March 19, 2005
ENDER'S GAME BOY:
Air Force Wants Big Boost in Predator Fleet (Peter Pae, March 19, 2005, LA Times)
In a major boost to San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., the Air Force said Friday that it planned to spend nearly $6 billion for more than 140 of the company's unmanned Predator spy planes.The remotely controlled aircraft made headlines early in the war in Afghanistan when it spotted a Taliban convoy and fired a Hellfire missile, striking the target. It marked the first search-and-destroy mission by an unmanned aircraft. Since then, the military has used the Predator in Iraq to track down insurgents and help U.S. forces keep an eye on potential threats.
The Air Force's latest plan would be the largest acquisition of robotic aircraft to date and represents a significant milestone in the evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, analysts said. General Atomics currently is producing 12 Predators annually, but the Air Force would like to see production doubled this year.
"People used to say that the Air Force would never buy into an aircraft that didn't have a human being in it, but in fact they've fallen in love with them," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute. [...]
The Pentagon envisions replacing up to a third of its manned aircraft with UAVs by 2010.
The less risk to American life the more likely we do the right thing. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 19, 2005 9:45 AM
The next iteration of the make-America-surrender crowd will be when they protest these weapons as being somehow unfair to the enemy. They will invoke dangerous and outmoded intellectual masturbation like the Just War and the Proportionate Response doctrines. They will complain about how the enemy is braver and therefore better than we are because we don't put the soldiers at risk, whereas they do. It just goes on and on and on.
Posted by: bart at March 19, 2005 10:36 AMif the networks were smart -- which they aren't -- they would be negotiating with the pentagon to get access to predator feeds. but no, they see money in denigrating the source untold hours of content.
Posted by: cjm at March 19, 2005 11:37 AMThe price for manned aircraft has simply gotten too high -- the F-22 is going to eventually come in at over $200 million a copy because of the procurement death spiral ( fixed development costs amortized over an ever-decreasing number of aircraft purchased.) It's either this or the Air Force prices itself out of business.
Posted by: joe shropshire at March 19, 2005 2:31 PMBOMARC was the first unmanned aircraft the AF bought, I believe, and there have been quite a few others.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 21, 2005 11:56 PM