Civilian contractors playing key roles in U.S. drone operations
Personnel at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County last year control a Predator drone flying over Ft. Irwin, northeast of Barstow. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / January 6, 2010)
Relying on contractors has brought companies that operate for profit into some of America's most sensitive military and intelligence operations. And using civilians makes some in the military uneasy.
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times December 29, 2011, 10:34 p.m.
Reporting from Washington— After a U.S. airstrike mistakenly killed at least 15 Afghans in 2010, the Army officer investigating the accident was surprised to discover that an American civilian had played a central role: analyzing video feeds from a Predator drone keeping watch from above.
The contractor had overseen other analysts at Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida as the drone tracked suspected insurgents near a small unit of U.S. soldiers in rugged hills of central Afghanistan. Based partly on her analysis, an Army captain ordered an airstrike on a convoy that turned out to be carrying innocent men, women and children.
"What company do you work for?" Maj. Gen. Timothy McHale demanded of the contractor after he learned that she was not in the military, according to a transcript obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
"SAIC," she answered. Her employer, SAIC Inc., is a publicly traded Virginia-based corporation with a multiyear $49-million contract to help the Air Force analyze drone video and other intelligence from Afghanistan.
America's growing drone operations rely on hundreds of civilian contractors, including some — such as the SAIC employee — who work in the so-called kill chain before Hellfire missiles are launched, according to current and former military officers, company employees and internal government documents.
Relying on private contractors has brought corporations that operate for profit into some of America's most sensitive military and intelligence operations. And using civilians makes some in the military uneasy.
At least a dozen defense contractors that supply personnel to help the Air Force, special operations units and the CIA fly their drones are filling a void. It takes more people to operate unmanned aircraft than it does to fly traditional warplanes that have a pilot and crew.
The Air Force is short of ground-based pilots and crews to fly the drones, intelligence analysts to scrutinize nonstop video and surveillance feeds, and technicians and mechanics to maintain the heavily used aircraft.
"Our No. 1 manning problem in the Air Force is manning our unmanned platforms," said Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, Air Force vice chief of staff. Without civilian contractors, U.S. drone operations would grind to a halt.
About 168 people are needed to keep a single Predator aloft for 24 hours, according to the Air Force. The larger Global Hawk surveillance drone requires 300 people. In contrast, an F-16 fighter aircraft needs fewer than 100 people per mission.
With a fleet of about 230 Predators, Reapers and Global Hawks, the Air Force flies more than 50 drones around the clock over Afghanistan and other target areas. The Pentagon plans to add 730 medium and large drones in the next decade, requiring thousands more personnel.
The Air Force is rushing to meet the demand. Under a new program, drone pilots get 44 hours of cockpit training before they are sent to a squadron to be certified and allowed to command missions. That compares with a minimum of 200 hours' training for pilots flying traditional warplanes.
The Air Force also has converted seven Air National Guard squadrons into intelligence units to help analyze drone video. About 2,000 additional Air Force intelligence analysts are being trained.
After the attack that killed the Afghan villagers in February 2010, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command questioned whether civilian contractors had a "potential conflict of interest" in analyzing drone video feeds.
A civilian "might be reluctant to make a definitive call, fearing liability or negative contractual action" if he or she passed on incorrect information that was used to call an airstrike, the command said.
McHale rejected that argument. "Although I recognize that a contractor will have a corporate interest separate and distinct from the military interest, in this instance I found no action or inaction by screeners that negatively influenced the engagement," he responded, according to Pentagon documents.
By law, decisions to use military force must be made by the military chain of command or, in the case of CIA strikes, by civilian officials authorized to conduct covert operations under presidential findings or other specific legal mandates.
Writing in a military law journal in 2008, Lt. Col. Duane Thompson, chief lawyer for the Air Force Operations Law Division, warned that allowing nonmilitary personnel to communicate targeting information directly to pilots would violate international laws of war.
Moreover, civilians are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which subjects military personnel to prosecution for war crimes or for violations of rules of engagement on when to use force.
"Persons who relay target identification for an imminent real-world mission to persons causing actual harm to enemy personnel or equipment should be uniformed military," Thompson wrote.
The "involvement of civilians in intelligence collection, analysis and planning" is "less objectionable" because it is "further removed" from actual combat, he added.
That involvement is now substantial. In a recent job advertisement, SAIC said it had 450 employees working for the Air Force Special Operations Command and other units analyzing video feeds from the battlefield.
BAE Systems Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of a British aerospace firm, posted an ad seeking an Air Force Special Operations Command veteran to manage "several hundred employees while conducting ISR/FMV missions." ISR and FMV are military abbreviations for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and Full Motion Video, both of which commonly come from drones.
