Category: US Drone Operations

USAF/CIA argue over the ‘honour’ of drone wars as Iran unveils drone

Chris Cole

Iran has unveiled a new long-range drone  named Karrar which has a range of 1,000km and could carry two 250-pound bombs or a precision bomb of 500 pounds. According to the BBC, President Ahmadinejad said that the new drone was a “messenger of honour and human generosity and a saviour of mankind, before being a messenger of death for enemies of mankind.”

On Saturday a drone attack killed between six and ten people  in Pakistan in the CIA’s show of ‘honour’ while Israel flew jets and drones over Lebanon in its own show of ‘human generosity’.

Amidst all this, the house newspaper of the USAF, the Air Force Times, carried a strong piece arguing that the air force should have the ‘honour’ of running the drone war in Pakistan rather than the CIA.  Its worth quoting a large section:

History, American tradition, and U.S. and international law all say that military operations should be carried out by the armed forces. If bad guys like al-Jufi are not legitimate military targets, we shouldn’t attack them. It’s not the business of an intelligence agency or, worse, of a private contractor working for an intelligence agency — to kill people. A 1976 executive order by President Ford bans American intelligence agencies from engaging in assassination.

If they are legitimate military targets, military people should wage the campaign against them. Since we’re talking remotely piloted aircraft, the branch of the military that should handle this is the Air Force.

“It’s not a good idea for the CIA to have a direct part in armed hostilities,” said Gary Solis in a telephone interview. Solis is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and judge advocate. “It’s contrary to the law of armed conflict. Flying and arming drones and inputting intelligence for their mission should be performed by the military.”

US Army Special Forces Unit Gets New Drone

Chris Cole

Strategy Page has revealed that US Army Special Operations Command (SOCOM)  has received the first of the new Sky Warrior drones.  Sky Warrior is a “substantially advanced” and updated version on the Predator drone (Wikipedia has details here). 

The SOCOM MQ-1C unit,  is a newly formed quick reaction capability unit  to  support special operations (Special Forces, SEALs, rangers, NATO commandos) in Afghanistan and Iraq.   According to a report in Aviation Week last December about Sky Warrior and the new units, they were created as part of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance surge.

NOTE:  Last post for a while as I’m taking a break with the family….

Death from the skies: 100 and still droning on

Chris Cole

This weekend saw four CIA drone strikes in Pakistan with a death toll estimated to be around 35.   This has brought the number of drone strikes in Pakistan since Nobel Peace Prize winning President Barack Obama came to power to 100.  The Guardian reports that British Reapers have been used 97 times to launch attacks in Afghanistan since 2008.

The Guardian information comes in their reporting of the 90,000 secret US military files, released via  Wikileaks,  that detail military operations between 2004 and 2009 in Afghanistan.   The files can be downloaded from Wikileaks here.

This report details an armed strike by a Reaper drone which resulted in two Afghan children being wounded.

This report details how a Reaper continues to attack people fleeing from its inital attack.  

This report details how a Reaper was assigned to bomb 3 people believed to be planting an IED.

No doubt as people trawl through the thousands of files, more details of how drones are operating in Afghanistan will emerge.

BBC research into drone strikes in Pakistan

Chris Cole

BBC Urdu has published new research into the undeclared war in Pakistan.  They report that since January 2009 nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Pakistan as a result of US drones and Islamic militant attacks.  They attribute 746 deaths to US drone strikes (30%) and 1,713 deaths (70%) to Islamic militant attacks.

What will hit the headlines though is the fact that in response a Taleban spokesman, Muhammed Umer, has said that “In the short term, yes, you can say it [drone strikes] has caused us some difficulties because of the martyrdoms and realignment of our ranks.”   The Guardian have already reported the story as ‘Taliban says US drone attacks ‘temporarily’ hindering insurgency’.     What Muhammed Umer goes on to say – and probably won’t get so much coverage – is that the drone strikes are also bringing new volunteers and recruits.

A unnamed ‘senior US official’ is also quoted in the report as saying that since Obama has taken office, 650 militants and 20 non-combatants have been killed by drone strikes.   Tactfully the BBC say

“Research by the BBC’s Urdu service puts the number of those killed considerably higher, and says there have been many cases where there has been no positive identification of those killed at all”. 

While the CIA, as usual refused to comment on their drone strikes, the same ‘unnamed senior US official’ said that drones are “the most precise weapons system in the history of warfare.”   No doubt as precise as his casualty figures.

BBC research into drone strikes in Pakistan

Chris Cole

BBC Urdu has published new research into the undeclared war in Pakistan.  They report that since January 2009 nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Pakistan as a result of US drones and Islamic militant attacks.  They attribute 746 deaths to US drone strikes (30%) and 1,713 deaths (70%) to Islamic militant attacks.

What will hit the headlines though is the fact that in response a Taleban spokesman, Muhammed Umer, has said that “In the short term, yes, you can say it [drone strikes] has caused us some difficulties because of the martyrdoms and realignment of our ranks.”   The Guardian have already reported the story as ‘Taliban says US drone attacks ‘temporarily’ hindering insurgency’.     What Muhammed Umer goes on to say – and probably won’t get so much coverage – is that the drone strikes are also bringing new volunteers and recruits.

A unnamed ‘senior US official’ is also quoted in the report as saying that since Obama has taken office, 650 militants and 20 non-combatants have been killed by drone strikes.   Tactfully the BBC say

“Research by the BBC’s Urdu service puts the number of those killed considerably higher, and says there have been many cases where there has been no positive identification of those killed at all”. 

While the CIA, as usual refused to comment on their drone strikes, the same ‘unnamed senior US official’ said that drones are “the most precise weapons system in the history of warfare.”   No doubt as precise as his casualty figures.

Drone pilot shortage as CIA drone strikes resume

Chris Cole
Drone strike damaged house from 2009

After a two week pause the CIA have resumed drone strikes in Pakistan.   According to press reports between seven and fourteen people have been killed in a drone strike on a ‘compound’ near the town of Miranshah in the province of North Waziristan.    The BBC reported that tribal elders in the area had told them that many of those killed were civilians staying in a village house.

Meanwhile in the US competion between homeland security and the military for drone pilots has led to US customs and borders being unable to fly drone missions according to testimony in the US congress this week.  “There is a significant amount of competition among the DoD (Department of Defense) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to hire UAV pilots,” said Customs and Border Protection (CBP) assistant commissioner Michael Kostelnik.

According to AFP, the United States currently has four drones patrolling the border with Mexico in Arizona and one in the northern border with Canada in the state of North Dakota. Two more have been requested this year for the Texas-Mexico border.