Civilians killed in Yemen drone attack. General Atomics MQ-1 Predator. The USAF describes the Predator as a "Tier II" MALE UAS (medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system).
The UAS consists of four aircraft or "air vehicles" with sensors, a ground control station (GCS), and a primary satellite link communication suite.[4] Powered by a Rotax engine and driven by a propeller, the air vehicle can fly up to 400 nmi (460 mi; 740 km) to a target, loiter overhead for 14 hours, then return to its base. Following 2001, the RQ-1 Predator became the primary unmanned aircraft used for offensive operations by the USAF and the CIA in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas; it has also been deployed elsewhere. Because offensive uses of the Predator are classified, U.S. military officials have reported an appreciation for the intelligence and reconnaissance-gathering abilities of UAVs but declined to publicly discuss their offensive use.[5] Development[edit] The Predator system was initially designated the RQ-1 Predator.
Command and sensor systems[edit] Predator-drone.jpeg (451×720) Rare Glimpse Inside A Predator Drone Control Station. UAV Predator / Reaper target destruction GCS (Ground Control Station) Operations. Playstation warfare. Killing via remote control and home in time for tea.
Symon Hill investigates drone warfare. A man sits at a computer in Nevada, in the middle of America. He is British. Inside a Predator Drone Control Station. Once closely guarded military secrets, remotely operated Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are now widely known to play a vital role in modern wars.
But even while most people recognize that UAS are extremely important, they usually don’t know how they are controlled and by whom. TechNewsDaily was recently invited to take a rare behind-the-scenes tour of a UAS ground control station in Italy that is jointly shared by the Italian and U.S. air forces to demystify some of the operations of these robot warrior aircraft. A new breed of fighters UAS are able to silently fly for 20 or more hours deep inside enemy territory; can carry a wide array of sensors, radars and even weapons to identify or attack time-sensitive targets; and, above all, they are “expendable” because they are controlled from a remote Ground Control Station by pilots who fly them in the same way you might fly a virtual plane in a flight simulator game. Gallery: Inside a Predator Drone Control Station. The US love affair with drones. One of the pleasures of traveling through the developing world is that things develop.
They change. There's always something new. Afghanistan is, depending on one's point of view, developing, deteriorating, or doing both at once. Example: Last August found me and two fellow Americans in a hired taxi zooming past bombed-out fuel trucks through Taliban-held Kunduz, a city in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border. The sense of menace was palpable, but our driver seemed calm. Then his face darkened. The adaptable neo-Taliban increasingly rely on the classic tactics of guerilla warfare. I call them the Talibikers. One of the more intriguing revelations in last year's WikiLeaks data dump was that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency has been supplying the Taliban with thousands of Pamir dirtbikes, including a 2007 shipment of 1,000 to the Waziristan-based network led by Mawlawi Jalaludin Haqqani.
An early report on the Talibikers appeared in the Telegraph in 2003. Charming. The Predator drone paradox. Whatever the legality of Osama bin Laden's apparent execution, he was certainly a murderer, probably a war criminal, and his demise flowed, albeit bloodily, from a carefully planned and targeted attack – the greatest care being taken to avoid the horror of innocent casualties.
President Obama himself, it is said, vetoed a bombing raid: the risk that innocents would die in full view of the watching world was too much to contemplate. Predator drones, launched by technicians in California, were too crude a weapon because hearts and minds, the president well understood, matter almost as much as bombs. Ntrolling America's deadly drones. In recent months, US and Pakistani military and intelligence officials have agreed to a shift in the roles and responsibilities of the use of unmanned aerial drones to strike al-Qaida and Taliban operatives throughout Pakistan. As hinted to in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times and further clarified in Thursday's New York Times, a squadron of drones tasked solely to the Pentagon will offer real-time surveillance and communications information to Pakistani military and intelligence agencies.
These Predator and Reaper drones will provide counterinsurgency support to Pakistan by watching those Taliban militants whose primary agenda and interests are to overthrow the ruling regime in Islamabad. The CIA will retain control of its own drones, which can be re-dedicated to pursuing their original counterterrorism mission: hunting down high-value al-Qaida operatives who remain motivated to planning and conducting attacks against Europe and the US.
Hedge10_6.gif (900×281) Drone pilots have a front-row seat on war, from half a world away. U.S.
Air Force Capt. Sam Nelson, on the left console, looks to his sensor… (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles…) Reporting from Creech Air Force Base, Nev. -- From his apartment in Las Vegas, Sam Nelson drove to work through the desert along wind-whipped Highway 95 toward Indian Springs. Along the way, he tuned in to XM radio and tried to put aside the distractions of daily life -- bills, rent, laundry -- and get ready for work. Nelson, an Air Force captain, was heading for his day shift on a new kind of job, one that could require him to kill another human being 7,500 miles away. American predators in Pakistan.
Last summer in Lahore, I had a little party at my house for the final of the football World Cup. It was a pretty relaxed affair, maybe 20 people, cushions on the TV room floor, pizza on the dining room table. Some of my friends brought friends of their own. One was an American man. He was wearing a light jacket. After he left, my wife told me he was also wearing a gun. Predator Drones: Joking over innocent deaths? Obama Jokes About Killing Jonas Brothers With Predator Drones. Predator Drones. Drone-Kill Culture: Predator Playstations. Dogfight between MQ-1 Predator drone and Mig-25 Foxbat. Predator UAV system.