The craft have flown 20 transport missions since the inaugural flight on Dec. 17, said Maj. Kyle O'Connor, the officer in charge of the detachment. They have delivered nearly 18 tons of cargo, mainly thousands of Meals Ready to Eat and spare parts needed at the forward operating bases.

"Afghanistan is a highly mined country and the possibility of improvised explosive devices is always a problem moving cargo overland in a convoy," O'Connor said.

"Every load that we can take off of a ground convoy reduces the danger and risk that our Marines, soldiers, and sailors are faced with," he said. "With an unmanned helicopter, even the aircrew is taken out of harm's way."

The Marines from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 1 lead the missions and deliver the cargo into combat drop zones, while contractors operate and maintain the two aircraft.

The craft's onboard computer uploads the mission plans, enabling them to fly on autopilot. But an operator at base control monitors progress and can step in and override the autopilot for manual operation if any problems occur, or if the drone must be redirected in mid-flight.

The K-MAX is the latest in a series of Kaman synchronized twin-rotor helicopters dating from the 1950s. The unusual arrangement, with two side-by-side pylons on the helicopter's roof supporting counter-rotating blades, results in exceptional stability while hovering and allows pinpoint cargo delivery.

During the Vietnam War, a previous Kaman model, the two-pilot HH-43 Huskie, flew more rescue missions than all other aircraft combined because of this unique hovering capability.

The manned version of the K-MAX helicopter first appeared in the 1990s, and the pilotless prototype was unveiled in 2008. It can carry a maximum payload of 6,855 pounds (3,100 kilograms) and costs about $1,100 an hour to operate, several times less than any manned helicopter.

After a six-month test period, the military will determine whether to put the craft into regular operational use.

Throughout the 10-year war, NATO troops have wrestled with serious logistics problems in the high-threat areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Resupplying the isolated forward operating bases has meant facing the dangers of frequent ambushes and roadside bombs.

This has meant that specialized escort units, known as route clearance packages, must escort all supply convoys.

"This is very time-consuming because you have to clear the routes for every single mission," said Theo Farrell, Professor of War at King's College London. "Also, there is a shortage of route clearance packages due to the high demand for them."

But the use of large manned helicopters to deliver supplies has also proved problematic as they present easy targets for Taliban machine-gunners while hovering over the delivery point, he said.

"The use of drone choppers could resolve both problems," Farrell said. "It reduces the need for armed escorts and presents a much smaller target to the enemy."

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Slobodan Lekic can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich

New drone has no pilot anywhere, so who's accountable?

New drone has no pilot anywhere, so who's accountable?

By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

January 26, 2012

The Navy's new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It's designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation's most difficult maneuvers.

What's even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all.

The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone's ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently.

Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many.

"Lethal actions should have a clear chain of accountability," said Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist and robotics expert. "This is difficult with a robot weapon. The robot cannot be held accountable. So is it the commander who used it? The politician who authorized it? The military's acquisition process? The manufacturer, for faulty equipment?"

Sharkey and others believe that autonomous armed robots should force the kind of dialogue that followed the introduction of mustard gas in World War I and the development of atomic weapons in World War II. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the group tasked by the Geneva Conventions to protect victims in armed conflict, is already examining the issue.

"The deployment of such systems would reflect … a major qualitative change in the conduct of hostilities," committee President Jakob Kellenberger said at a recent conference. "The capacity to discriminate, as required by [international humanitarian law], will depend entirely on the quality and variety of sensors and programming employed within the system."

Weapons specialists in the military and Congress acknowledge that policymakers must deal with these ethical questions long before these lethal autonomous drones go into active service, which may be a decade or more away.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said policy probably will first be discussed with the bipartisan drone caucus that he co-chairs with Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita). Officially known as the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, the panel was formed in 2009 to inform members of Congress on the far-reaching applications of drone technology.

"It's a different world from just a few years ago — we've entered the realm of science fiction in a lot of ways," Cuellar said. "New rules have to be developed as new technology comes about, and this is a big step forward."

Aerial drones now piloted remotely have become a central weapon for the CIA and U.S. military in their campaign against terrorists in the Middle East. The Pentagon has gone from an inventory of a handful of drones before Sept. 11, 2001, to about 7,500 drones, about one-third of all military aircraft.

Despite looming military spending cuts, expenditures on drones are expected to take less of a hit, if any, because they are cheaper to build and operate than piloted aircraft.

All military services are moving toward greater automation with their robotic systems. Robotic armed submarines could one day stalk enemy waters, and automated tanks could engage soldiers on the battlefield.

"More aggressive robotry development could lead to deploying far fewer U.S. military personnel to other countries, achieving greater national security at a much lower cost and most importantly, greatly reduced casualties," aerospace pioneer Simon Ramo, who helped develop the intercontinental ballistic missile, wrote in his new book, "Let Robots Do the Dying."

The Air Force wrote in an 82-page report that outlines the future usage of drones, titled "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047," that autonomous drone aircraft are key "to increasing effects while potentially reducing cost, forward footprint and risk." Much like a chess master can outperform proficient chess players, future drones will be able to react faster than human pilots ever could, the report said.

And with that potential comes new concerns about how much control of the battlefield the U.S. is willing to turn over to computers.

There is no plan by the U.S. military — at least in the near term — to turn over the killing of enemy combatants to the X-47B or any other autonomous flying machine. But the Air Force said in the "Flight Plan" that it's only a matter of time before drones have the capability to make life-or-death decisions as they circle the battlefield. Even so, the report notes that officials will still monitor how these drones are being used.

"Increasingly humans will no longer be 'in the loop' but rather 'on the loop' — monitoring the execution of certain decisions," the report said. "Authorizing a machine to make lethal combat decisions is contingent upon political and military leaders resolving legal and ethical questions."

Peter W. Singer, author of "Wired for War," a book about robotic warfare, said automated military targeting systems are under development. But before autonomous aerial drones are sent on seek-and-destroy missions, he said, the military must first prove that it can pull off simpler tasks, such as refueling and reconnaissance missions.

That's where the X-47B comes in.

"Like it or not, autonomy is the future," Singer said. "The X-47 is one of many programs that aim to perfect the technology."

The X-47B is an experimental jet — that's what the X stands for — and is designed to demonstrate new technology, such as automated takeoffs, landings and refueling. The drone also has a fully capable weapons bay with a payload capacity of 4,500 pounds, but the Navy said it has no plans to arm it.

The Navy is now testing two of the aircraft, which were built behind razor-wire fences at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s expansive complex in Palmdale, where the company manufactured the B-2 stealth bomber.

Funded under a $635.8-million contract awarded by the Navy in 2007, the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration program has grown in cost to an estimated $813 million.

Last February, the first X-47B had its maiden flight from Edwards Air Force Base, where it continued testing until last month when it was carried from the Mojave Desert to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in southern Maryland. It is there that the next stage of the demonstration program begins.

The drone is slated to first land on a carrier by 2013, relying on pinpoint GPS coordinates and advanced avionics. The carrier's computers digitally transmit the carrier's speed, cross-winds and other data to the drone as it approaches from miles away.

The X-47B will not only land itself, but will also know what kind of weapons it is carrying, when and where it needs to refuel with an aerial tanker, and whether there's a nearby threat, said Carl Johnson, Northrop's X-47B program manager. "It will do its own math and decide what it should do next."

william.hennigan@latimes.com

RQ-4 Global Hawks drones cost $176 million each

U.S. may rely on aging U-2 spy planes longer than expected

By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

January 28, 2012

Wars have come and gone. But for more than half a century, the CIA and U.S. military have relied on a skinny sinister-looking black jet to go deep behind enemy lines for vital intelligence-gathering missions.

The high-flying U-2 spy plane was first designed during the Eisenhower administration to breach the iron curtain and, as engineers said, snap "picture postcards for Ike" of hidden military strongholds in the Soviet Union.

And although the plane is perhaps best known for being shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 and the subsequent capture of pilot Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 continues to play a critical role in national security today, hunting Al Qaeda forces in the Middle East. The aging cold warrior once slated for retirement in 2015 may fight on into the next decade.

The fleet of 33 spycraft was supposed to be replaced in the next few years with RQ-4 Global Hawks, the high-tech drones that have been part of the Air Force since 2001. But this week the Pentagon proposed delaying the U-2's retirement as part of Defense Department cutbacks.

At an estimated cost of $176 million each, the Global Hawk drone had "priced itself out of the niche, in terms of taking pictures in the air," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at a Thursday news conference. "That's a disappointment for us, but that's the fate of things that become too expensive in a resource-constrained environment."

The Pentagon has determined that operating the U-2 would be cheaper for the foreseeable future; it won't disclose how much operating the U-2s will cost for security reasons. The government has relied on the U-2 since 1955, when the aircraft was first built and designed under tight security by Lockheed Corp. at its famed Skunk Works facilities in Burbank headed by legendary chief engineer Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson.

"It's incredible to think that these planes are flying," said Francis Gary Powers Jr., Powers' son and founder of the Cold War Museum in Warrenton, Va. "You'd think another spy plane, or satellite or drone would come along by now to replace it."

Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., boasts on its website that the U-2, which naysayers said "could not be built and would last a few years," continues to play a critical role in national security.

Flying a nearly six-decade-old plane may sound risky, but the military's U-2s are regularly "rebuilt, redone and retrofitted," said Dianne Knippel, a Lockheed spokeswoman. Each of the nation's 33 U-2s get refurbished at Lockheed's new Skunk Works facility in Palmdale.

Since 1994, the Air Force said, at least $1.7 billion has been invested to modernize the U-2 airframe. [That's $51 million per plane] These upgrades also include new engines, new cockpits and, of course, new cameras and sensors.

