CIA DRONES FLYING OVER IRAN

Usually, hunt­ing for mis­siles and reac­tors from the sky would be a job for the Air Force. But those spy drones that are fly­ing over Iran, look­ing for nukes — they belong to the CIA, accord­ing to Aviation Week.

“They are using the I-​​Gnat and Predator [drones that the CIA] used early in the Afghanistan war… They focus on small areas, and that’s what they need to find those dis­persed [nuclear weapons devel­op­ment] sites,” a senior Air Force offi­cial says. “The data are sent back to Beale [Air Force Base in California, via satel­lite]… The infor­ma­tion is then sep­a­rated by its code word [pre­fix] and sent to the proper agency.“
Beale is the major intel­li­gence exploita­tion cen­ter; processed infor­ma­tion is then dis­trib­uted, often by secure land­line, to other bases such as Indian Springs aux­il­iary air­field near Las Vegas, where Predator mis­sions are con­trolled.
The CIA [was the] first [American agency to use] armed Predators, although flown remotely by [Air Force] pilots, that were launched on com­bat mis­sions from bases in Uzbekistan. Since both the Army and Air Force now oper­ate sim­i­lar [drones], the CIA’s small fleet could be flown from the same bases in the the­ater or from small bases in remote areas of Afghanistan or Iraq.

March 1st, 2005 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.