From Ceasefire Magazine online Sept. 19, 2010
Piece by Musab Younis
An excerpt ...
The drone issue is an interesting one. A typical report from the BBC this week, for example, mentions that “twelve people were killed” in a drone strike, probably “militants”, in what is “the 12th drone strike this month in the region”, before adding: “The American military does not routinely confirm drone operations.”
The report is striking by virtue of omission. Nothing is mentioned of the civilian casualties of drone strikes – which were reported by Pakistani authorities to have reached 700 in January of this year (the figure now is surely higher), since the drone war began. Nothing is mentioned of the Gallup poll conducted for Al Jazeera which suggests that less than one in ten Pakistanis support the drone strikes. The same poll asked Pakistanis who they considered to be the greatest threat to their country – the Taliban, India, or the US. A majority of 59 percent said the US. 11 percent said the Taliban.
None of this is mentioned by the BBC. Why should we care what Pakistanis think about the military attacks taking place in their country? And the suggestion that most of them consider the US a greater threat than the Taliban is a difficult one, because it would undercut the central narrative of the news coverage of drone strikes: that though they at times entail unfortunate consequences, they are conducted for the security of the West and Pakistan. The idea that the US could be making the region less secure is, in this context, inconceivable.
Statistics have also vanished: such as the fact that this year, the US has allocated fifteen times more money to Predator drones than to the Pakistan floods relief effort ($2.2bn versus $150m). And there is no question of the reader being subjected to any uncomfortable suggestions, such as that made by the New Yorker last year that assassination, euphemistically termed “targeted killing”, is now “official US policy”, despite the violation of international law, and even the US constitution, that it entails.
Showing posts with label Predator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Predator. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Some history on General Atomics and its Predator drone
A little background on brothers Neil and Linden Blue, owners and operators of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and manufacturers of the majority of predator drones. Keen emphasis on the Blues' friendship throughout the '80s with Nicaraguan then-president Anastasio Somoza, who brought you the Contra in Iran-Contra scandal and crack cocaine in Los Angeles (see Dark Alliance, a prize-winning book of journalism by the late Gary Webb). Today's piece is compelling, and adds a curious chapter to a story told in Cover-up, a documentary detailing the subterfuge beneath the story of the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings in 1987.
From Death and Taxes
Predator Drones: The All-Seeing Eye
By DJ Pangburn Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Excerpt-
While the Predator drones are generally considered a success by the Blues, General Atomics, other defense contractors and the U.S. government, their missile-strike record is horrific. According to the Brookings Institution’s Daniel Byman:
“Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.”
From Death and Taxes
Predator Drones: The All-Seeing Eye
By DJ Pangburn Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Excerpt-
While the Predator drones are generally considered a success by the Blues, General Atomics, other defense contractors and the U.S. government, their missile-strike record is horrific. According to the Brookings Institution’s Daniel Byman:
“Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.”
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Still Killing Without Regard to Target
Article posted to Counterpunch September 9, 2010
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Monday, August 9, 2010
Excellent blog post on ABC News tribute to the murderous glory of UAV drones
Nice work from whoever is behind http://www.spider-topihitam.com
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Competition from Lockheed Martin in UAV arms race
As evidenced by a photo of the prototype named Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin may be getting into the drone business with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.
With so many hands working to assemble (not to mention market) these devices, it's going to take enormous public outcry to even raise questions about the ethics of using these craft and producing more of them.
Dug up industry story on drone manufacture
The following story is a business story, meaning ...
NO ETHICAL ANALYSIS SO LONG AS THE NUMBERS LOOK GOOD--YEAAAAAA!!!
Please keep in mind while you read that there are some potentially negative effects to filling the sky with unmanned drones with electronic eyes and radio signal receiver/transmitters on board. How bout a world where 90 percent of the population starves and 10 percent live to get more robots onto the battlefield so they can be on the side of the conflict with the most robots that haven't been destroyed? Personally, I'd like to see that kind of reality safely assigned to science fiction.
The following San Diego Union-Tribune story contains some indispensable facts about unmanned aerial vehicles and the weapons contractors General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.
Prowling for profit
As demand rises for unmanned surveillance drones, Poway’s General Atomics Aeronautical among companies positioned to benefit
By Mike Freeman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Every minute of every day, about 40 Predator-series unmanned aircraft are flying worldwide, providing “constant stare” surveillance over everything from war zones to U.S. borders to piracy-plagued shipping lanes.
With the U.S. military preparing to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, the number of Predator-family aircraft flying at any given moment is likely to increase. Air Force officials said last week that more drones will be added in Afghanistan as part of the troop buildup. The Army is also fast-tracking its schedule for deploying unmanned vehicles.
