"Hunter-killer" drones to be first robot attack squadron in history...in Iraq.

[madfloridian]

Someone has got to stop these guys. They don't need to worry about sending too many more troops....just send the planes. They can not be allowed to do this.



MAYA ALLERUZZO/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An MQ-4 Predator controlled by the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron stands on the tarmac at Balad Air Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq, in June. The Air Force plans to replace this robot aircraft "soon" with the larger MQ-9 Reaper.

(edited to fix link, but the site appears to be working slowly.)

Planes Go To War, but Pilots Stay

The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada. The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.

It's a sign we are staying says the article. And there is more.

The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.

It's another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq, supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.

Looks like Little Boots is going to stay there, more of his war games.



On vient faire le ménage : “We are coming for housekeeping “

Attendez que je finis –instead of finisse- mon jeu : ‘ Wait for I finish my game ‘ (I cannot reproduce the grammar mistake in English – well, I think so ... ) . It needs a subjonctive instead a present...

From a friend elsewhere...note it is Hillary and Obama peering into the room.

We can not let this go on without speaking out.

[rubberducky]

1. Getting ready for Iran??????

[Gman]

2. like this

[scrinmaster]

3. They aren't robots, they're remote controlled.

They have a human controller just like a regular airplane, except that the pilot isn't inside the drone, but is flying it from 7,000 miles away.

[madfloridian]

4. I used the sub headline

from the article.

[scrinmaster]

5. You called them "killer robot planes"

All they're doing is replacing older human-controlled Predator drones with larger, newer human-controlled Reaper drones.

[madfloridian]

6. So we have more efficient killing machines.

And we can kill more Iraqis and get less of our own killed.

Let's see, what did the Iraqis do to us?

NOTHING.

You are so worried about the words, I will change them. The difference means nothing to me at all.

We attacked a nation that never hurt us and we are occupying their country.

We have declared them enemy combatants in their own country.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1372

We said if they remained in the city they would be declared the enemy.

But if those two words I used bother you so much I will go and fix them now so you can see the full import of what we are doing with out being distracted by my words.

[madfloridian]

15. Here is something for you to read.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/11/2454/

Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis

"A key question is missing from this debate. How many Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion? The New York Times editorial is silent on this matter.

In a scientific study published last fall in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died because of our government’s invasion of their country. The survey that produced that estimate was completed in July, 2006. That was a year ago.

Unfortunately, despite the calls of the Lancet authors for other studies, there has been no systematic effort to update these results.

Just Foreign Policy has attempted to update the Lancet estimate in the best way we know. We have extrapolated from the Lancet estimate, using the trend provided by the tally of Iraqi deaths reported in Western media compiled by Iraq Body Count. Our current estimate is that 974,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. The web counter and fuller explanation are here. "

[kestrel91316]

7. My dad was a career USAF officer and worked for many years on

various aspects of the drone program, but they were ONLY for reconnaissance back then.

I don't think he'd be very happy to see them used for attack missions in this rerun of Vietnam.

[madfloridian]

8. Killing Iraqis because they are declared by us to be enemy combatants

in their own cities.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1372

It goes against everything we ever stood for as a nation.

[Cheap_Trick]

9. What controls the Hunter-Killers?

Skynet?

[madfloridian]

10. My concern is the civilians. We said Iraqis were enemy combatants.

To me it is a killing machine, meant to kill Iraqi civilians whom we have deemed to be enemy combatants.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1325

"Prior to the second siege in November, its citizens were given two choices: leave the city or risk dying as enemy insurgents.

"...."What of the estimated 50,000 residents who did not leave Falluja? The US military suggested there were a couple of thousand insurgents in the city before the siege, but in the end chose to treat all the remaining inhabitants as enemy combatants."

[churchofreality]

11. What was that movie with Chevy Chase when he sells the unmanned planes?

And the thing turns on the military and everyone starts running?

[madfloridian]

13. Was it this one?

http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/deal-of-the-century/3480

[madfloridian]

12. Another headline: MQ-9 Reaper Drones Packed with Bombs head to Iraq

So proud of their killing machines.

http://www.product-reviews.net/2007/07/16/mq-9-reaper-drones-packed-with-bombs-head-to-iraq/

"The MQ-9 Reaper drone will help a lot in Iraq as it is equipped with radar, laser and infrared targeting and can cause major damage to the enemy with a ton and a half of guided missiles and bombs.

7,000 miles away in Nevada on a video console is where the Reaper drone will be controlled as no one is on-board, so other than the cost to make these flying machines there is no loss to the US in the way of life."

So it is easier to kill more of them without worrying loss of US military. We talked here before about the fact that the worst thing would be Bush using the air war to kill.

Leaving appears not to be an option.

A comment after the article:

"This is soooo cool.
Nice planes."

Yep, nice planes, so cool.

:-(

[madfloridian]

14. "Billions for weapons of war" cuts in funding for Katrina victims and social programs.

"More millions in military toys and weapons, and there still people in the U.S. dying of hunger, sickness, jobless and homeless..."

"Just hope nations with such advanced capabilities have an equally advanced doctrine of responsibility."

"Great! disconnected from the violence and suffering it creates makes it easier to inflict with less danger of thinking about what your actually doing (killing other humans)."

"It's clear we are an ingenuous and resourceful people that we can create such an effective fighting machine. But if the goal of such a vehicle is to help end the conflict(s) that we currently are engaged in, then it seems quite a misuse of that intelligence.

I think we can agree that we are already very deadly, and that being 5% deadlier won't change the face of the conflict in a place like Iraq."

Those are from the comments after this article.

Predator's Big Bro Preps for War

The Predator, put together as sort of a robo-plane pilot project, was never really designed to be anything more that a surveillance plane. But, during the Balkans conflict, Predator footage started being used for targeting. Then, in 2001, the CIA hooked missiles on to the undersides of the wings of its Predators.

The Reaper, on the other hand, was built from the beginning to fight.

"Whereas the Predator is primarily an intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance aircraft, the MQ-9 was designed as a primary strike asset," Lt. Col. Jonathan Greene tells Inside Defense. "In training we’re concentrating a lot on counter-land operations -- close air support, air interdiction and we’re very good for time-sensitive targeting, with a loiter capability of about 15 hours."

"By the end of the summer, we expect to begin our first combat deployment -- probably late summer, early fall," he adds. "Our goal is to deploy for combat by early this fall."

I still can not take in the fact that we really do not know about how many Iraqis we are killing. How many innocent civilians.

It is like a strange kind of madness has taken over this administration and it's brainless followers.

Power is all, truth and honor mean nothing.

I never thought I would live to see it. It breaks my heart. My hubby has quit watching the news. He says he can't take it.

I hope there is a way out of there for all our sakes, but I really doubt it.

I did all the calling and emailing and rallying I can do, so now I can just write about it. And hope someone reads it and cares what we are doing.

These are machines for killing. They are being used in a country that never harmed us. We have displaced millions while calling them enemy combatants and telling them to leave their homes.

Southern Iraq Can't Support Any More displaced persons. Turning them away.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1383

Someone above was quibbling about my use of the word robot, which was the word used by the paper I quoted.

I would rather we have a really big quibble about right and wrong and morality.

[Cobalt-60]

16. It's as ugly as home made soap

I realize that it is aerodynamically sound. But this spud is just plain pug ugly.
If I were a kid, wouldn't want to build a model of it.