Today, the U-2 is flying more missions and is involved in more operations than ever, said Staff Sgt. Heidi Davis, an Air Force spokeswoman. Since 2003, the Air Force has flown more than 95,000 hours in the U-2 providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

"The U-2 supports the boots on the ground using its various sensors and cameras to relay information to the requesting war fighting units," she said. "Specific missions conducted by the U-2 will not be discussed due to operational security."

Few U-2 missions are ever discussed. The former chief of Lockheed's Skunk Works facility, Ben Rich, gave a few details in his book "Skunk Works." In it, he wrote about the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when Russians were found delivering ballistic missiles to Cuba.

The CIA was flying a U-2 above Cuba when it discovered a missile site. President Kennedy wanted to know, "How do we know these sites are being manned?" Rich wrote. The CIA showed the president a picture taken from a U-2 at 72,000 feet. It showed a worker using an outdoor latrine.

"The picture was so clear you could see that guy reading a newspaper," Rich wrote.

Most of the U-2's capabilities are classified, but analysts say its newest sensors enable the U-2 to listen in on cellphone and radio conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground. Some can even "smell" the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory.

The U-2, nicknamed Dragon Lady, has been successful spying on other countries, but not because it's stealthy — countries often know that it's flying overhead at more than 70,000 feet. [That's 13 miles high] At that height, few countries have the capability to blast it out of the sky.

But it has happened. The Powers incident proved that.

That's part of the reason the Pentagon thought the remotely piloted Global Hawk would be a good replacement. Global Hawks, made in Palmdale by Northrop Grumman Corp., have been part of the U.S. arsenal since their first flight in 1998, carrying out humanitarian, scientific and combat missions.

There are various versions of the drone, including one for the Navy. The Air Force has 20 active Global Hawks and had planned to buy dozens more to replace the U-2s. But that plan is on hold, pending approval from Congress.

Northrop lashed out at this week's Pentagon plan, saying the U-2 needs to be replaced. In a statement, the company said the U-2 "places pilots in danger, has limited flight duration and provides limited sensor capacity."

Thirty-three pilots have died in U-2 operations, including pilots from Lockheed, the CIA and the Air Force.

To fly a U-2, pilots must, like astronauts, don a 35-pound yellow pressure suit to protect themselves from rapid decompression at high altitudes.

It helps stop nitrogen from forming bubbles in their blood and bringing on decompression sickness, known as the bends. To eat, they ingest meals like chicken a la king and beef gravy in tubes through their space suits.

Pilots are trained near Sacramento at Beale Air Force Base, where the U-2s are based.

Typically each year, 18 new pilots go through the 10-month course. At the same base, the Air Force is training about 60 new Global Hawk pilots a year.

"They might want to start training more U-2 pilots," said Loren Thompson, a defense policy analyst with the Lexington Institute, who estimated that the earliest the U-2 would be retired is 2023. "There's still a lot of fight in that aircraft."

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Times staff writer David S. Cloud contributed to this report.

U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq

U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq

By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Published: January 29, 2012

BAGHDAD — A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering to field unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.

The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles.

When embassy personnel move throughout the country, small helicopters buzz over the convoys to provide support in case of an attack. Often, two contractors armed with machine guns are tethered to the outside of the helicopters. The State Department began operating some drones in Iraq last year on a trial basis, and stepped up their use after the last American troops left Iraq in December, taking the military drones with them.

The United States, which will soon begin taking bids to manage drone operations in Iraq over the next five years, needs formal approval from the Iraqi government to use such aircraft here, Iraqi officials said. Such approval may be untenable given the political tensions between the two countries. Now that the troops are gone, Iraqi politicians often denounce the United States in an effort to rally support from their followers.

A senior American official said that negotiations were under way to obtain authorization for the current drone operations, but Ali al-Mosawi, a top adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; Iraq’s national security adviser, Falih al-Fayadh; and the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, all said in interviews that they had not been consulted by the Americans.

Mr. Asadi said that he opposed the drone program: “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky.”

The Pentagon and C.I.A. have been stepping up their use of armed Predator and Reaper drones to conduct strikes against militants in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. More recently, the United States has expanded drone bases in Ethiopia, the Seychelles and a secret location in the Arabian Peninsula.

The State Department drones, by contrast, carry no weapons and are meant to provide data and images of possible hazards, like public protests or roadblocks, to security personnel on the ground, American officials said. They are much smaller than armed drones, with wingspans as short as 18 inches, compared with 55 feet for the Predators.

The State Department has about two dozen drones in Iraq, but many are used only for spare parts, the officials said.

The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred all questions about the drones to the State Department in Washington.

The State Department confirmed the existence of the program, calling the devices unmanned aerial vehicles, but it declined to provide details. “The department does have a U.A.V. program,” it said in a statement without referring specifically to Iraq. “The U.A.V.’s being utilized by the State Department are not armed, nor are they capable of being armed.”

When the American military was still in Iraq, white blimps equipped with sensors hovered over many cities, providing the Americans with surveillance abilities beyond the dozens of armed and unarmed drones used by the military. But the blimps came down at the end of last year as the military completed its withdrawal. Anticipating this, the State Department began developing its own drone operations.

According to the most recent annual report of the department’s diplomatic security branch, issued last June, the branch worked with the Pentagon and other agencies in 2010 to research the use of low-altitude, long-endurance unmanned drones “in high-threat locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The document said that the program was tested in Iraq in December 2010. “The program will watch over State Department facilities and personnel and assist regional security officers with high-threat mission planning and execution,” the document said.

In the online prospectus, called a “presolicitation notice,” the State Department last September outlined a broad requirement to provide “worldwide Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U.A.V.) support services.” American officials said this was to formalize the initial program.

The program’s goal is “to provide real-time surveillance of fixed installations, proposed movement routes and movement operations,” referring to American convoy movements. In addition, the program’s mission is “improving security in high-threat or potentially high-threat environments.”

The document does not identify specific countries, but contracting specialists familiar with the program say that it focuses initially on operations in Iraq. That is “where the need is greatest,” said one contracting official who spoke on condition of anonymity, because the contract is still in its early phase.

In the next few weeks, the department is expected to issue a more detailed proposal, requesting bids from private contractors to operate the drones. That document, the department said Friday, will describe the scope of the program, including the overall cost and other specifics.

While the preliminary proposal has drawn interest from more than a dozen companies, some independent specialists who are familiar with drone operations expressed skepticism about the State Department’s ability to manage such a complicated and potentially risky enterprise.

“The State Department needs to get through its head that it is not an agency adept at running military-style operations,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Wired for War,” a book about military robotics.

The American plans to use drones in the air over Iraq have also created yet another tricky issue for the two countries, as Iraq continues to assert its sovereignty after the nearly nine-year occupation. Many Iraqis remain deeply skeptical of the United States, feelings that were reinforced last week when the Marine who was the so-called ringleader of the 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqis in the village of Haditha avoided prison time and was sentenced to a reduction in rank.

“If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country,” said Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, 57, an engineer from the northern city of Mosul.

Hisham Mohammed Salah, 37, an Internet cafe owner in Mosul, said he did not differentiate between surveillance drones and the ones that fire missiles. “We hear from time to time that drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists,” Mr. Salah said. “Our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext.”

Still, Ghanem Owaid Nizar Qaisi, 45, a teacher from Diyala, said that he doubted that the Iraqi government would stop the United States from using the drones. “I believe that Iraqi politicians will accept it, because they are weak,” he said.

Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Michael S. Schmidt from Baghdad.

Drone crashes in Somali capital

Surveillance drone crashes in Somali capital

Feb. 3, 2012 05:06 PM

Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Witnesses say a surveillance drone has crashed into a refugee camp in the Somali capital.

Drones have been used by the U.S. to attack or observe al-Qaida-linked militants in the Horn of Africa nation.

Refugees and soldiers in Mogadishu’s Badbado camp say they watched the drone crash Friday into a hut made of sticks, corrugated cans and plastic bags.

Sacdiyo Sheikh Madar, a refugee at the camp, says African Union peacekeepers came to remove it.

Police officer Ali Hussein says the drone was shaped like a small plane. A similar drone crashed into a house in Mogadishu last year.

Who reviews the U.S. 'kill list'?

"There has been remarkably little public debate about the drone strikes, which have killed at least 1,300 people in Pakistan"

"Obama and his aides have refused to answer questions about drone strikes because they are part of a covert program, yet they have repeatedly taken credit for their victories in public"

Source

McManus: Who reviews the U.S. 'kill list'?

By Doyle McManus

February 5, 2012

When it comes to national security, Michael V. Haydenis no shrinking violet. As CIA director, he ran the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretaps against suspected terrorists.

But the retired air force general admits to being a little squeamish about the Obama administration's expanding use of pilotless drones to kill suspected terrorists around the world — including, occasionally, U.S. citizens.

"Right now, there isn't a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel," Hayden told me recently.

As an example of the problem, he cites the example of Anwar Awlaki, the New Mexico-born member of Al Qaeda who was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen last September. "We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him," Hayden notes, "but we didn't need a court order to kill him. Isn't that something?"

Hayden isn't the only one who has qualms about the "targeted killing" program. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), has been pressing the administration to explain its rules for months.

In a written statement, Feinstein said she thinks Awlaki was "a lawful target" but added that she still thinks the administration should explain its reasoning more openly "to maintain public support of secret operations."

As Hayden puts it: "This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that's dangerous."

There has been remarkably little public debate about the drone strikes, which have killed at least 1,300 people in Pakistan alone since President Obama came to office. Little debate inside the United States, that is. But overseas, the operations have prompted increasing opposition and could turn into a foreign policy headache.

It's odd that the Obama administration, which came into office promising to be more open and more attentive to civil liberties than the previous one, has been so reluctant to explain its policies in this area. Obama and his aides have refused to answer questions about drone strikes because they are part of a covert program, yet they have repeatedly taken credit for their victories in public. After months of negotiations, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. won approval from the White House to spell out some of the administration's legal thinking in the Awlaki case. But his statement, originally promised for last month, has been delayed by continued internal wrangling.