Michael D. Teegardin, a spokesman for BAE, said the "recruiting ad was for a [Department of Defense] customer, which I cannot name."
Pentagon officials say civilian contractors play a vital role.
"The civilians and the contractors are very important to what we do," said an Air Force colonel, who agreed to discuss the subject on condition of anonymity. "But they're not going to be making a call on any action. They're making an assessment, and that may generate a decision" by a military commander to launch a missile.
A ground-based Air Force pilot is in command of every drone flight, and has formal responsibility for any attack.
"Any contractor analysis contributing to operational decisions, such as targeting, must be reviewed" by someone in uniform, said Maj. Eric Hilliard, a spokesman for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, which is based at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
Contractors are especially common in the CIA, which has used armed Predators to kill dozens of Al Qaeda members and hundreds of insurgents in Pakistan since 2008. CIA drones also operate in Yemen, collect intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities, and study other potential targets, current and former officials said.
The Air Force Special Operations Command flies armed drones in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. The command said in a statement that it employs 165 civilians to analyze video and other intelligence. Many work alongside uniformed military personnel in a vast facility at command headquarters at Hurlburt Field.
An additional 300 civilians support other Air Force drones at 10 military bases in the U.S., Germany and South Korea, although most work in technical jobs, officials said. Many are military retirees who kept their security clearances, enabling them to do the same classified work they did on active duty.
After the 2010 accident in Afghanistan, the SAIC employee described her role in a sworn interview with McHale, the chief investigator. Her name was not made public and SAIC declined to identify her. A company spokeswoman, Melissa Koskovich, said Thursday that the woman was still employed by SAIC.
As the mission's "primary screener," she oversaw six enlisted personnel trained in video analysis, including her husband, an active-duty airman. The analysts spent hours that night watching the live video feed as three vehicles neared the U.S. troops.
She condensed her team's observations and her own into minute-by-minute written reports, which she forwarded via a chat system to the Air Force pilot flying the drone from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. He passed the information to the Army unit in Afghanistan.
Others were watching the drone video, as well. In addition to the pilot, the military crew at Creech consisted of a camera operator, mission intelligence coordinator and a safety observer. A transcript shows they believed the convoy contained insurgents.
The SAIC analyst in Florida was more guarded in her assessment. She reported "military aged males" in the vehicles holding what she described as "possible weapons" — it was impossible from the video to tell what the men were carrying, she said.
"We thought they could have been hostile," she told McHale.
But she also reported seeing children in the convoy. Later, she changed that description and called them "adolescents" after deciding they appeared to be from 7 to 13 years old. She also reported at one point that the vehicles had turned off the road and were no longer moving toward the U.S. troops, suggesting the threat had receded, she said.
The civilian analyst was not in direct communication with the Army captain who called in the airstrike, and she was surprised when she learned later about the attack. But she added that it was not her job to second-guess military commanders.
"There have been a lot of times when someone has called out something that was later found to be a mistaken assessment," she told McHale. That's the danger of "real time" analysis, she added.
Air Force buys an Avenger, its biggest and fastest armed drone
An Avenger drone is seen here in flight. It was designed to carry 2,000-pound bombs, as well as missiles, cameras and sensor packages. (Chad Slattery, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems / December 30, 2011)
The new radar-evading aircraft, which cost the Air Force $15 million, has a maximum takeoff weight of 15,800 pounds and can fly at 460 mph. The drone, built near San Diego, is for testing purposes.
By W.J. Hennigan
December 31, 2011 The Air Force has bought a new hunter-killer aircraft that is the fastest and largest armed drone in its fleet.
The Avenger, which cost the military $15 million, is the latest version of the Predator drones made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., a San Diego-area company that also builds the robotic MQ-9 Reapers for the Air Force and CIA.
The new radar-evading aircraft, also known as the Predator C, is General Atomics' third version of these drones. The Air Force picked up only one of them, strictly for testing purposes.
"There is no intention to deploy the aircraft in the war in Afghanistan at this time," said Pentagon spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy.
The Avenger represents a major technological advance over the other Predator and Reaper drones that the Obama administration has increasingly relied on to hunt and destroy targets in Central Asia and the Middle East, defense industry analysts said. It may be several months — even years — away from active duty, but the Avenger represents the wave of the future, said Phil Finnegan, an aerospace expert with the Teal Group, a research firm.
"As the U.S. looks at threats beyond Iraq and Afghanistan — where it has complete air dominance — it needs aircraft that are going to be stealthier and faster so they won't be shot down by enemy air defense," Finnegan said.