All of which has focused a spotlight on Poway-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the maker of the Predator and its more advanced siblings, the Reaper, Sky Warrior and Avenger.
Three years ago, the Predator group had logged 80,000 total flight hours since the first one flew in the mid-1990s.
Today, these aircraft have flown close to 1 million hours — a good portion of that over Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the process, the drones have helped change the battlefield by giving service members — even small groups in isolated areas — their own spy plane. Not only do these aircraft provide surveillance for miles in every direction, they also can pick up enemy communications and transmit video feeds to soldiers’ handheld devices on the ground as well as to operations centers halfway around the world.
“The Predator may be the single most popular new military product introduced in this generation,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The versatility and transformational nature of the Predator allows war-fighting ideas that just weren’t feasible in the past.”
Drones have changed the battlefield to the point that insurgents in Iraq have been hacking into video feeds to see what the Predators are monitoring, according to Wall Street Journal reports last week. But U.S. officials said there’s no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights.
Although General Atomics is getting the most attention, it’s not the only one in the drone business operating in San Diego.
Northrop Grumman has a significant unmanned-aircraft division in Rancho Bernardo. Although its aircraft are assembled elsewhere, the company’s San Diego unit provides software, systems integration, business development and other functions for the high-altitude Global Hawk, the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, a Navy version of the Global Hawk called BAMS and the stealthy, early-stage drone designed to land on aircraft carriers called the X-47 UCAS, among others.
These two companies have put San Diego near the center of a sea change in military aviation with the rise of ever-more-capable drones.
“They are the two largest by far” in the unmanned-aircraft industry, said Phil Finnegan, director for corporate analysis for The Teal Group, a defense industry research firm.
Teal estimates that the market for drone aircraft will double in the next decade, reaching $8.7 billion in annual sales worldwide. That’s just for the planes. It doesn’t include sensor systems, which often increase costs significantly.
Neither Northrop Grumman nor General Atomics provides specific revenue figures.
The companies control different market segments. Northrop Grumman’s larger, more capable and more expensive Global Hawk dominates the high-altitude, long-endurance segment. It can fly at 60,000 feet for more than 36 hours. No drone competes with it, analysts say.
Northrop Grumman has made roughly 25 of the planes to date, and they’ve flown hundreds of missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force eventually plans to buy 54. The company won’t reveal the cost of the Global Hawk, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2006 said the drones cost more than $100 million each, including ground equipment, support, testing and spare parts. Northrop Grumman says that estimate is too high.
General Atomics’ Predator series dominates the medium-altitude, long-endurance market segment. The company has made more than 380 of the planes, mostly for the Pentagon. But they also are being used by the Department of Homeland Security to patrol borders, by NASA for research and by foreign military customers.
“It comes down to this: If I was trying to cover the world with an unmanned surveillance drone, I would definitely pick the Global Hawk,” said Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “But if I was trying to cover the northwest corner of Afghanistan, I would probably pick the Predator.”
Drone aircraft are less expensive to operate than manned aircraft. They also keep pilots out of harm’s way by performing some of the dull but dangerous work on the battlefield.
Some drones, such as the Predator family, can be fitted with missiles and circle a potential target for more than day. Most, though, are used only for surveillance.
Inside its San Diego-area factory, General Atomics builds Predator-series planes from scratch. Frank Belknap, director of composite manufacturing, said local workers who lost their aerospace industry jobs in the early-’90s recession — many of whom found work making composite golf shafts and tennis rackets — are now returning to aerospace to build Predators.
In 1999, Belknap was the 16th employee of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliate of privately held General Atomics. Today, the company employs more than 4,000 workers.
Over the past decade, Pentagon procurement spending on unmanned aerial vehicles has surged from $500 million to $3.5 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants more drones in the field. He told the military to move faster to get those systems deployed, even if they have only 75 percent or 80 percent of their expected features ready for action, military officials said.
General Atomics got into the drone business after acquiring a small company out of bankruptcy in the early 1990s that had been working on the aircraft. By the mid-’90s, it had perfected the technology enough to build prototype planes.
Thomas Cassidy Jr., a retired admiral who heads General Atomics Aeronautical, went ahead without waiting for the Pentagon to come out with specifications for what it wanted. That’s unusual in the defense business, analysts say.
“Tom picked absolutely the sweetest spot in the technology,” said Dave Fulghum of Aviation Week, an aerospace industry magazine. “He essentially made a platform that you can stick almost anything into. That has been the perfect answer, and it’s the cheapest of the high-performance platforms that are out there.”
