IRAQ MAY GET KILLER DRONES

The U.S. mil­i­tary has been fly­ing drones over Iraq since Desert Storm, back in ’91. But, up ’til now, they’ve basi­cally served in just one role: as air­borne spies, tak­ing pic­tures of what’s below.
The Army wants to change that. And fast, by strap­ping the unmanned planes up with bombs and guns.
This wouldn’t be a first, exactly. Predator unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles (UAVs) have occa­sion­ally been equipped with a cou­ple of Hellfire mis­siles. And occa­sion­ally, the drone has unleashed those weapons, either on sus­pected ter­ror­ist groups, or on artillery posi­tions. But those mis­sions have been very much the excep­tion, and not the rule.
This new effort reported by Inside the Army — has the poten­tial to be some­thing quite dif­fer­ent: UAVs des­ig­nated specif­i­cally for com­bat. It’s some­thing “troops in Iraq are ask­ing for,” the mil­i­tary trade mag­a­zine says, “now.”

Both the Armys I-​​Gnat and Hunter UAV sys­tems used in Iraq could carry weapons, sources noted. [In fact, the Hunter has already been tested with Viper Strike muni­tions.] The I-​​Gnat can carry up to 450 pounds of pay­load, while the Hunters pay­load capac­ity is 200 pounds. But the Army has never employed a weaponized UAV to date in a warfight­ing oper­a­tion, a source said.
The only thing we can con­firm, due to the oper­a­tional con­cerns on this issue, is the Army is in fact pur­su­ing weaponiz­ing a UAV in the­ater, said the source, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity. Thats all we can say with­out dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion
It is still new in inven­tory, noted Army Lt. Col. Christopher Rodney. The use has yet to be deter­mined. The the­ater, par­tic­u­larly Iraq, will be the test­ing ground.

The test­ing ground for what, exactly? Well, the Army is on the verge of award­ing con­tracts, to build its weapons-​​carrying, Extended-​​Range Mission Payload pilot­less planes. But those small­ish UAVs, with a range of 300 kilo­me­ters, are just a first step. The real doozy is cur­rently being jointly devel­oped by Darpa, the Air Force, and the Navy a drone, specif­i­cally designed for com­bat.
THERE’S MORE: Slate’s lastest scener from Fallujah tells the story of “How the Pioneer Robot Plane Helped Win an Artillery Duel.“
AND MORE: A hun­dred bomb-​​disposal robots have been bought by the Navy, and are now on their way to Afghanistan and Iraq.
AND MORE: “No fewer than 20 types of air­craft have been thrown into the [Fallujah] fight,” the AP says, “includ­ing 10 fixed-​​wing planes, three types of heli­copters and seven kinds of unmanned drones.”

November 12th, 2004 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.