When it is issued, officials said, the statement is likely to add a few details to the bare-bones rationale the administration has offered in a handful of public statements and court proceedings. The administration has said that strikes against suspected terrorists are justified for two reasons: First, that Al Qaeda is at war with the United States, which makes any participant in Al Qaeda operations an enemy combatant; and second, that anyone directly involved in terrorist plots against Americans poses an "imminent danger" to U.S. security.

Holder may also shed light on an issue that has been less clear: Should a terrorist suspect who is a U.S. citizen get special treatment? Some in the intelligence community argue that the answer is no — that a U.S.-born member of Al Qaeda is no different from an American who joined, say, the German army in World War II. But civil libertarians argue that in a murky war against terrorism, an American such as Awlaki deserves some kind of due process before his name goes on the CIA's "kill list."

In fact, officials say, Awlaki did get more due process than most Al Qaeda suspects on the list. They say the administration made a point of naming Awlaki publicly as an Al Qaeda leader — putting him on notice, in effect — before he was killed. And they say the Justice Department held that Awlaki could be killed only if it was not feasible to capture him. The administration has refused to release that legal opinion, in part because it's not sure it wants those standards to turn into a binding precedent for later cases.

But there are questions that go beyond the legal underpinning for targeted killing. Who puts names on the "kill list," and who reviews them? And is the process rigorous enough to withstand outside scrutiny?

In the case of a U.S. citizen such as Awlaki, Obama makes the final call. Or so said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who offered a rare bit of on-the-record clarity in an interview withCBS' "60 Minutes" last week. "In the end, when it comes to going after someone like that, the president of the United States has to sign off," Panetta said.

There's also scrutiny from Congress. "There is no intelligence activity the [Senate] Intelligence Committee follows more closely, or conducts more oversight on, than CIA counter-terrorism operations along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Feinstein said, studiously avoiding the word "drone."

But congressional oversight comes after the fact, and it is divided between Congress' intelligence committees, which review CIA operations, and its armed forces committees, which review military operations.

That's one reason some former officials argue that the administration needs to set up a clearer, more rigorous system of internal review — for its own good. John B. Bellinger III, who served as the State Department's top lawyer during the Bush administration, believes a good solution would be to expand the jurisdiction of the judges who currently authorize wiretaps to cover targeted killing cases as well.

But most intelligence officials hate that idea. "Why on earth would you want to get a judge involved?" asked one. A better solution, he said, would be appointing a special review office made up of seasoned officials who can't be fired, to insulate them from bureaucratic pressure. But that would still invest life-or-death power in a secret corner of the intelligence community, without a clear constitutional foundation.

The biggest problem with this newly invented form of clandestine warfare is that its rules have been made on the fly. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, has made crucial decisions with little outside review and virtually no public scrutiny.

The administration says it has the authority to kill U.S. citizens who are active in Al Qaeda, but it's never explained how that squares with the Constitution's guarantee of due process. It's past time that it did so.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

Regarding U.S. drones

Regarding U.S. drones

February 7, 2012

When the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a report Sunday claiming that U.S. drone strikes have killed dozens of civilian rescuers and mourners in Pakistan, the American media scarcely noticed. Similarly, while other countries hotly debate America's covert program of targeted assassination, its legality has never been considered by a U.S. court and is seldom discussed by Congress, which has ceded extraordinary authority over the drone program to the president and the CIA.

That silence could well come back to haunt this country.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's findings are worth a look — not because they're an ironclad assertion of facts on the ground in Pakistan's tribal areas, where solid information is hard to come by, but because of the questions they raise about the drone program. The three-month investigation turned up evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed when they tried to rescue people injured in a drone attack, only to be hit with another round of missiles. If this is true, it's a tactic that seems borrowed from the playbook of Islamist terrorists, who have been known to set off bombs in crowded areas, wait for rescuers to arrive and then explode more bombs to maximize the carnage.

Eyewitness accounts in such places as the tribal areas must be regarded with great skepticism; playing up alleged U.S. atrocities is a common recruiting strategy for terrorist groups. But claims of secondary drone strikes are so frequent that they call for further investigation. Meanwhile, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick, in his recent book, "The Triple Agent," describes a 2009 drone attack at the funeral of a Taliban operative that was aimed at a senior commander; he escaped, but dozens of civilians, including children, were reportedly killed in the strike. Are funerals appropriate targets, even when they provide an opportunity to lure dangerous terrorists out of hiding?

That's the kind of question we'd like to hear asked more often, by Congress and the courts. The drone program is so secretive that until last week it was not officially acknowledged to exist; President Obama changed that in an online appearance in which he insisted that drone attacks "have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties."

Such assurances, even when they come from the president, aren't enough. Other countries have developed drone technology, and if they follow U.S. precedent, they could start targeting their own enemies across any border they like, including our own. It is past time for U.S. courts and the United Nations to explore the legal issues involved in targeted assassination and set rules that take into account advances in technology.

Drones may soon fly alongside airplanes

Source

Drones may soon fly alongside airplanes

Approved bill would give FAA 3 years to act

by Bart Jansen - Feb. 6, 2012 10:33 PM

USA Today

WASHINGTON - Within a few years, that flying object overhead might not be a bird or a plane, but an unmanned drone.

Drones, perhaps best known for their role in combat missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are increasingly looking to share room in U.S. skies with passenger planes. And that's prompting safety concerns.

Right now, remote-controlled drones are mostly used in the U.S. by the military and the federal Customs and Border Protection in restricted airspace.

But everyone from police forces searching for missing people to academic researchers counting seals on the polar ice cap is eager to launch drones weighing a few pounds to some the size of a jetliner in the same airspace as planes.

On Monday, the Senate sent President Barack Obama legislation that requires the Federal Aviation Administration to devise ways for that to happen safely in three years.

"It's about coming up with a plan where everybody can get along," said Doug Marshall, a New Mexico State University professor helping develop regulations and standards. "Nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants to cause an accident."

The appeal of drones is that they can fly anywhere it's too dangerous or remote for people, and they cost less than piloted helicopters or planes.

In Mesa County, Colo., for example, sheriff's deputies have negotiated a special agreement with the FAA to fly a 2-pound helicopter up to 400 feet above the ground so a camera can snap pictures of crime scenes or accidents. An infrared camera can help deputies track a missing person or a suspect in an overgrown ravine.

"It's a tool in the toolbox," says Ben Miller, the program's manager.

Sidewinder missiles cost $600,000 each???

Source

Raytheon gets $39.6M to make newest Sidewinder

Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Monday, February 6, 2012

The U.S. Navy has awarded Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems a $39.6 million contract modification for fiscal year 2012 production and delivery of the AIM-9X Sidewinder Block II air-to-air missile.

The contract follows a $68.9 million contract announced in late December for low-rate initial production of 115 AIM-9X Block II missiles and related hardware for the Navy and the Air Force. [Wow a single missile only costs $599,130]

The AIM-9X Sidewinder is an infrared-guided, air-to-air missile that has demonstrated capability in the surface-to-air and air-to-surface missions, Raytheon said. The AIM-9X Block II adds a redesigned fuze and electronics, along with other enhancements to the AIM-9X Block I.

Raytheon says it has produced more than 4,500 AIM-9X Block I and II Sidewinders.

Drone strikes in the USA????

Source

Pentagon working with FAA to open U.S. airspace to combat drones

By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

February 13, 2012, 9:57 p.m.

With a growing fleet of combat drones in its arsenal, the Pentagon is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to open U.S. airspace to its robotic aircraft.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the military says the drones that it has spent the last decade accruing need to return to the United States. When the nation first went to war after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the military had around 50 drones. Now it owns nearly 7,500.

These flying robots need to be shipped home at some point, and the military then hopes to station them at various military bases and use them for many purposes. But the FAA doesn't allow drones in national airspace without a special certificate.

These aircraft would be used to help train and retrain the pilots who fly the drones remotely, but they also are likely to find new roles at home in emergencies, helping firefighters see hot spots during wildfires or possibly even dropping water to combat the blaze.

At a recent conference about robotic technology in Washington, D.C., a number of military members spoke about the importance of integrating drones along with manned aircraft.

"The stuff from Afghanistan is going to come back," Steve Pennington, the Air Force's director of ranges, bases and airspace, said at the conference. The Department of Defense "doesn't want a segregated environment. We want a fully integrated environment."

That means the Pentagon wants the same rules for drones as any other military aircraft in the U.S. today.

Robotic technology was the focus of the Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's annual program review conference in Washington last week. For three days, a crowd made up of more than 500 military contractors, military personnel and industry insiders packed the Omni Shoreham Hotel to listen to the foremost experts on robots in the air, on the ground and in the sea.

Once the stuff of science-fiction novels, robotic technology now plays a major role day-to-day life. Automated machines help farmers gather crops. Robotic submarines scour the ocean floor for signs of oil beds. Flying drones have become crucial in hunting suspected terrorists in the Middle East.

Drones such as the jet-powered, high-flying RQ-4 Global Hawk made by Northrop Grumman Corp. have also been successful in providing aerial coverage of recent catastrophic events like the tsunami in Japan and earthquake in Haiti.

The FAA has said that remotely piloted aircraft aren't allowed in national airspace on a wide scale because they don't have an adequate "detect, sense and avoid" technology to prevent midair collisions.

The FAA does allow exceptions. Unarmed Predator drones are used to patrol the nation's borders through special certifications. The FAA said it issued 313 such certificates last year.

The vast majority of the military's drones are small — similar to hobby aircraft. The FAA is working on proposed rules for integrating these drones, which are being eyed by law enforcement and private business to provide aerial surveillance. The FAA expects to release the proposal on small drones this spring.

