Bombs are offloaded from a Reaper. Drone data will provide “the option to arrest the individual, talk … [or] take them out with a Hellfire missile,” a military official says. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)From The Sydney Morning Herald:
The kohl-eyed Hakimullah Mehsud probably is dead. He was the target for a missile fired last month from an unmanned aircraft hovering over the Afghan-Pakistani border - but launched by an operator in the US.
Mehsud was the ruthless mastermind of multiple suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan. He was part of a suicide mission on December 30 at Khost, just across the border in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA agents who were working on the covert operation that now appears to have ended Mehsud's brief and brutal leadership of the Taliban in Pakistan.
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My Comment: There is a lot of good information and stats in this report.
I was first exposed to the effectiveness and possibilities of drones in the late 1990s. I had an interest in a security firm and one of my business partners wanted to use drones for law enforcement purposes. The cost negated this as a workable business possibility, but my friend had the foresight to mention that the military should become involved.
Fast forward 12 years to today, we now have the following ....
.... War does not get more radical than this - technically, politically and, perhaps, ethically.
Consider: for the first time ever, a civilian intelligence agency is manipulating robots from halfway around the world in a program of extrajudicial executions in a country with which Washington is not at war ....
The use of drones will only increase with time, and will in fact be used in support of military operations and security. The SMH article's last paragraph sums up what the future is going to be ....
.... The US Air Force now has more drone operators in training than fighter and bomber pilots ....