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| Science & Technology |
| How robot drones revolutionized the face of warfare |
| 2009-07-24 |
| CNN- Barely an hour's drive from the casinos of Las Vegas, a group of unassuming buildings have become as important as the trenches were to WWI. The big difference? Today's warriors are fighting without getting in harm's way, using drones to attack targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Major Morgan Andrews is one such combatant. He kisses his wife goodbye, drives to Creech, a tiny desert air force base in Nevada, and within minutes could be killing insurgents on the other side of the world. Andrews fights not from the seat of the F16 he joined the air force to fly but from a darkened ground control station. He pilots a remote-controlled Predator, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) which can spy on and attack positions and personnel without risk to its controller, shooting deadly Hellfire missiles at enemy fighters in support of fellow soldiers. "You're talking to them on the radios as if we were in a normal airplane flying overhead," says Andrews. "You see the imagery, you know what's going on, you see what you're looking at. It's very easy when something like that is happening to project yourself there and feel a part of the battle. Like I said, your heart starts racing a little bit." Is remote-controlled warfare a good or a bad idea? Tell us what you think. Meanwhile, intelligence analysts get to see images in real time and can identify personnel on the ground. There are now more than 7,000 UAVs ranging from the workhorse, the Predator, and its beefier, deadlier kin the Reaper, to army drones like the tiny hand-launched Raven and the larger Shadow. The drones are dramatically tilting the war in favor of the United States. Predators, for example, played a key role in killing al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2006. UAVs are credited with killing more than half al Qaeda's top 20 leaders. Now U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants more UAVs. Already he has said that the next generation of fighter planes -- the F-35 that took decades to develop at a cost of more than half-a-billion dollars each -- will be the last manned fighter aircraft. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF, explains that the next phase will enable a single drone to provide as many as 60 simultaneous live video feeds directly to combat troops. Some new drones will be as small as flies, others walk -- all appear destined to work with decreasing human input. "The future of how you use these un-manned systems or remotely piloted systems is really unlimited," says Deptula, based at the Pentagon and racing to keep pace with battlefield needs as well as Gates's demands. "We need to open our minds and think more about capability and impact we are going to achieve as opposed to how we've done business in the past." At Creech, frontline requests surged when weapons were first put on the Predator. In Iraq and Afghanistan drones have become so indispensable that missions are cancelled if they are not available |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #2 Check the younger enlisted. They are likely better qualified in terms of being familiar with virtual environments, etc. |
| Posted by: Lagom 2009-07-24 13:48 |
| #1 U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Major Morgan Andrews is one such combatant. meh |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-07-24 11:26 |