Predators, Reapers and Sky Warriors — the Army’s version of the aircraft — generally cost $4 million to $12 million each. Sometimes costs are higher, depending on sensors, communications and weapons payloads.
General Atomics makes money not only on building the planes, ground stations and some radar systems, but also gets paid for maintaining the drones.
That has become a lucrative business as use of the aircraft soared in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts say.
“They understood the importance of the life-cycle part of the business,” said Lindsay Voss, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “These aircraft are being used at such a high rate and in such extreme environments. General Atomics can make a killing on the back end by supporting it and providing the services that are required to keep these aircraft going.”
The company is repeating the blueprint that worked in the Predator for the next generation of drone. This year, it flew the Avenger for the first time — even though it doesn’t have a customer.
The Avenger has a jet engine, a first for the Predator family, It also has other features for better performance in more contested airspace.
“General Atomics is trying to continue its ‘first mover’ advantage,” said Ryan Peoples, an associate principal with Charles River Associates, a defense industry research firm. “With the Predator, they did all this development on their own dime, so they were best positioned to capture (the Air Force contract) when it came along. And they’re just continuing that trend with the Avenger.”
The Air Force hasn’t set a firm time frame for seeking proposals for the next generation of medium-altitude drone. When it does, however, the Avenger is likely to have competition, analysts say. For example, a previously unknown stealth drone recently was spotted in Afghanistan. It has been declassified as a Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works”-designed plane. Others such as AAI Corp. and Northrop Grumman also could compete, analysts say.
“That program will be really important in the way the future of UAVs is shaped,” said Voss of Frost & Sullivan. “They could really mix it up if they choose a vendor other than General Atomics. It’s pretty unlikely, but it’s something everybody is going to be talking about.”
Mike Freeman: (760) 476-8209; mike.freeman@uniontrib.com
NO ETHICAL ANALYSIS SO LONG AS THE NUMBERS LOOK GOOD--YEAAAAAA!!!
Please keep in mind while you read that there are some potentially negative effects to filling the sky with unmanned drones with electronic eyes and radio signal receiver/transmitters on board. How bout a world where 90 percent of the population starves and 10 percent live to get more robots onto the battlefield so they can be on the side of the conflict with the most robots that haven't been destroyed? Personally, I'd like to see that kind of reality safely assigned to science fiction.
The following San Diego Union-Tribune story contains some indispensable facts about unmanned aerial vehicles and the weapons contractors General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.
Prowling for profit
As demand rises for unmanned surveillance drones, Poway’s General Atomics Aeronautical among companies positioned to benefit
By Mike Freeman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Every minute of every day, about 40 Predator-series unmanned aircraft are flying worldwide, providing “constant stare” surveillance over everything from war zones to U.S. borders to piracy-plagued shipping lanes.
With the U.S. military preparing to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, the number of Predator-family aircraft flying at any given moment is likely to increase. Air Force officials said last week that more drones will be added in Afghanistan as part of the troop buildup. The Army is also fast-tracking its schedule for deploying unmanned vehicles.
All of which has focused a spotlight on Poway-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the maker of the Predator and its more advanced siblings, the Reaper, Sky Warrior and Avenger.
Three years ago, the Predator group had logged 80,000 total flight hours since the first one flew in the mid-1990s.
Today, these aircraft have flown close to 1 million hours — a good portion of that over Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the process, the drones have helped change the battlefield by giving service members — even small groups in isolated areas — their own spy plane. Not only do these aircraft provide surveillance for miles in every direction, they also can pick up enemy communications and transmit video feeds to soldiers’ handheld devices on the ground as well as to operations centers halfway around the world.
“The Predator may be the single most popular new military product introduced in this generation,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The versatility and transformational nature of the Predator allows war-fighting ideas that just weren’t feasible in the past.”
Drones have changed the battlefield to the point that insurgents in Iraq have been hacking into video feeds to see what the Predators are monitoring, according to Wall Street Journal reports last week. But U.S. officials said there’s no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights.
Although General Atomics is getting the most attention, it’s not the only one in the drone business operating in San Diego.
Northrop Grumman has a significant unmanned-aircraft division in Rancho Bernardo. Although its aircraft are assembled elsewhere, the company’s San Diego unit provides software, systems integration, business development and other functions for the high-altitude Global Hawk, the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, a Navy version of the Global Hawk called BAMS and the stealthy, early-stage drone designed to land on aircraft carriers called the X-47 UCAS, among others.
These two companies have put San Diego near the center of a sea change in military aviation with the rise of ever-more-capable drones.
