http://counterpunch.com/green03042010.htmlThe manufacturers of drone airplanes, which have killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan, are about to see their prospects soar as the Pentagon expands its vast arsenal.
At least that was the message at Tuesday's "Unmanned Aircraft Systems West" conference in San Diego, where advocates of the lethal composite birds dispassionately described how unpiloted planes directed via satellite will soon come to largely replace the human element on the killing fields.
Use of the so-called Predator and Reaper drones to fight the U.S.-spawned war in the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan have rapidly escalated during the opening months of the Obama administration, with 51 reported strikes in Pakistan in 2009 alone - up from 45 during the previous eight years, according to a recent report by the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The foundation alleges in its "The Year of the Drone" account that more than 1,000 - or 32 per cent - of drone attack victims were civilians.
Tuesday's industry conference was held at the sprawling Sheraton Hotel on Harbor Island. A group of antiwar protesters picketed the event on a sidewalk near the facility's entrance.
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San Diego is the epicenter of drone airplane construction, with the bulk of the machines built by area defense contractor General Atomics and a local division of Northrop Grumman.
The machines, which render both surveillance and attack functions at altitudes of up to 25,000 feet, cost between $4 million and $12 million each to produce - substantially less than piloted bomber planes.
Moreover, the 27-foot-long planes can travel as far as 400 miles to their target, hover there for hours rendering their assignment, and then return home to base.
Just how prized the drones have become to the U.S. military was evident on December 8 when Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, hailed the plane's battlefield advantages during an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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The two-day conference, which ended Wednesday, was held under the auspices of the Association of Naval Aviation, with corporate sponsorship supplied by the likes of RTI, a softward services company; HDT Engineered Technologies; Flow Technology and Z Microsystems, among other subcontractors hoping for expanded business from the drone's primary producers.
Among the nine speakers at Tuesday's meeting were Marine Major Gen. Thomas Conant, who addressed the burgeoning use of unmanned aircraft systems in the corps, and U.S. Coast Guard Captain James Sommer, who likewise recited various nonwar projects for the unmanned planes in his agency.
Several military officials and corporate executives, all of whom asked that their names not be used in this story, defended the dispatch of drones in warfare as an economical strategy to keep soldiers out of harm's way.
Missions can be executed quickly and cleanly using unmanned aircraft, and "with little, if any, collateral (civilian) damage," one company official said.
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Other attendees acknowledged that the drones aren't necessarily the weapon for all occasions, but only good for use in relatively poor countries without the military capacity to launch anti-drone missiles and aircraft.
"These (drones) wouldn't do well over, say, Russia," a company salesman said with a laugh.
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puke on our military brass - may the pentagon crumble
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