With a length of 44 feet and a maximum takeoff weight of 15,800 pounds, the Avenger can carry more weaponry than its predecessors.
The Reaper, for example, is 36 feet long and has a maximum takeoff weight of 10,500 pounds. The largest bombs it carries weigh 500 pounds and hang from its wings.
The Avenger, on the other hand, has an internal bomb bay like other modern fighter and bomber jets. It was designed to carry 2,000-pound bombs, as well as missiles, cameras and sensor packages.
Both the Reaper and Avenger have 66-foot wingspans and can reach a maximum altitude of about 50,000 feet.
The Reaper can stay aloft for 30 hours at a time –- 10 hours longer than the Avenger. But with the power of a turbofan engine, the Avenger's top speed is about 460 mph, much faster than the propeller-driven Reaper's 276 mph.
The Avenger is considered one of the contenders to replace older Predators and Reapers. It's also likely to be in the running for the Navy's upcoming carrier-launched drone program.
General Atomics builds its drones in 10 buildings in Poway. The sprawling complex harks back to an era when Southland aerospace pioneers such as Lockheed Aircraft Co., Douglas Aircraft Co. and North American Aviation built aircraft from start to finish, manufacturing nearly all of the components in-house.
The company first flew the Avenger in April 2009 at the company's Gray Butte Flight Operations Facility in Palmdale. David A. Deptula, a retired three-star general who focused on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance during his career in the Air Force, said the military would check out how detectable the Avenger is when faced with radar. The military will also test the aircraft's weapon delivery system and its overall performance in a simulated battle environment.
"They're going to test out all of its capabilities before they make a commitment to buy more," he said.
Navy Balloon Launches Drone, Which Drops Two More Spy Bots
By Katie Drummond Email Author January 6, 2012 | 12:30 pm |
It just might be the most convoluted spy program in the Pentagon’s history: Fly a balloon up to 60,000 feet, and have it unleash a drone. Then, have that drone deploy several smaller surveillance drones that glide to the ground and collect data. Rube Goldberg, call your office.
The elaborate plot comes courtesy of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which recently announced successful completion of flight tests for their new, Autonomous Deployment Demonstration project. The goal sounds simple enough: land small, sensor-laden drones at precise locations, without being detected. That’d allow military personnel to have better intel inside enemy terrain, and avoid putting themselves in harm’s way to deposit the devices.
But the anodyne title and seemingly simple goal don’t begin to get at the complexity of the project.
The Navy started with a high-altitude balloon. To the end of the balloon, they attached a simple, mid-sized Tempest .. http://uasusa.com/tempest.php .. drone — each one has a 10-foot wingspan and can carry a 10-pound payload.
But we’re not done yet. The Tempest, in turn, is carrying two tiny Cicada drones — one under each wing.
The Cicada drones are tiny gliders, each about the size of a small bird and undetectable to radar. Plus, because the drones don’t have a motor or propulsion system, they’re essentially noiseless.
And their simple construction and inexpensive airframe means that the drones are disposable. The Cicada’s wings are made of nothing more than custom-printed circuit boards, which contain a basic navigation system and the requisite sensors for a given job.
Their drones-within-a-drone-within-a-balloon contraption complete, the Navy conducted a series of eight aerial tests. And — shazzam! — the clever plot worked: Unleashed at 57,000 feet, the Tempest drones traveled as far as 30 nautical miles before unleashing their Cicada cargo. Once deployed, the Cicada drones glided an extra 11 miles, and landed an average of 15 feet away from their target locations.
Brace yourself, Bovais, because this “straight forward” scheme is expected to get a little more complex. Eventually, the Navy hopes to deploy hundreds of Cicada drones from an aerial vehicle, and disperse them to deluge a hostile area with secret sensors.
By ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN and MARK HANIS Published: January 30, 2012
Washington
DRONES are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan. In Iraq, the State Department is using them to watch for threats to Americans. It’s time we used the revolution in military affairs to serve human rights advocacy.
They fled the very violence they were trying to monitor. Drones could replace them, and could even go to some places the observers, who were escorted and restricted by the government, could not see. This we know: the Syrian government isn’t just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is shooting unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on news media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they make us YouTube witnesses.
Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.
Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars — no longer many millions — a surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria.
An environmental group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has reported that it is using drones to monitor illegal Japanese whaling in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years, human-rights groups and the actor and activist George Clooney [ http://www.satsentinel.org/ ], among others, have purchased satellite imagery of conflict zones. Drones can see even more clearly, and broadcast in real time.
We could record the repression in Syria with unprecedented precision and scope. The better the evidence, the clearer the crimes, the higher the likelihood that the world would become as outraged as it should be.
This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isn’t the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work?