But the Pentagon is concerned about flying hundreds of larger drones, including Global Hawks as well as MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, both made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in Poway.

And last week Congress approved legislation that requires the FAA to have a plan to integrate drones of all kinds into national airspace on a wide scale by 2015.

The Army will conduct a demonstration this summer at its Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, testing ground-based radars and other sense-and-avoid technology, Mary Ottman, deputy product director with the Army, said at the conference.

These first steps are crucial, said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who co-chairs a bipartisan drone caucus with Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita). Officially known as the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, the panel was formed in 2009 to inform members of Congress on the far-reaching applications of drone technology.

McKeon also said he was in favor of moving along the process of integrating drones into civil airspace. This came before he was abruptly interrupted by an anti-drone female protester during a speech.

"These drones are playing God," she said, carrying a banner that read "Stop Killer Drones." She was part of a group that wants the end of drone strikes.

Within seconds, hotel security personnel surrounded the woman. She was carried out chanting, "Stop killer drones."

McKeon, who stood silent throughout the brief protest, went on with his speech.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies

Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies

By NICK WINGFIELD and SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: February 17, 2012

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — Daniel Gárate’s career came crashing to earth a few weeks ago. That’s when the Los Angeles Police Department warned local real estate agents not to hire photographers like Mr. Gárate, who was helping sell luxury property by using a drone to shoot sumptuous aerial movies. Flying drones for commercial purposes, the police said, violated federal aviation rules.

“I was paying the bills with this,” said Mr. Gárate, who recently gave an unpaid demonstration of his drone in this Southern California suburb.

His career will soon get back on track. A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.

But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue.

American courts have generally permitted surveillance of private property from public airspace. But scholars of privacy law expect that the likely proliferation of drones will force Americans to re-examine how much surveillance they are comfortable with.

“As privacy law stands today, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy while out in public, nor almost anywhere visible from a public vantage,” said Ryan Calo, director of privacy and robotics at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. “I don’t think this doctrine makes sense, and I think the widespread availability of drones will drive home why to lawmakers, courts and the public.”

Some questions likely to come up: Can a drone flying over a house pick up heat from a lamp used to grow marijuana inside, or take pictures from outside someone’s third-floor fire escape? Can images taken from a drone be sold to a third party, and how long can they be kept?

Drone proponents say the privacy concerns are overblown. Randy McDaniel, chief deputy of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in Conroe, Tex., near Houston, whose agency bought a drone to use for various law enforcement operations, dismissed worries about surveillance, saying everyone everywhere can be photographed with cellphone cameras anyway. “We don’t spy on people,” he said. “We worry about criminal elements.”

Still, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups are calling for new protections against what the A.C.L.U. has said could be “routine aerial surveillance of American life.”

Under the new law, within 90 days, the F.A.A. must allow police and first responders to fly drones under 4.4 pounds, as long as they keep them under an altitude of 400 feet and meet other requirements. The agency must also allow for “the safe integration” of all kinds of drones into American airspace, including those for commercial uses, by Sept. 30, 2015. And it must come up with a plan for certifying operators and handling airspace safety issues, among other rules.

The new law, part of a broader financing bill for the F.A.A., came after intense lobbying by drone makers and potential customers.

The agency probably will not be making privacy rules for drones. Although federal law until now had prohibited drones except for recreational use or for some waiver-specific law enforcement purposes, the agency has issued only warnings, never penalties, for unauthorized uses, a spokeswoman said. The agency was reviewing the law’s language, the spokeswoman said.

For drone makers, the change in the law comes at a particularly good time. With the winding-down of the war in Afghanistan, where drones have been used to gather intelligence and fire missiles, these manufacturers have been awaiting lucrative new opportunities at home. The market for drones is valued at $5.9 billion and is expected to double in the next decade, according to industry figures. Drones can cost millions of dollars for the most sophisticated varieties to as little as $300 for one that can be piloted from an iPhone.

“We see a huge potential market,” said Ben Gielow of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a drone maker trade group.

For Patrick Egan, who represents small businesses and others in his work for the Remote Control Aerial Photography Association in Sacramento, the new law also can’t come fast enough. Until 2007, when the federal agency began warning against nonrecreational use of drones, he made up to $2,000 an hour using a drone to photograph crops for farmers, helping them spot irrigation leaks. “I’ve got organic farmers screaming for me to come out,” he said.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in Texas bought its 50-pound drone in October from Vanguard Defense Industries, a company founded by Michael Buscher, who built drones for the army, and then sold them to an oil company whose ships were threatened by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The company custom-built the drone, which takes pictures by day and senses heat sources at night. It cost $300,000, a fraction of the cost of a helicopter.

Mr. McDaniel said his SWAT team could use it for reconnaissance, or to manage road traffic after a big accident. He said he regretted that he didn’t have it a few months ago, to search for a missing person in a densely wooded area.

Mr. Buscher, meanwhile, said he was negotiating with several police agencies. “There is tremendous potential,” he said. “We see agencies dipping their toes.”

The possibilities for drones appear limitless. Last year, Cy Brown of Bunkie, La., began hunting feral pigs at night by outfitting a model airplane with a heat-sensing camera that soared around his brother’s rice farm, feeding live aerial images of the pigs to Mr. Brown on the ground. Mr. Brown relayed the pigs’ locations by radio to a friend with a shotgun.

He calls his plane the Dehogaflier, and says it saves him time wandering in the muck looking for skittish pigs. “Now you can know in 15 minutes if it’s worth going out,” said Mr. Brown, an electrical engineer.

Earlier this month, in Woodland Hills, Mr. Gárate, the photographer, demonstrated his drone by flicking a hand-held joystick and sending the $5,000 machine hovering high above a tennis court. A camera beneath the drone recorded lush, high-definition video of the surrounding property.

Bill Kerbox, a real estate agent in Malibu who hired Mr. Gárate for several shoots before the L.A.P.D. crackdown, said that aerial video had helped him stand out from his competitors, and that the loss of it had been painful.

Mr. Gárate, for now, plans to work mainly in his native Peru, where he has used his drone to shoot commercials for banks. He said he was approached by paparazzi last year about filming the reality television star Kim Kardashian’s wedding using a drone, but turned down the offer. “Maybe the F.A.A. should give a driver’s license for this, with a flight test,” he said. “Do a background check to make sure I’m not a terrorist.”

30 percent of drone attack victims are civilians

Source

Study: Militants, not civilians, are primary victims of drone strikes

by Sebastian Abbot - Feb. 26, 2012 01:01 AM

Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - American drone strikes inside Pakistan are killing far fewer civilians than many in the country are led to believe, according to a rare on-the-ground investigation by the Associated Press of 10 of the deadliest attacks in the past 18 months.

The widespread perception in Pakistan that civilians, not militants, are the principal victims -- a view that is fostered by leading right-wing politicians, clerics and the fighters themselves -- fuels pervasive anti-American sentiment and, some argue, has swelled the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

But an AP reporter who spoke to about 80 villagers at the sites of the 10 attacks in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militants in Pakistan's northwest tribal region along the Afghan border, was told that a significant majority of the dead were combatants.

The AP was told by the villagers that of at least 194 people killed in the attacks, about 70 percent -- at least 138 -- were militants. The remaining 56 were either civilians or tribal police, and 38 of them were killed in a single attack on March 17.

Excluding that strike, which inflicted one of the worst civilian death tolls since the drone program started in Pakistan, nearly 90 percent of the people killed were militants, villagers said.

But the civilian deaths in the covert CIA-run program raise legal and ethical concerns, especially given Washington's reluctance to speak openly about the strikes or compensate the families of innocent victims.

U.S. officials who were shown the AP's findings rejected the accounts of any civilian casualties but declined to be quoted by name or make their own information public.

The U.S. has carried out at least 280 attacks since 2004 in Pakistan's tribal region. The area is dangerous and off-limits to most reporters, and death tolls from the strikes usually rely on reports from Pakistani intelligence agents speaking on condition of anonymity.

The numbers gathered by the AP turned out to be very close to those given by Pakistani intelligence on the day of each strike, the main difference being that the officials often did not distinguish between militants and civilians.

Drone attacks began during the Bush administration. President Barack Obama has ramped them up significantly since he took office but slowed them down in recent months because of increased tension between the U.S. and Pakistan caused by American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

Pakistan responded by kicking the U.S. out of a base used to service American drones, but the move is not expected to affect the program significantly.

The AP study paints a much different picture from that advanced by important Pakistani opinion shapers.

Syed Munawar Hasan, head of the country's most powerful Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, recently claimed on TV that the strikes "are killing nearly 100 percent innocent people."

Imran Khan, a popular opposition politician close to some right-wing Islamic groups, addressed a cheering crowd last April, saying, "Those who lie to the nation after every drone attack and say terrorists were killed should be ashamed."

He called for journalists and activists to go to the tribal region to see that the strikes were killing civilians, not militants.

Some analysts have been skeptical about carrying out on-the-ground investigations, assuming villagers would follow the militants' narrative of high civilian death tolls to avoid reprisals. But the AP study showed otherwise.

Many knew the dead civilians personally. They also said one way to distinguish civilians from militants was by counting funerals, because the bodies of dead militants would usually be whisked away for burial elsewhere.

U.S. counterterrorism officials disputed the death tolls and other details of some of the strikes, including the exact locations.

Pressure builds for civilian drone flights at home

Pressure builds for civilian drone flights at home

Feb. 27, 2012 02:17 PM

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Heads up: Drones are going mainstream.

Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird's-eye view that's too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.

Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms.

Drones overhead could invade people's privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.

Despite that, pressure is building to give drones the same access as manned aircraft to the sky at home.

