Inside the Pentagon's New Plan for Drones That Don't Piss Off Pakistan

Inside the Pentagon's New Plan for Drones That Don't Piss Off Pakistan

Esquire.com gets an advanced look at the Air Force roadmap to better robots — flying multi-missile hitmen, floating multi-target guidance systems, flapping suicide bombers — and how they can zero in on Al Qaeda without costing Hillary her job.

By: Erik Sofge

As hitmen go, robots are clumsy killers. The proof is in Pakistan, where local authorities claim that drone strikes on Al Qaeda and affiliate targets have killed at least 687 civilians. Whether or not that figure is inflated, the real or imagined death toll continues to fuel anti-American sentiment around the world. And that's to say nothing of the anti-administration fervor inside Washington circles as to whether President Obama and newly promoted general Stanley McChrystal, in continuing Bush-era policies with Bush-era technologies (even if they're offering Pakistan surveillance data), should continue air strikes near the Afghan border at all.

Now, the Air Force is planning to build a more selective breed of military drones, with swarms of bird-size bots shadowing targets and new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of launching mini-missiles at multiple targets at once. The mechanized assassin, it seems, is about to become a lot more professional.

Details of this new UAV development are limited — the Air Force Research Laboratory released a 87-page briefing last month, sketching out individual plans for a number of drone-related systems. The briefing, first obtained by Air Force Times but reviewed this morning for Esquire.com, offers the first detailed glimpse at an American military strategy that has adapted to conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan and "incorporates a vision and strategy... that focus on delivery of warfighting capability" with new robots.

Perhaps the most significant concept in the briefing is a UAV called Suburb Warrior, which would carry a new kind of smaller, precision-guided missile. Another project, called Sniper, is a targeting system that can lock on to multiple targets, allowing a single drone pilot to coordinate the attacks of a squadron of robots — or a single UAV to hit a group of enemies. Picking through the dozens of systems in this briefing, many of which will be flight-tested within five years, there's a clear set of goals: build smaller, even microscopic drones with smaller weapons that can hunt in swarms and engage targets in the close quarters of urban battlefields. And hunt as soon as possible.

To understand the significance of this new plan — how it could affect U.S. diplomacy in the region, reduce potential troop counts there, and, you know, better hunt Al Qaeda — one need only look at the current state of unmanned assassination. The least powerful weapons deployed by Predators — and their new big brother, the Reaper — are Hellfire missiles. These antitank weapons have incredibly literal names; they're designed to penetrate armored vehicles with a jet of molten metal. So if a U.S. target were sitting in a pickup truck, or even a second-floor window, a Hellfire is more than overkill. It's a collateral damage factory, turning a city street into hell on earth, and potentially flattening buildings.

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http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/new-air-force-drones-in-pakistan-061709

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Sorry folks, everything good is 'off the table'. We need more weapons.

...on the Am taxpayer...who will eventually see these in their own skies? First near borders and inner cities...and then at political "events"...and when the herd has calmed down some....in many other places.