“They are the two largest by far” in the unmanned-aircraft industry, said Phil Finnegan, director for corporate analysis for The Teal Group, a defense industry research firm.
Teal estimates that the market for drone aircraft will double in the next decade, reaching $8.7 billion in annual sales worldwide. That’s just for the planes. It doesn’t include sensor systems, which often increase costs significantly.
Neither Northrop Grumman nor General Atomics provides specific revenue figures.
The companies control different market segments. Northrop Grumman’s larger, more capable and more expensive Global Hawk dominates the high-altitude, long-endurance segment. It can fly at 60,000 feet for more than 36 hours. No drone competes with it, analysts say.
Northrop Grumman has made roughly 25 of the planes to date, and they’ve flown hundreds of missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force eventually plans to buy 54. The company won’t reveal the cost of the Global Hawk, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2006 said the drones cost more than $100 million each, including ground equipment, support, testing and spare parts. Northrop Grumman says that estimate is too high.
General Atomics’ Predator series dominates the medium-altitude, long-endurance market segment. The company has made more than 380 of the planes, mostly for the Pentagon. But they also are being used by the Department of Homeland Security to patrol borders, by NASA for research and by foreign military customers.
“It comes down to this: If I was trying to cover the world with an unmanned surveillance drone, I would definitely pick the Global Hawk,” said Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “But if I was trying to cover the northwest corner of Afghanistan, I would probably pick the Predator.”
Drone aircraft are less expensive to operate than manned aircraft. They also keep pilots out of harm’s way by performing some of the dull but dangerous work on the battlefield.
Some drones, such as the Predator family, can be fitted with missiles and circle a potential target for more than day. Most, though, are used only for surveillance.
Inside its San Diego-area factory, General Atomics builds Predator-series planes from scratch. Frank Belknap, director of composite manufacturing, said local workers who lost their aerospace industry jobs in the early-’90s recession — many of whom found work making composite golf shafts and tennis rackets — are now returning to aerospace to build Predators.
In 1999, Belknap was the 16th employee of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliate of privately held General Atomics. Today, the company employs more than 4,000 workers.
Over the past decade, Pentagon procurement spending on unmanned aerial vehicles has surged from $500 million to $3.5 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants more drones in the field. He told the military to move faster to get those systems deployed, even if they have only 75 percent or 80 percent of their expected features ready for action, military officials said.
General Atomics got into the drone business after acquiring a small company out of bankruptcy in the early 1990s that had been working on the aircraft. By the mid-’90s, it had perfected the technology enough to build prototype planes.
Thomas Cassidy Jr., a retired admiral who heads General Atomics Aeronautical, went ahead without waiting for the Pentagon to come out with specifications for what it wanted. That’s unusual in the defense business, analysts say.
“Tom picked absolutely the sweetest spot in the technology,” said Dave Fulghum of Aviation Week, an aerospace industry magazine. “He essentially made a platform that you can stick almost anything into. That has been the perfect answer, and it’s the cheapest of the high-performance platforms that are out there.”
Predators, Reapers and Sky Warriors — the Army’s version of the aircraft — generally cost $4 million to $12 million each. Sometimes costs are higher, depending on sensors, communications and weapons payloads.
General Atomics makes money not only on building the planes, ground stations and some radar systems, but also gets paid for maintaining the drones.
That has become a lucrative business as use of the aircraft soared in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts say.
“They understood the importance of the life-cycle part of the business,” said Lindsay Voss, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “These aircraft are being used at such a high rate and in such extreme environments. General Atomics can make a killing on the back end by supporting it and providing the services that are required to keep these aircraft going.”
The company is repeating the blueprint that worked in the Predator for the next generation of drone. This year, it flew the Avenger for the first time — even though it doesn’t have a customer.
The Avenger has a jet engine, a first for the Predator family, It also has other features for better performance in more contested airspace.
“General Atomics is trying to continue its ‘first mover’ advantage,” said Ryan Peoples, an associate principal with Charles River Associates, a defense industry research firm. “With the Predator, they did all this development on their own dime, so they were best positioned to capture (the Air Force contract) when it came along. And they’re just continuing that trend with the Avenger.”
The Air Force hasn’t set a firm time frame for seeking proposals for the next generation of medium-altitude drone. When it does, however, the Avenger is likely to have competition, analysts say. For example, a previously unknown stealth drone recently was spotted in Afghanistan. It has been declassified as a Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works”-designed plane. Others such as AAI Corp. and Northrop Grumman also could compete, analysts say.
“That program will be really important in the way the future of UAVs is shaped,” said Voss of Frost & Sullivan. “They could really mix it up if they choose a vendor other than General Atomics. It’s pretty unlikely, but it’s something everybody is going to be talking about.”
