CIA – Page 2 – Drone Wars UK

Drones target Yemen

27/08/2010Chris Cole

The CIA is to redeploy some Predator drones from Pakistan to the arabian peninsula so they can step up the ‘war against terror’ in Yemen and Somalia. The Wall Street Journal revealed this week that:

“U.S. military’s Special Operation Forces and the CIA have been positioning surveillance equipment, drones and personnel in Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia to step up targeting of al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, and Somalia’s al Shabaab—Arabic for The Youth.”

Unsuprising, given what the CIA have done in Pakistan in the name of the ‘war on terror’, senior Yemeni officals are clearly against the idea. According to Associated Press, Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah al-Saidi, said CIA drones would be a “nonstarter,” adding, “to even posit this theory about U.S. drones only builds support for radicalization.”

Yemen has already been the target of several US drone strikes. As noted previously, in May 2010, a Yemeni mediator was killed by US drone as he was seeking to persuade al Qaeda members to surrender.

Amnesty International this week launched, Yemen: Cracking Down Under Pressure, a new report on the human rights situation in Yemen. Amnesty said

“The USA appears to have carried out or collaborated in unlawful killings in Yemen and has closely cooperated with Yemeni security forces in situations that have failed to give due regard for human rights.” Amnesty urged Washington to “investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by U.S. forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones”.

Yemen and Amnesty are right to be worried about US drone strikes. Just this week a US intellegence official confirmed that a drone strike in Paksitan killed a numer of children earlier this week. “According to the reports we have received here four men, five women and four children died in the attack. The identities of those killed were not known yet,” the official said. Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, was among those who condemned the attack. “Americans are using indiscriminately the drones to hit what they called high-value targets that killed so many people,” Hassan said in an interview with Iranian Press TV.

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

22/08/2010Chris 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.”

Drones and the Farnborough ‘airshow’

28/07/2010Chris Cole

There has been much drone news over the past ten days, much of it generated by the Farnborough ‘airshow – in truth more of an arms/aerospace fair- so I thought I would do a quick round-up.

General Atomics Avenger

General Atomics, maker of the Predator and Reaper drone were much in evidence at Farnborough and received lots of press coverage, including a profile piece on General Atomics owner, Neal Blue, in the FT. At the airshow, General Atomics revealed that they had won approve from US regulators to export the unarmed version of Predator to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, U.A.E. and Morocco, and had applied for a license to sell to Pakistan. How long they will stay unarmed is anyones guess.

General Atomics though were in town mainly to pitch their new drone, Avenger, an upgrade of the Predator and Reaper to the RAF. Avenger had its first flight in April 2010 and is now in flight testing. Aviation Week revealed more detail about Avenger including that it will be produced in different variants.

Drone downed by Laser

Farnborough was also the setting for the news that Raytheon had downed a drone (four actually) by laser. This also gained much coverage (including this wonderfully daft article in the Sun). “This was a bad day for UAVs, and a good one for laser technology,” said Raytheon Missile Systems’ vice-president, Mike Booen in the Guardian.

CIA Drone Guy Becomes New Top Spy

was how Wired News reported that John Bennett was to be the next chief of the National Clandestine Service, the operations side of the CIA. Bennett, according AFP, oversaw the Predator drone ‘program’ in Pakistan.

Zephyr – the eternal drone

Zephyr, the Qinetiq developed solar unmanned drone completed its record breaking 14 day flight on 22nd July. Launched by hand, the 22 metre wingspan aircraft flies by day on solar power which is then used to recharge the lithium-sulphur batteries, which are used to power the aircraft by night. Although Qinetiq is a British company, the flight trial took place at a US military range in Arizona as the US military are very interested in the aircraft that can provide low-cost, non-stop surveillance over months rather than days.

Speaking to the BBC about Zephyr, which has been dubbed the ‘eternal drone’, project manager Jon Slatmarsh cut to the chase: “Qinetiq is now looking to the Ministry of Defence and the DoD (US Department of Defense) to put a system into service.”

Footprints….

A briefing by Thales UK business manager at the Airshow led to the Telegraph headline ‘’Watchkeeper drone can detect footprints from above clouds’. The reality is as the Register reported, the Anglo-French I-MASTER radar on Watchkeeper “allows images of the same piece of ground from different times to be compared – detecting vehicle tracks and even footprints which may have been left since the first image was taken.”

BBC research into drone strikes in Pakistan

23/07/2010Chris 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

23/07/2010Chris Cole

“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”.

Drone pilot shortage as CIA drone strikes resume

16/07/2010Chris Cole

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.