"It's going to be the next big revolution in aviation. It's coming," says Dan Elwell, the Aerospace Industries Association's vice president for civil aviation.

Some impetus comes from the military, which will bring home drones from Afghanistan and wants room to test and use them. In December, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration six months to pick half a dozen sites around the country where the military and others can fly unmanned aircraft in the vicinity of regular air traffic, with the aim of demonstrating they're safe.

The Defense Department says the demand for drones and their expanding missions requires routine and unfettered access to domestic airspace, including around airports and cities. In a report last October, the Pentagon called for flights first by small drones both solo and in groups, day and night, expanding over several years. Flights by large and medium-sized drones would follow in the latter half of this decade.

Other government agencies want to fly drones, too, but they've been hobbled by an FAA ban unless they first receive case-by-case permission. Fewer than 300 waivers were in use at the end of 2011, and they often include restrictions that severely limit the usefulness of the flights. Businesses that want to put drones to work are out of luck; waivers are only for government agencies.

But that's changing.

Congress has told the FAA that the agency must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by September 2015. This spring, the FAA is set to take a first step by proposing rules that would allow limited commercial use of small drones for the first time.

Until recently, agency officials were saying there were too many unresolved safety issues to give drones greater access. Even now FAA officials are cautious about describing their plans and they avoid discussion of deadlines.

"Our big concern is ensuring that as these get introduced into (civilian airspace) the system is safe," Michael Huerta, FAA's administrator, said. "What we're hearing from the Congress and the industry is, 'This technology is evolving quickly and we don't want the FAA to be too cautious so as to hold up technological innovation.' "

But there is no question that the FAA must find a way to accommodate this new class of aircraft, he said.

"Not that long ago some in aviation viewed the whole unmanned aircraft thing as kind of a passing fad. I think we're all beyond that now," Huerta said. "Everyone recognizes that the technology has developed and ... these things are really a permanent part of the aviation industry."

Drones come in all sizes, from the high-flying Global Hawk with its 116-foot wingspan to a hummingbird-like drone that weighs less than an AA battery and can perch on a window ledge to record sound and video. Lockheed Martin has developed a fake maple leaf seed, or "whirly bird," equipped with imaging sensors, that weighs less than an ounce.

Potential civilian users are as varied as the drones themselves.

Power companies want them to monitor transmission lines. Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which crops need water. Ranchers want them to count cows.

Journalists are exploring drones' newsgathering potential. The FAA is investigating whether The Daily, a digital publication of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., used drones without permission to capture aerial footage of floodwaters in North Dakota and Mississippi last year. At the University of Nebraska, journalism professor Matt Waite has started a lab for students to experiment with using a small, remote-controlled helicopter.

"Can you cover news with a drone? I think the answer is yes," Waite said.

The aerospace industry forecasts a worldwide deployment of almost 30,000 drones by 2018, with the United States accounting for half of them.

"The potential ... civil market for these systems could dwarf the military market in the coming years if we can get access to the airspace," said Ben Gielow, government relations manager for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group.

The hungriest market is the nation's 19,000 law enforcement agencies.

Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.

Several police departments are experimenting with smaller drones to photograph crime scenes, aid searches and scan the ground ahead of SWAT teams. The Justice Department has four drones it loans to police agencies.

"We look at this as a low-cost alternative to buying a helicopter or fixed-wing plane," said Michael O'Shea, the department's aviation technology program manager. A small drone can cost less than $50,000, about the price of a patrol car with standard police gear.

Like other agencies, police departments must get FAA waivers and follow much the same rules as model airplane hobbyists: Drones must weigh less than 55 pounds, stay below an altitude of 400 feet, keep away from airports and always stay within sight of the operator. The restrictions are meant to prevent collisions with manned aircraft.

Even a small drone can be "a huge threat" to a larger plane, said Dale Wright, head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association's safety and technology department. "If an airliner sucks it up in an engine, it's probably going to take the engine out," he said. "If it hits a small plane, it could bring it down."

Controllers want drone operators to be required to have instrument-rated pilot licenses -- a step above a basic private pilot license. "We don't want the Microsoft pilot who has never really flown an airplane and doesn't know the rules of how to fly," Wright said.

Military drones designed for battlefields haven't had to meet the kind of rigorous safety standards required of commercial aircraft.

"If you are going to design these things to operate in the (civilian) airspace you need to start upping the ante," said Tom Haueter, director of the National Transportation Safety Board's aviation safety office. "It's one thing to operate down low. It's another thing to operate where other airplanes are, especially over populated areas."

Even with FAA restrictions, drones are proving useful in the field.

Deputies with the Mesa County Sheriff's Office in Colorado can launch a 2-pound Draganflyer X6 helicopter from the back of a patrol car. The drone's bird's-eye view cut the manpower needed for a search of a creek bed for a missing person from 10 people to two, said Ben Miller, who runs the drone program. The craft also enabled deputies to alert fire officials to a potential roof collapse in time for the evacuation of firefighters from the building, he said.

The drone could do more if it were not for the FAA's line-of-sight restriction, Miller said. "I don't think (the restriction) provides any extra safety," he said.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, north of Houston, used a Department of Homeland Security grant to buy a $300,000, 50-pound ShadowHawk helicopter drone for its SWAT team. The drone has a high-powered video camera and an infrared camera that can spot a person's thermal image in the dark.

"Public-safety agencies are beginning to see this as an invaluable tool for them, just as the car was an improvement over the horse and the single-shot pistol was improved upon by the six-shooter," said Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel, who runs the Montgomery drone program.

The ShadowHawk can be equipped with a 40 mm grenade launcher and a 12-guage shotgun, according to its maker, Vanguard Defense Industries of Conroe, Texas. The company doesn't sell the armed version in the United States, although "we have had interest from law-enforcement entities for deployment of nonlethal munitions from the aircraft," Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said.

The possibility of armed police drones someday patrolling the sky disturbs Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The Constitution is taking a back seat so that boys can play with their toys," Burke said. "It's kind of scary that they can use a laptop computer to zap people from the air."

A recent ACLU report said allowing drones greater access takes the country "a large step closer to a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the authorities."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on civil liberties threats involving new technologies, sued the FAA recently, seeking disclosure of which agencies have been given permission to use drones. FAA officials declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the lawsuit.

Industry officials said privacy concerns are overblown.

"Today anybody-- the paparazzi, anybody -- can hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that they're interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they want," said Elwell, the aerospace industry spokesman. "I don't understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing."

Pakistan wants U.S. to put end to drone strikes

Pakistan wants U.S. to put end to drone strikes

Mar. 13, 2012 11:05 PM

Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON - Pakistan has told the White House it no longer will permit U.S. drones to use its airspace to attack militants and collect intelligence on al-Qaida and other groups, according to officials involved in the talks.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the drone program is classified, called the use of unmanned aerial vehicles a critical element in the Obama administration's anti-terrorism strategy.

Eliminating drone missions would "contribute to a resurgence of extremist groups operating in the tribal areas" along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, said Peter Singer, author of "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century."

Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Sherry Rehman, met Vice President Joe Biden's national-security adviser Antony Blinken on Friday and told him that Pakistan's political parties have agreed that the drone flights over Pakistan must end, officials involved said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

Pakistan's sovereignty over its airspace and the civilian casualties that have resulted from drone strikes are emotional issues in Pakistan, where public opinion heavily favors terminating drone missions, Pakistani officials say.

The United States will try to reach an accommodation with Pakistani leaders, two American officials said. The U.S. gave Pakistan $4.4 billion in economic assistance, counterinsurgency funding and military reimbursements in 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The only chance for a compromise, Pakistani officials said, may be if the U.S. agrees to share intelligence.

Drones at Issue as U.S. Rebuilds Ties to Pakistan

Drones at Issue as U.S. Rebuilds Ties to Pakistan

By DECLAN WALSH, ERIC SCHMITT and IHSANULLAH TIPU MEHSUD

Published: March 18, 2012

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Making up is never easy. But as Pakistan and the United States try to restart their troubled relationship after a year of spectacular crises, the difference could come down to drones.

For the Obama administration, facing a faltering war effort and increasingly distrustful allies in Afghanistan, the covert C.I.A. drone strike campaign centered on North and South Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan has acquired new relevance.

Although the drones are best known for targeting senior commanders of Al Qaeda — two more were reported killed in January — they also play a vital role in combating cross-border infiltration from Taliban havens inside Pakistan. Of the 10 confirmed strikes so far this year, 6 hit vehicles filled with fighters that, in several cases, were headed for the Afghan border, a senior United States official said.

“We must protect the troops, and almost all of that stuff is in Waziristan,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the drone program is classified.

Interviews with militants in those areas leave little doubt that the drones have disrupted their operations, driving fugitive leaders deeper into the mountains. But that matters little in mainstream Pakistan, where public discourse rings with thunderous condemnations of breached sovereignty and civilian casualties. Here, the C.I.A. campaign is as unpopular as ever — and could stymie efforts over the coming days to revive diplomatic relations with Washington that have been frozen for four months now.

On Tuesday, President Asif Ali Zardari will convene a special sitting of Parliament that aims to improve his government’s strained ties with the United States, which have been suspended since American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani troops on the Afghanistan border in November. Public outrage over the shooting capped a tumultuous year for the countries’ relationship, already rocked by a shooting by a C.I.A. contractor in Lahore and the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

“We want this relationship to be transparent and predictable,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington.

American officials hope that the parliamentary debate will pave the way for a normalization of relations by early April, end a months-long blockade of NATO supply lines through Pakistan and boost faltering efforts to draw the Afghan Taliban into peace talks. All those issues are critical to American plans to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014. But signs are that the Pakistani debate will be dominated by strident calls for an end to drone strikes.

“The drones are killing innocent bystanders, including children and women,” said Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the leader of the opposition in Parliament, in an interview. “They must be stopped forthwith.”