Mike Freeman: (760) 476-8209; mike.freeman@uniontrib.com
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Whiteman AFB near Columbia, MO is thrilled about the Predator
"Whiteman Lands Drone Assignment" is the title of T.J. Greaney's piece in the Columbia Daily Tribune. An excerpt of excellent reporting on the details of drone operation appears below.
"The MQ-1 Predator is known as a system, not an aircraft. The system consists of four aircraft with sensors, a ground control station and a Predator Primary Satellite Link, along with operations and maintenance crews deployed for 24-hour operations. Each system is valued at about $20 million.
The basic crew for the Predator includes a pilot, sensor operator and mission intelligence coordinator. The aircraft is equipped with a color nose camera used by the pilot for flight control, a high-resolution TV camera, an infrared camera and other sensors.
Capt. Matthew Reese, public affairs officer for Air Combat Command in Langley, Va., said the team involved in missions is a unique blend of mechanics, pilots and intelligence analysts working in war zones and in the U.S.
'The pilot and sensor operator are only one piece of the puzzle,' Reese said. 'The big picture is that it takes maintainers downrange to keep these in the air, the people who are keeping the mechanical aspects of the birds flying are all downrange.'"
"The MQ-1 Predator is known as a system, not an aircraft. The system consists of four aircraft with sensors, a ground control station and a Predator Primary Satellite Link, along with operations and maintenance crews deployed for 24-hour operations. Each system is valued at about $20 million.
The basic crew for the Predator includes a pilot, sensor operator and mission intelligence coordinator. The aircraft is equipped with a color nose camera used by the pilot for flight control, a high-resolution TV camera, an infrared camera and other sensors.
Capt. Matthew Reese, public affairs officer for Air Combat Command in Langley, Va., said the team involved in missions is a unique blend of mechanics, pilots and intelligence analysts working in war zones and in the U.S.
'The pilot and sensor operator are only one piece of the puzzle,' Reese said. 'The big picture is that it takes maintainers downrange to keep these in the air, the people who are keeping the mechanical aspects of the birds flying are all downrange.'"
Friday, May 7, 2010
LA Times: CIA receives permission to expand targeting for UAV drone program
CIA drones have broader list of targets
The agency since 2008 has been secretly allowed to kill unnamed suspects in Pakistan.
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times
May 5, 2010 | 8:37 p.m.
The secrecy aspect of the predator drone program is on some levels rapidly eroding. This story, like Robert Fisk's Belfast Independent story of last week, pulls up some detailed and informative numbers on drone attacks, their hellfire missiles and the results of those efforts. Also particularly compelling is how concern for the blowback factor is shifting, also contained in David Cloud's story.
Excerpt— Missile attacks have risen steeply since Obama took office. There were an estimated 53 drone strikes in 2009, up from just over 30 in Bush's last year, according to a website run by the New America Foundation that tracks press reports of attacks in Pakistan. Through early this month, there had been 34 more strikes this year, an average of one every 3 1/2 days, according to the site's figures
The 2010 attacks have killed from 143 to 247 people, according to estimates collected by the site, but only seven militants have been publicly identified. Among them are Al Qaeda explosives expert Ghazwan Yemeni, Taliban commander Mohammad Qari Zafar, Egyptian Canadian Al Qaeda leader Sheikh Mansoor, and Jordanian Taliban commander Mahmud Mahdi Zeidan.
The agency since 2008 has been secretly allowed to kill unnamed suspects in Pakistan.
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times
May 5, 2010 | 8:37 p.m.
The secrecy aspect of the predator drone program is on some levels rapidly eroding. This story, like Robert Fisk's Belfast Independent story of last week, pulls up some detailed and informative numbers on drone attacks, their hellfire missiles and the results of those efforts. Also particularly compelling is how concern for the blowback factor is shifting, also contained in David Cloud's story.
Excerpt— Missile attacks have risen steeply since Obama took office. There were an estimated 53 drone strikes in 2009, up from just over 30 in Bush's last year, according to a website run by the New America Foundation that tracks press reports of attacks in Pakistan. Through early this month, there had been 34 more strikes this year, an average of one every 3 1/2 days, according to the site's figures
The 2010 attacks have killed from 143 to 247 people, according to estimates collected by the site, but only seven militants have been publicly identified. Among them are Al Qaeda explosives expert Ghazwan Yemeni, Taliban commander Mohammad Qari Zafar, Egyptian Canadian Al Qaeda leader Sheikh Mansoor, and Jordanian Taliban commander Mahmud Mahdi Zeidan.
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