It may be illegal in the Syrian government’s eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syria’s territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian state’s brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders.
There are some obvious risks and downsides to the drone approach. The Syrian government would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to blame a foreign conspiracy for its troubles. Local operators of the drones could be at risk, though a higher-end drone could be controlled from a remote location or a neighboring country.
Such considerations figured in conversations we have had with human rights organizations that considered hiring drones in Syria, but opted in the end for supplying protesters with phones, satellite modems and safe houses. For nearly a year now, brave amateurs with their tiny cameras arguably have been doing the trick in Syria. In those circumstances, the value that a drone could add might not be worth the investment and risks.
Even if humanitarian drones are not used in Syria, they should assume their place in the arsenal of human rights advocates. It is a precedent worth setting, especially in situations where evidence of large-scale human rights violations is hard to come by.
Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media did not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just response, but it helps.
If human rights organizations can spy on evil, they should.
By msnbc.com staff, NBC News and news services February 17, 2012
"A good number" of unmanned U.S. military and intelligence drones are operating in the skies over Syria, monitoring the Syrian military's attacks against opposition forces and innocent civilians alike, U.S. defense officials tell NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski.
The officials said this surveillance is not in preparation for U.S. military intervention. Rather, the Obama administration hopes to use the overhead visual evidence and intercepts of Syrian government and military communications in an effort to "make the case for a widespread international response," the officials told Miklaszewski.
Unlike in Libya, there has been no widespread international support for military intervention in the country. And while there has been some discussion among White House, State Dept. and Pentagon officials about possible humanitarian missions, U.S. officials fear that those missions could not be carried out without endangering those involved and would almost certainly draw the United States into a military role in Syria.
On Friday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces renewed bombardment of the opposition stronghold of Homs and attacked rebels in Deraa, in blatant disregard of a U.N. resolution.
Demonstrations against Assad were reported by activists in several cities across Syria, including the capital Damascus and the commercial hub Aleppo, after Friday Muslim prayers, despite the threat of violence from security forces.
In a show of support for Assad, China's vice foreign minister, Zhai Jun, arrived in Damascus after the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution telling the increasingly isolated president to halt the crackdown and surrender power.
China, along with Russia, had voted against the motion and says Syria must be allowed to resolve its problems without being dictated terms by foreign powers.
Its stance on Syria will "withstand the test of history," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in Beijing.
Zhai said before leaving for Damascus: "China does not approve of the use of force to interfere in Syria or the forceful pushing of a so-called regime change."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that the UN General Assembly resolution showed an overwhelming consensus that Syria's bloody crackdown must end.
Even as Zhai landed in Damascus, government forces pummeled opposition-held areas of the strategic western city of Homs, now under fire for two weeks.
In Deraa, a city on the Jordanian border where the revolt erupted nearly a year ago, explosions and machine gun fire echoed through districts under attack by troops, residents said.
Army tanks rolled through the streets of the conflict-torn city, even as regime forces categorically denied using them.
"We will not use them and we will win," a Syrian general in Deraa told ITN's Bill Neely.
The military has also opened a new offensive in Hama, a city with a bloody history of resistance to Assad's late father.
A doctor told Neely that a growing number of revolutionary troops are suffering head and neck wounds, proof that they are facing a well-trained enemy -- in many cases, defectors from their own ranks.
Protests continued in spite of the attacks, and one activist told Neely that Assad was doomed.
"One hundred percent he will go," the activist said.
The U.N. assembly vote in New York on Thursday showed Assad had few foreign sympathizers left. The vote went 137-12 in favour with 17 abstentions on a resolution endorsing an Arab League plan that calls for him to step down.
The assembly vote, unlike Security Council resolutions, has no legal force but it reflected global revulsion at the ferocity of the crackdown in which security forces have killed several thousand civilians since last March.
Assad portrays the opposition as foreign-backed terrorists and has promised reforms while rejecting the idea of surrendering power.
On Wednesday he announced a referendum on a draft constitution on Feb. 26 followed by a multi-party parliamentary election, a move swiftly dismissed the opposition and the West.
Assad told a visiting Mauritanian official on Friday that political reforms "have to march parallel with returning security and stability and protecting citizens," the state news agency said.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders have decried the violence and are considering steps to get humanitarian aid to civilians suffering in embattled areas.
But the West has ruled out military intervention of the type that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in Libya last year and must pin its hopes on a bringing together a fragmented opposition movement which includes activists inside Syria, armed rebels and politicians in exile.
The military intervention in Libya was possible due to widespread support within NATO and among the Arab Gulf States and also because of the lack of support for Gadhafi, which is not the case for Syria.
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