American officials say there is no question of grounding the unmanned aircraft, which have become a central weapon in the Obama administration’s counterterrorism arsenal. A senior American official in Washington said that the C.I.A. had consistently taken precautions to reduce the risk to civilians, and noted that some strikes had killed Pakistan’s insurgent enemies, too. “These efforts have been extremely precise and effective,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the program’s covert status.

In North and South Waziristan, the tribal districts where 95 percent of about 265 strikes ordered by the Obama administration have occurred, the drones have sown fear and paranoia among Taliban fighters who, facing a technologically superior enemy, have adopted some unusual countermeasures.

During an interview last month in Shawal, a thickly-forested district of plunging valleys that became a haven for Al Qaeda after 2001, a senior Taliban commander, Wali ur-Rehman, ordered his fighters to scan a newly arrived car with a camcorder. Mr. Rehman explained that the camera could somehow detect otherwise invisible signals from the “patrai” — local slang for small electronic tracking devices that, many tribesmen believe, guide American missiles to their target.

“This is our new weapon,” said Mr. Rehman, who has a $5 million United States government bounty on his head, pointing to the Sony camera. “It has saved a lot of lives.”

Whether that was true is unclear, although a former C.I.A. official confirmed that the agency does use tracking devices to identify targets. Either way, Mr. Rehman’s camcorder served a gruesome secondary purpose: recording the last testimony of tribesmen accused of spying for the United States, dozens of whom have been tortured and executed. Yet that, too, was a sign of vulnerability.

Another militant commander, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the killing of several innocent tribesmen by the Taliban’s “spy squads” had provoked discord in militant ranks over the past year, and led to a drop in summary executions.

On the American side, the drone program is also evolving. The pace has relented, with 64 strikes recorded in 2011, down from 117 in 2010, according to the Long War Journal, a Web site that closely monitors the strikes. A lively debate inside the Obama administration last summer gave the State Department greater say in the strikes. The final say, however, still rests with David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director.

The Afghan war also affects the program’s momentum. Gen. John R. Allen, the top allied commander in Afghanistan, now receives more timely information about C.I.A. strikes in Pakistan than he did just a few months ago, an American military official said. That allows the general’s commanders to direct attacks more effectively on the Afghan side of the border.

In January, President Obama publicly acknowledged the covert program for the first time. “This thing is kept on a very tight leash,” he said.

In Waziristan, though, many take those assurances with skepticism. On a visit to Islamabad last week, Noor Magul, a farmer from North Waziristan, spoke of his anger at the death of three relatives who were killed last Oct. 30 when a drone struck the car in which they were traveling. Naming the men as Khastar Gul, Mamrud Khan and Noorzal Khan, Mr. Magul insisted they had no militant links but worked in a local chromite mine.

“I have revenge in my heart,” said the 64-year-old, fingering his ash-colored beard. “I just want to grab a drone by the tail and smash it into the ground.”

Accounts of civilian casualties play a major role in Pakistani anger toward the drones. An extraordinary claim by President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, last June that there had not been “a single collateral death” over the previous year drew an indignant response. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which monitors the toll, counted “credible media accounts” of between 63 and 127 nonmilitant deaths in 2011, and a recent Associated Press investigation found evidence that at least 56 villagers and tribal police had been killed in the 10 largest strikes since August 2010. But analysts, American officials and even many tribesmen agree the drones are increasingly precise. Of 10 strikes this year, the local news media have alleged civilian deaths in one case. The remainder of those killed — 58 people, by conservative estimates — were militants.

“The overriding concern is to avoid collateral damage,” another senior United States official said.

For diplomats on both sides, the drone issue has become the Rubik’s Cube of their relationship — a puzzle with no easy solution. “Things are at a very delicate point right now,” one senior United States official said.

Some officials suggest that the diplomatic deadlock could be broken by sharing more information with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. But patience with Pakistan in Washington has been so low since the Bin Laden raid in May that such changes could be a tough sell in Congress, said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former member of the National Security Council.

“It’s not in the U.S. interest to have a drone program with limits,” she said. “The administration wants utmost flexibility.”

Whatever this week’s debate brings, many in Pakistan are cynical that it will change much. “I can tell you how all this will end,” said Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, a former interior minister. “The Pakistani people will keep on protesting. And the drone strikes will keep taking place.”

Iran says it recovered data from captured US drone

Iran says it recovered data from captured US drone

Associated PressBy ALI AKBAR DAREINI

Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran claimed Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy drone that went down in Iran last year, including information that the aircraft was used to spy on Osama bin Laden weeks before he was killed. Iran also said it was building a copy of the drone.

Similar unmanned surveillance planes have been used in Afghanistan for years and kept watch on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. But U.S. officials have said little about the history of the particular aircraft now in Iran's possession.

Tehran, which has also been known to exaggerate its military and technological prowess, says it brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret drone equipped with stealth technology, and has flaunted the capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States.

The U.S. says the drone malfunctioned and downplayed any suggestion that Iran could mine the aircraft for sensitive information because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.

The drone went down in December in eastern Iran and was recovered by Iran almost completely intact. After initially saying only that a drone had been lost near the Afghan-Iran border, American officials eventually confirmed the plane was monitoring Iran's military and nuclear facilities.

Washington has asked for it back, a request Iran rejected.

The chief of the aerospace division of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, told state television that the captured drone is a "national asset" for Iran and that he could not reveal full technical details.

But he did provide some samples of the data that he claimed Iranian experts had recovered from the aircraft, state television reported.

"There is almost no part hidden to us in this aircraft. We recovered part of the data that had been erased. There were many codes and characters. But we deciphered them by the grace of God," Hajizadeh said.

Among the drone's past missions, he said, was surveillance of the compound in northwest Pakistan where bin Laden lived. Hajizadeh claimed the drone flew over bin Laden's compound two weeks before the al-Qaida leader was killed there in May 2011 by U.S. Navy SEALs.

He also listed tests and maintenance that the drone had undergone, all of which, he said, had been recorded in the aircraft's memory. According to Hajizadeh, the drone was taken to California on Oct. 16, 2010, for "technical work" and then to Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Nov. 18, 2010.

He said it carried out flights from Afghanistan but ran into some problems that U.S. experts were unable to fix. Then the drone was taken in December 2010 to Los Angeles, where the aircraft's sensors underwent testing, Hajizadeh said.

"If we had not achieved access to software and hardware of this aircraft, we would be unable to get these details. Our experts are fully dominant over sections and programs of this plane," he said.

Hajizadeh said he provided the details to prove to the Americans "how far we've penetrated into this aircraft."

The U.S. Defense Department said it does not discuss intelligence matters and would not comment on the Iranian claims.

The semiofficial Mehr news agency said Iran had reverse-engineered the aircraft and has begun using that knowledge to build a copy of the drone.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday" that he views the reports with skepticism.

"There is a history here of Iranian bluster, particularly, now when they are on the defensive because of the economic sanctions against them."

He acknowledged that it was "not good for the U.S. when the drone went down in Iran and not good when the Iranians grabbed it." But the senator said he did not "have confidence at this point that they are really able to make a copy of it."

Iran has gone a long way in reverse-engineering some key technologies in the past three decades, particularly in the areas of nuclear and missile technology.

Iran's famous Shahab-3 missile, first displayed in 1998, is believed to be based on North Korea's Nodong-1 design. Iran obtained its first centrifuge from Pakistan in 1986 and later reverse-engineered it to develop its now advanced uranium-enrichment program.

Centrifuges, which purify uranium gas, are the central component of a process that can make fuel for power plants or — at higher levels of processing — weapons.

However, unlike the situation with the drone, the Iranian government usually touts these achievements as the result of an indigenous, home-grown research.

One area where there is concern is whether Iran or other states could reverse-engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.

How much data there is on the drone is another question. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.

Media reports claimed this week that Russia and China have asked Tehran to provide them with information on the drone, but Iran's Defense Ministry denied that.

Teen and drone once stuck in tree compete in state science fair

Teen and drone once stuck in tree compete in state science fair

April 30, 2012 | 6:00 am

When the California State Science Fair kicks off Monday, one 15-year-old Studio City innovator will feel fortunate that he still has a project to present.

Christian Stewart's autonomous, low-cost drone got struck in a palm tree during one of its final test runs April 20, and it took two fire trucks, a long ladder and three attempts with different hose nozzles to finally blast the glider from its perch.

“There was quite a lot of concern," Christian said recently. “I was really nervous about it.”

But he added: “There was no way I was going to just let it go.”

Christian will show his project to judges Monday and Tuesday as he competes with 30 other students in his category for first place and a chance at a share of more than $50,000 in prize money. The event will be held at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. For months, Christian toiled away, trying to develop a low-cost drone that could fly on its own, take orders from a computer program and shoot video from hundreds of feet above the ground.

The Harvard-Westlake freshman managed to create a $500 foam glider with a computer and a camera on board, which he estimates costs about $24,500 less than other experimental civilian models.

Christian wrote the computer program that runs the drone, and judges recognized his work by awarding him first place at the Los Angeles County Science Fair a few weeks ago. He said a biologist even approached him about ways to use the drone to quietly track wolves in the area.

On Monday, Christian will be among the youngest students in the senior division as one of more than 900 participants from across the state. He said he is hoping to place well, but is more excited about the chance to share his work -- work that almost was lost in a tree.

“Christian has put his life in this thing,” his father, Jim, said. “It’s his show, and we’re just bystanders.”

The fair culminates with award ceremonies Tuesday night.

Switchblade Sky Warrior Drone

Switchblade Sky Warrior

You launch it from a tube. It is powered by an electric motor. It has TV cameras and all that cool stuff in it.

If you find somebody you want to kill you fly the drone into them and the drone has a high explosive charge in it that blows up destroying the drone while killing whom ever you want to kill.

