- Home
- ISLAMIC RESISTANCE
- SECRETARY-GENERAL
-
Full Speeches
- Speeches-2000
- Speeches-2006
- Speeches-2007
- Speeches-2008
- Speeches-2009
- Speeches-2010
- Speeches-2011
- Speeches-2012
- Speeches-2013
- Speeches-2014
- Speeches-2015
- Speeches-2016
- Speeches-2017
- Speeches-2018
- Speeches-2019
- Speeches-2020
- Speeches-2021
- Speeches-2022
- Speeches-2023
- Speeches-2024
- Speeches-2025
- Speeches-2026
- Speech-Reports
- SG
-
Full Speeches
- Voices
- Ten Day Dawn
- The Biggest Crime
- Martyr Leaders
Pentagon to Expand Drone Flights by 50% in next 4 Years
Local Editor
The US military will increase the number of drone flights from the current 61 a day to as many as 90 by 2019 while expanding lethal strike capabilities.
The expanded drone program, operated mostly by the US Air Force, will allow for broadened surveillance and intelligence gathering from Ukraine and North Africa to Iraq and the South China Sea.
"We've seen a steady demand signal from all of our geographic combatant commanders to have more of this capability," Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Military Department spokesman, told reporters at Pentagon.
The move would mark the most expansion within the drone program since 2011.
More than 5,000 people have been killed by US drone strikes since 2004, according to estimates by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The US government has not made public any casualty figures related to the secretive program.
The new plan would have the Air Force share drone flight duties with the US Army and Special Operations Command, as well as government contractors that would not have lethal strike capabilities.
By 2019, the Pentagon would like to have the Air Force fly 60 flights per day, the Army to contributing as many as 16, Special Operations Command would offer four, while contractors would fly as many as ten per day.
Currently, the Air Force flies 22 of its 61 daily flights for CIA intelligence gathering purposes, with the spy agency directing the flights with operation conducted by military personnel.
The plan will materialize in steps, the Wall Street Journal reported, with the contractors handling six flights a day and the Army taking as many as eight by 2017, all in addition to the 60 daily flights by the Air Force.
The plan also allows for drone flights to be rerouted from one area to another in case of bad weather or other restrictions. A military official told the Journal that if a drone can't fly over Iraq on a certain day, for example, it could be sent elsewhere in the Middle East for monitoring.
The expansion of the drone program since 2009 to surveil and police the world may be the most indelible mark on the Obama administration's tenure in Washington. The administration has used technological advances in unmanned lethal drones to revolutionize warfare overseas, portending ominous implications for the 21st century.
Capable of surveillance and firing missiles, Predator and Reaper drones have been used to attack targets - with much danger to civilians, according to numerous reports - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, all without an international legal framework and with only America's take-our-word-for-it assurances that lethal drones are guided by some sort of ethical or moral compass.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
- Related News
