Army's unmanned aerial drone kills for the first time
LinkA Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle engaged and killed two suspected improvised explosive device emplacers overwatching a major thoroughfare for Coalition Forces during a historic flight near Qayyarah, Iraq, in Nineveh province Sept. 1.
A scout weapons team from 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, observed the two unknown enemy fighters in a tactical overwatch near the roadside. The SWT requested support from the Hunter UAV.
The pilots guided the Hunter operator to the scene where it set up for a strike mission and dropped its precision munition, killing both unknown enemies and marking a first in Army Aviation history.
"It’s very humbling to know that we have set an Army historical mark in having the first successful launch in combat from an Army weaponized UAV," said Capt. Raymond Fields, commander, Unmanned Aerial Surveillance Company. "This would not be possible without my soldiers and civilians working hard day in and day out in Iraq to accomplish this feat."
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So, they were 'suspected improvised explosive device emplacers' in the first paragraph, moved quickly into being 'unknown enemy fighters' and rapidly became a 'feat', not to mention 'dead'.
Gee willikers, what a whizbang accomplishment. Something to be proud of, the ability to kill people who might be doing something we don't like.
Arborman, I certainly share your concern about having remotely controlled aircraft preemptively blasting someone who's only "suspected," since that's a pretty slippery slope, but if they were placing an IED, don't you think that activity goes a bit beyond "something we don't like?" i.e. it's not like they were zapped because they were burning an American flag. By your logic, the Iraqi insurgents shouldn't be attacking US troops just because the troops are "doing something the Iraqis don't like" by occupying Iraq.
To phasor3000, since *any* mid-eastern might be doing stuff that the US army don't like (such as not speaking English, or looking foreign), wouldn't it be simpler to just kill them all ?
Hello ? Did you somehow miss the meaning of suspected here ? (of course since they are just heathen sub humans from another continent it doesn't matter much). Zapped ? Sorry ? Was that thing equipped with a tazer while we weren't looking ?
Nah, they're suspected, might as well kill them. It's not as if they were americans.
I'm sure you're so happy to get a ticket when you're *suspected* of breaking the speed limit. Too bad your police isn't allowed to shoot yet in such cases.
However, you could have a brilliant career ahead of you in politics.
All the best.
At the institute I work at, there's been discussion over when this would happen. A few of our professors have worked on UCAVs, and the interesting thing is the debate over when the UCAV will be allowed to fire ordinance without a human pulling the trigger.
Ignoring the politics, it opens an interesting question now that the first human-assisted UCAV kill has been made.
i have mixed feelings about this. Any technology that allows for combatants to be safer from harm is potentially a good thing. But i have doubts about it being used responsibly, which were amplified when i read the comments and realized that the people killed were only suspected of planting explosives (which i missed on my read through).
i had no idea that the cia/af drones had apparently been killing for years though, which is interesting.
first i would like to say that the airforce's predetor UAV has been using Hellfire antitank missiles for several years. this is just the army catching up with us in the airforce. second its obvious that combat is not something some of you commenters are to familier with. the war in iraq, while may not be in our best intrest to be there, is not a normal war. the enemy doesn't wear uniforms, except when they get some of ours and try to trick us, they do not follow LOAC (law of armed combat) that all of use are required to follow when we engage them, and that makes for a rather difficult situation for us on the gound. IEDs are one of the main wepons they use against us. and this is not the first instance of killing combatants while in the act of placing IEDs. And lastly i would like to say that there is always someone pulling the trigger. A ground team from a remote control station controls the plane either by a line-of-sight radio connection or via a satellite link. these are trainned pilots that are fully qualified o fly UAVs or regualar manned aircraft. they have to get comand autherization to fire any ordanace. which i can safely say was given in this situation. we've been fighting these people for a while now and have become quite good at telling what a person planting an IED looks like.
sorry for the rant but i just had to pass on that info for those who didn't know.
yours from balad air base
and the CIA has been using the, like in Pakistan. First Iraq was a mistake, but in a combat zone, if someone is doing something like that, shoot first, ask questions later. Should they waited until the device exploded so they would no longer be suspected of it? we might not ought to be in Iraq, but while we are there, this is what we need to be doing.
"It’s very humbling to know that we have set an Army historical mark in having the first successful launch in combat from an Army weaponized UAV"
Rather odd use of the word "humbling" there. Is that "humble" as in Uriah Heep? Shouldn't it be "We're insanely proud"?
>wouldn't it be simpler to just kill them all ?
The Germans tried this in the 1940's - disposing of the bodies is a logistic nightmare - better to just give them all Mastercards and make wage slaves of them.
Pacman, want to double-check your facts? First, we talked the old Iraqi Army into disbanding, while making various promises to them (none of which we kept). The resistance isn't in uniform? Big surprise. Second, at this point some of the forces attacking us are in uniform. They're also using fully professional military tactics.
By the way, do you know why the Iraqis have the means to make so many IEDs? Before the war started, and well into its opening phases, Rumsfeld and his buddies personally, repeatedly insisted on ignoring the advice of the Pentagon's military planning specialists, and going in with far fewer troops than they recommended. Then, when our troops got to Iraq, they spent huge amounts of valuable time and resources searching for the "weapons of mass destruction" Bush had sworn were there.
The WMDs never turned up, of course. But in the meantime, we didn't have the manpower to secure obvious conventional targets, like an entire huge warehouse full of military explosives. That stuff all got looted, and vanished into the population. Our troops have been encountering it ever since in the form of IEDs.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, while i'm in no way condoning the war in iraq or how it was handled. i can say from first hand experiance that the majority of insurgents in no way were uniforms, thus the deffinition of insurgent, although by deffinition they could also be called aresistance. the point i was tring to make is that iraq is a vry dangerous place for us to be and most anything to help keep us safe is a good thing. and i hope that comment is not taken to leteraly, i am not for torture or just nuking the hell out of that sand box as some of my brothers would put it or anything of that nature. as for your points of what led up to the war i am in aggrement with you. but i do what i am ordered and i will use what is at my disposal to stay alive.
How humbling. I'm sure your mum and your primary school teachers are proud of what they created.