Column: Domestic use of drones? Bad idea

Source

Column: Domestic use of drones? Bad idea

By Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.

Today: Domestic use of drones.

Bob:President Obama and Congress recently signaled their willingness to allow wider use of drones — the pilotless aircraft used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia against Islamic terrorists — for domestic purposes. This is Big Brother at its worst. The ACLU and privacy groups have demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration address the "unique threat" posed by drones, as well they should.

Cal: Hold onto your ACLU card, Bob. I'm with you and civil liberties organizations that are deeply worried about government seizing this kind of intrusive and invasive power for itself.

Bob: Now there's a first, Cal agreeing with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Cal: Not really. I've sided with them on various issues, including the freedom of expression and even some religious matters. But back to the drones. While these planes have performed well in killing terrorists overseas, they are the last thing we need flying over America. The technology is so good that they can operate undetected and low enough to identify people attending your backyard barbecue.

Bob: I'm surprised how little we've heard from Congress, besides a letter of concern to the FAA from Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Cal: Maybe that's because there's a congressional "drone caucus," which has 58 members. Many of them have received generous campaign contributions from defense contractors, including General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin (a major manufacturer of drones and missiles that can be attached to them) and Raytheon.

Bob: Once again, money wins out over an important principle: the right to privacy. The news media tend to report actions by drones when they bomb terrorists, but the planes have several other significant capabilities. They can also see and capture pictures in the smallest detail from thousands of feet in the sky. They can detect cellphone conversations and other means of communications.

Cal: Bad things are often ushered in with good intentions. As constitutional attorney John Whitehead commented, "Certainly these unmanned vehicles could be used for legitimate purposes, such as search-and-rescue missions, etc., but living as we do already in a semi-surveillance state with our constitutional rights in peril at every turn, these drones, which can be armed with surveillance devices, as well as weapons, are yet another building block in a total control society."

Bob: Whitehead is right. Already we have millions of surveillance cameras watching us when we're in public places, not to mention the Patriot Act, which gives the FBI unprecedented powers to enter homes without notice, look at our library cards and much more. These drones are usually operated by the CIA against terrorists abroad. The law expressly forbids the CIA to operate within U.S. borders.

Cal: Here's something else to consider: In 2009, insurgents in Iraq hijacked Predator drones with a software program that cost $26. They gained access to footage shot by the spy planes. Another potential danger, which even the FAA acknowledges, is whether drones would add to the air traffic congestion already experienced at major airports. Commercial airline pilots, who also rely on visual flight rules, are concerned about safety hazards from unmanned drones.

Bob: Good point. Let's hope that the FAA listens to the suggestions for privacy and safety rules from privacy groups — and let's hope, too, that members of Congress put our constitutional rights above special interest money and speak up. President Obama should do so as well.

Cal: We are already further along with drones than the public may know. The FAA reform act requires the FAA to create a comprehensive program to safely integrate drone technology into the national air space by 2015. The FAA predicts there could be 30,000 drones crisscrossing American skies by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth $12 billion a year. Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn us against the "military-industrial complex." Drones are just the latest example of the industry's intrusions into our liberties.

Bob: That's right. In this case, the section of the FAA reform act that permits drones in our domestic airspace was written by a lobbyist for the contractors who build drones. I will guarantee you that the members of Congress who inserted that provision in the FAA act have all received political contributions from the makers of drones.

Cal: Granted, there can be legitimate uses of drone technology. They can cut costs for police departments and are more effective than helicopters in locating and apprehending armed and dangerous suspects. Since 2005, drones have been used along our lengthy border with Mexico to deter immigrants from entering our country illegally. But permitting the domestic use of drones for these purposes allows the camel's nose under the tent. Do we want our government collecting a constant stream of information on our whereabouts? Drones equipped with Tasers and beanbag guns could fly over political demonstrations, sporting events and concert arenas. The ability of these machines to collect information is almost unlimited — and if we allow it to happen, we will have accepted the Orwellian vision of Big Brother. Trying to recover liberties after losing them is like trying to regain your lost virginity.

Bob: In fact, drones have already been deployed to assist local police departments, which on its face may seem like a good idea. But local police don't control the drones; that's done by trained drone pilots in the U.S. military. So police departments may request assistance on a local crime issue, but who knows what other information is being collected by the U.S. government while the drone is flying over a particular area? On the subject of using drones for domestic purposes, Cal, we have found complete common ground.

Cal: A few groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are pushing back. They are filing lawsuits against the FAA, demanding records of the drone certificates that the FAA has issued to various government agencies and research groups. But, says constitutional attorney Whitehead, "It is unlikely that the implementation of this technology can be stopped. Based upon the government's positions on wiretapping, GPS tracking devices, and Internet tracking technologies, it is also unlikely that our elected officials will do anything to protect the American people from the prying eye of the American government."

Bob: The potential for abuse from government and law enforcement domestic surveillance by drones is terrifying. And if we're worried about congested air space, just wait until the commercial industry gets into the act. Already drone manufacturers are envisioning use by private companies where the technology might be used for journalistic purposes or disaster relief. But do we really want this technology in the hands of private companies?

Cal: And drones aren't the only threat. As The New York Times reported recently, while Google was roaming the world's streets with special cameras attached to car roofs for their Street View project, they were also collecting data such as e-mails, chat and instant messages, postings on websites and social networks — all sorts of private Internet communications. The company says the data collection was a mistake. But combine that technology with domestic drones, and the possibilities for Big Brother intrusion seem limitless. That's what scares me.

Barack Obama: Drone Warrior

Barack Obama: Drone Warrior

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: May 31

A very strange story, that 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles “baseball cards” with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant.

The article could have been titled “Barack Obama: Drone Warrior.” Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign. On-the-record quotes from the highest officials. This was no leak. This was a White House press release.

Why? To portray Obama as tough guy. And why now? Because in crisis after recent crisis, Obama has looked particularly weak: standing helplessly by as thousands are massacred in Syria; being played by Iran in nuclear negotiations, now reeling with the collapse of the latest round in Baghdad; being treated with contempt by Vladimir Putin, who blocks any action on Syria or Iran and adds personal insult by standing up Obama at the latter’s G-8 and NATO summits.

The Obama camp thought that any political problem with foreign policy would be cured by the Osama bin Laden operation. But the administration’s attempt to politically exploit the raid’s one-year anniversary backfired, earning ridicule and condemnation for its crude appropriation of the heroic acts of others.

A campaign ad had Bill Clinton praising Obama for the courage of ordering the raid because, had it failed and Americans been killed, “the downside would have been horrible for him. “ Outraged vets released a response ad, pointing out that it would have been considerably more horrible for the dead SEALs.

That ad also highlighted the many self-references Obama made in announcing the bin Laden raid: “I can report . . . I directed . . . I met repeatedly . . . I determined . . . at my direction . . . I, as commander in chief,” etc. ad nauseam. (Eisenhower’s announcement of the D-Day invasion made not a single mention of his role, whereas the alternate statement he’d prepared had the landing been repulsed was entirely about it being his failure.)

Obama only compounded the self-aggrandizement problem when he spoke a week later about the military “fighting on my behalf.”

The Osama-slayer card having been vastly overplayed, what to do? A new card: Obama, drone warrior, steely and solitary, delivering death with cool dispatch to the rest of the al-Qaeda depth chart.

So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.

A rather strange ethics. You go around the world preening about how America has turned a new moral page by electing a president profoundly offended by George W. Bush’s belligerence and prisoner maltreatment, and now you’re ostentatiously telling the world that you personally play judge, jury and executioner to unseen combatants of your choosing and whatever innocents happen to be in their company.

This is not to argue against drone attacks. In principle, they are fully justified. No quarter need be given to terrorists who wear civilian clothes, hide among civilians and target civilians indiscriminately. But it is to question the moral amnesia of those whose delicate sensibilities were offended by the Bush methods that kept America safe for a decade — and who now embrace Obama’s campaign of assassination by remote control.

Moreover, there is an acute military problem. Dead terrorists can’t talk.

Drone attacks are cheap — which is good. But the path of least resistance has a cost. It yields no intelligence about terror networks or terror plans.

One capture could potentially make us safer than 10 killings. But because of the moral incoherence of Obama’s war on terror, there are practically no captures anymore. What would be the point? There’s nowhere for the CIA to interrogate. And what would they learn even if they did, Obama having decreed a new regime of kid-gloves, name-rank-and-serial-number interrogation?

This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily (and unsuccessfully, there being — surprise! — no plausible alternative) to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds.

You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed. We do kill terror operatives, an important part of the war on terror, but we gratuitously forfeit potentially life-saving intelligence.

But that will cost us later. For now, we are to bask in the moral seriousness and cool purpose of our drone warrior president.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Switchblade kamikaze drone

Source

Pentagon to soon deploy pint-sized but lethal Switchblade drones

By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

June 11, 2012, 5:00 a.m.

Seeking to reduce civilian casualties and collateral damage, the Pentagon will soon deploy a new generation of drones the size of model planes, packing tiny explosive warheads that can be delivered with pinpoint accuracy.

Errant drone strikes have been blamed for killing and injuring scores of civilians throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan, giving the U.S. government a black eye as it targets elusive terrorist groups. The Predator and Reaper drones deployed in these regions typically carry 100-pound laser-guided Hellfire missiles or 500-pound GPS-guided smart bombs that can reduce buildings to smoldering rubble.

The new Switchblade drone, by comparison, weighs less than 6 pounds and can take out a sniper on a rooftop without blasting the building to bits. It also enables soldiers in the field to identify and destroy targets much more quickly by eliminating the need to call in a strike from large drones that may be hundreds of miles away.

"This is a precision strike weapon that causes as minimal collateral damage as possible," said William I. Nichols, who led the Army's testing effort of the Switchblades at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Ala.

The 2-foot-long Switchblade is so named because its wings fold into the fuselage for transport and spring out after launch. It is designed to fit into a soldier's rucksack and is fired from a mortar-like tube. Once airborne, it begins sending back live video and GPS coordinates to a hand-held control set clutched by the soldier who launched it.

When soldiers identify and lock on a target, they send a command for the drone to nose-dive into it and detonate on impact. Because of the way it operates, the Switchblade has been dubbed the "kamikaze drone."

The Obama administration, notably the CIA, has long been lambasted by critics for its use of combat drones and carelessly killing civilians in targeted strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. In 2010, a United Nations official said the CIA in Pakistan had made the United States "the most prolific user of targeted killings" in the world.

In recent weeks, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about the issue at a recent news briefing, and he said the Obama administration is committed to reducing civilian casualties.

Although Carney did not mention the Switchblade specifically, he said "we have at our disposal tools that make avoidance of civilian casualties much easier, and tools that make precision targeting possible in ways that have never existed in the past."

The Switchblade drone appears to be an improvement as an alternative to traditional drone strikes, in terms of minimizing civilian harm, but it also raises new concerns, said Naureen Shah, associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School.

She pointed out that when a drone strike is being considered there are teams of lawyers, analysts and military personnel looking at the data to determine whether lethal force is necessary. But the Switchblade could shorten that "kill chain."

"It delegates full responsibility to a lower-level soldier on the ground," she said. "That delegation is worrisome. It's a situation that could end up in more mistakes being made."

Arms-control advocates also have concerns. As these small robotic weapons proliferate, they worry about what could happen if the drones end up in the hands of terrorists or other hostile forces.

The Switchblade "is symptomatic of a larger problem thatU.S. militaryand aerospace companies are generating, which is producing various more exotic designs," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Assn. "This technology is not always going to be in the sole possession of the U.S. and its allies. We need to think about the rules of the road for when and how these should be used so we can mitigate against unintended consequences."

The Switchblade is assembled in Simi Valley by AeroVironment Inc., the Pentagon's top supplier of small drones, which include the Raven, Wasp and Puma. More than 50 Switchblades will be sent to the war zone in Afghanistan this summer under a $10.1-million contract, which also includes the cost of repairs, spare parts, training and other expenses. Officials would not provide details about where the weapons would be used, how many were ordered and precisely when they would be deployed.

AeroVironment, based in Monrovia, developed the weapon on its own, thinking the military could use a lethal drone that could be made cheaply and deployed quickly by soldiers in the field, said company spokesman Steven Gitlin.

"It's not inexpensive to task an Apache helicopter or F-16 fighter jet from a base to take out an [improvised explosive device] team when you consider fuel, people, logistics support, etc.," he said.

About a dozen Switchblades were tested last year by special operations units in Afghanistan, according to Army officials, who said the drone proved effective.

The Army is considering buying $100 million worth of the drones in a few years under a program called the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System, Nichols said. The Air Force and the Marine Corps have also expressed interest in the technology.

AeroVironment is not the only company pursuing small, lethal drones. Textron Defense Systems is also working on a small kamikaze-style drone. Named the BattleHawk Squad-Level Loitering Munition, the drone is being tested at an Army facility in New Mexico.

Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Wired for War," a book about robotic warfare, said the Switchblade's entry into the war zone is typical of today's weapons procurement path. Defense contractors, he said, are on their own developing smaller and cheaper but powerful high-tech weapons vital to waging guerrilla-type warfare in the 21st century, and they are finding success.

"This weapon system is the first of its kind," he said. "If it works, there's little doubt others will follow."

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Drones are unlawful and dangerous

Opposing view: Drones are unlawful and dangerous

By Kirsty Wigglesworth, AP

Robert Grenier, the head of the CIA's counterterrorism center during the Bush administration, said last week that "we have been seduced" by drones, and that drone killings "are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield." He's right.

When our nation violates the law in the name of our national security, it gives propaganda tools to our enemies and alienates our allies. That is why the government's targeted killing program, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, is both unlawful and dangerous.

To be sure, targeted killing is not always illegal, nor is the use of drones. Under international law and our Constitution, the government can use lethal force when, for example, an individual takes up arms against the United States in an actual war, or against a person who poses an imminent threat to life and no means other than killing will prevent the threat. These are not the rules the government is following.

Today, our government is killing people in countries in which the United States is not at war. It reportedly adds suspected terrorists — including U.S. citizens — to "kill lists" for months at a time, which by definition cannot be limited to genuinely imminent threats. The New York Times disclosed that the government "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants" unless intelligence proves them innocent — but only after they are dead. Rate the debate

When mistakes are made, our nation refuses to acknowledge them and does not compensate victims. The first Yemeni missile strike President Obama authorized, in December 2009, targeted alleged militants but killed 21 children and 14 women. WikiLeaks revealed a secret agreement by Yemen to accept responsibility for the U.S. killing. Yemenis were enraged, but most Americans probably never heard about it.

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan admits that the U.S. targeted killing program sets a precedent. Russia, China or Iran may claim tomorrow, as our government does today, the power to declare individuals enemies of the state and kill them far from any battlefield, based on secret legal criteria, secret evidence and a secret process. That is the world we are unleashing unless the program is stopped.

Hina Shamsi is director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

US to use drones in Caribbean "drug war"

Of course my question is when is the American Empire going to start using drone strikes to murder suspected "drug war" criminals.?

Source

U.S. plans more drone flights over Caribbean

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

June 23, 2012, 5:00 a.m.

WASHINGTON — After quietly testing Predator drones over the Bahamas for more than 18 months, the Department of Homeland Security plans to expand the unmanned surveillance flights into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to fight drug smuggling, according to U.S. officials.

The move would dramatically increase U.S. drone flights in the Western Hemisphere, more than doubling the number of square miles now covered by the department's fleet of nine surveillance drones, which are used primarily on the northern and southwestern U.S. borders.

But the high-tech aircraft have had limited success spotting drug runners in the open ocean. The drones have largely failed to impress veteran military, Coast Guard and Drug Enforcement Agency officers charged with finding and boarding speedboats, fishing vessels and makeshift submarines ferrying tons of cocaine and marijuana to America's coasts.

"The question is: Will they be effective? We have no systematic evidence on how effective they are," said Bruce Bagley, who studies U.S. counter-narcotics efforts at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.

Despite that, a new control station will arrive this month in Corpus Christi, Texas, allowing Predators based there to cover more of the Gulf of Mexico. An additional drone will be delivered this year to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's base in Cocoa Beach, Fla., for operations in the Caribbean.

The Federal Aviation Administration has already approved a flight path for the drones to fly more than 1,000 miles to the Mona Passage, the strait between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

"There is a lot more going on in the deep Caribbean, and we would like to know more," said a law enforcement official familiar with the program who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official said drones may be based temporarily at airfields in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

The Predator B is best known as the drone used by the CIA to find and kill Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen. An unarmed version patrols the U.S. borders searching known overland smuggling routes.

On the ocean, however, there are no rutted trails or roads to follow. And the Predator cannot cover as much open water as larger, higher-flying surveillance aircraft, such as the Global Hawk.

"I'm not sure just because it's a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that it will solve and fit in our problem set," the top military officer for the region, Air Force Gen. Douglas M. Fraser, said recently.

Fraser's command contributes ships and manned surveillance airplanes to the Joint Interagency Task Force South. Last year, the task force worked with U.S. agencies and other countries to seize 119 metric tons of cocaine, valued at $2.35 billion.

For the recent counter-narcotics flights over the Bahamas, border agents deployed a maritime variant of the Predator B called a Guardian with a SeaVue radar system that can scan large sections of open ocean. Drug agents can check a ship's unique radio pulse in databases to identify the boat and owner.

The planned drone flights are partly a response to demands from leaders in the western Caribbean to shift more drug agents, surveillance aircraft and ships into the area, as cartels have switched from the closely watched U.S.-Mexico border to seaborne routes. In the last four years, drug seizures in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico have increased 36%, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

"As we tighten the land borders, it squishes out to the seas," said the law enforcement official.

Over the last several years, however, drug-war personnel have been diverted from the Caribbean to the southwestern U.S. border. In Puerto Rico, for example, 1 out of 8 DEA positions is vacant.

The increase in drug traffic has contributed to an unprecedented rise in homicides in Puerto Rico, a major transit point for cocaine moving from Central America to northeastern U.S. cities. In 2011, the homicide rate hit a historic high of 1,136, with 8 out of 10 killings related to drug trafficking.

"We need help fighting this battle along the Caribbean border to protect U.S. citizens there being buffeted by violence," Puerto Rico's Gov. Luis Fortuno told a congressional panel this week.

Despite budget cuts in other areas, Customs and Border Protection has requested $5.8 million to push its drone operations farther into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

But test flights for the Guardian showed disappointing results in the Bahamas, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the program who were not authorized to speak publicly.

During more than 1,260 hours in the air off the southeastern coast of Florida, the Guardian assisted in only a handful of large-scale busts, the officials said.

One of the most recent occurred early Dec. 22, when a Guardian trained its infrared eye on a sailboat heading toward the south shoreline of New Providence island in the Bahamas. Photographs of the sloop and grid coordinates were relayed by the U.S. embassy in Nassau. The Royal Bahamas Defense Forces found no drugs, but arrested 23 men, five women and a boy. The passengers were believed to be migrants from Haiti.

The head of an interagency drug task force based in the Bahamas called the mission a "great case" in an internal email obtained by The Times. The mission proved "what we all suspect to be the case with a piece of equipment that has such promising capabilities and potential," wroteU.S. Coast GuardCmdr. Louie C. Parks Jr.

But federal officials who received the laudatory message said it only underscored that such success stories have been extremely rare.

brian.bennett@latimes.com

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