Air Force Drones Hit 1 Million Combat Hours

coondoggie writes "If you needed any more evidence as to how important unmanned aircraft have become to the US military operations, the US Air Force today said drones have amassed over one million combat hours flown. While that number is impressive, it took the planes known as Global Hawk, Predator and Reaper, almost 14 years to do it, but it could take only a little over another two years to cross the two million mark according to Air Force officials."

Comments

Glenn Greenwald Tweeted This One Well

[darien.train]

"A moment of silence, please, to honor the brave robot we lost today in Libya: http://is.gd/e1Oyyj "- Original Link

Re:Glenn Greenwald Tweeted This One Well

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Given that each drone costs almost as much as a primary school building, I think we should all pause to reflect.

A good thing...

[steve buttgereit]

...that these things, by today's definitions, are neither hostile nor a part of war. It would be a much less peaceful world otherwise.

Another reason to question buying the F35

[schwit1]

UAVs are smaller, more versatile, cheaper to buy and maintain, stealthier, don't get tired(in the traditional sense) and can loiter for greater periods. The Canadians estimate each F35 at $150M. I don't see an advantage for the F35 that UAVs won't meet or exceed in a few more years. The F35 is a plane looking for a mission, like the Comanche attack helicopter was.

Re:Another reason to question buying the F35

[Ihmhi]

Well, UAVs are still pretty new militarily. Originally they were just surveillance devices until someone figured out how to strap some Hellfire missiles onto the thing.

The thing we've yet to see is UAV to UAV combat. Most UAVs have air-to-ground missiles. What happens when someone starts building air-to-air UAVs to target the Predators and the like?

Re:Another reason to question buying the F35

[Ihmhi]

Derp, I forgot to add - I think we're seriously going to see what basically amount to Protoss Carriers in the next 10-20 years. A C-130 or AC-130 that can launch and retrieve fighter-style drones from its bays, and not have any latency or signal loss issues over long distances.

Wish there were more.

[kamapuaa]

I like the program and hope to see it expanded. I think the US should have these continually flying sortees all over the world. So if a bad guy shows up in Europe, the US can easily take him out with a Tomahawk missile or two.

Re:Wish there were more.

[AliasMarlowe]

I like the program and hope to see it expanded. I think the US should have these continually flying sorties all over the world. So if a bad guy shows up in Europe, the US can easily take him out with a Tomahawk missile or two.

I'd prefer if they started by doing this in Manhattan.
I heard there are some non-patriots actually inside the Beltway in D.C.

Re:Wish there were more.

[shoehornjob]

Tomahawk missiles are not currently launched from UAV's. You mean Hellfire missiles. They are small enough and still keep the stealth profile to a minimum.

Military robots like drones are ironic...

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html ... because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead? ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all.

(I know, I'm like a broken record on this -- for those who remember broken scratched records...)

Re:Military robots like drones are ironic...

[Paul Fernhout]

Maybe you would prefer to read this, by John Taylor Gatto, about the socioeconomic system the US drones are defending?
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprise -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

Why not just get the robot drones to do the work instead of using them against opponents of a rapacious short-term-empire-minded social system based around the USA? And maybe get more people to accept that the answer to "Why do they hate us?" is not so much "Because we are free" but rather more of "Because we support their oppressors"?

See also, for something written by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC:
    http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
    It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
    A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. ..."

Re:Military robots like drones are ironic...

[churchtech]

The one big problem with that theory is that everyone needs to recognize that it's wasteful of resources to fight wars. As long as you have one group that's willing to continue the fight, (Al-quida) your stuck. My biggest complaint about George W. Bush was that he didn't use the war as a chance to break our dependance on foreign oil. Not for environmental reasons, but for basic strategic ones... It's the heights of stupidity to pay for your enemies war.

Re:Military robots like drones are ironic...

[Paul Fernhout]

I have to admit you have a point as to up-front costs, but if the robots can build and maintain other robots, which they can do to a limited extent already, the operating cost is less of an issue (although the robots can more easily get out of control like in James P. Hogan' s "Two Faces of Tomorrow").

Plus, in general, robots are becoming cheaper than human labor for more and more jobs anyway. See Marshall Brain's presentations, like this one:
    "Marshall Brain - Automation & Unemployment"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Z8TR4ToNs

Ot Martin Ford's writings:
    http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/

Or this from 1964:
    http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures -- unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S.
    The existence of this paradox is denied or ignored by conventional economic analysis. The general economic approach argues that potential demand, which if filled would raise the number of jobs and provide incomes to those holding them, is underestimated. Most contemporary economic analysis states that all of the available labor force and industrial capacity is required to meet the needs of consumers and industry and to provide adequate public services: Schools, parks, roads, homes, decent cities, and clean water and air. It is further argued that demand could be increased, by a variety of standard techniques, to any desired extent by providing money and machines to improve the conditions of the billions of impoverished people elsewhere in the world, who need food and shelter, clothes and machinery and everything else the industrial nations take for granted.
    There is no question that cybernation does increase the potential for the provision of funds to neglected public sectors. Nor is there any question that cybernation would make possible the abolition of poverty at home and abroad. But the industrial system does not possess any adequate mechanisms to permit these potentials to become realities. The industrial system was designed to produce an ever-increasing quantity of goods as efficiently as possible, and it was assumed that the distribution of the power to purchase these goods would occur almost automatically. The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand -- for granting the right to consume -- now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system."

Or related stuff on my site.

Re:Military robots like drones are ironic...

[Paul Fernhout]

Remember, the USA helped create bin Laden by funding and training and arming him to fight against the USSR...

Yes, I agree on the need to switch to alternative energy and energy efficiency. The total US military budget is somewhere around US$1 trillion per year (or more with interest). That's a lot of solar panels and wind turbines and home insulation. Amory Lovins (IIRC) suggested decades ago that just the operating cost for two years of the US Persian Gulf deployment force would be enough to imporve US energy efficiency to the point where we did not need the oil from the Persian Gulf. So, yet more irony. On that, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

The state of the art in Germany is now to build houses without furnaces, they are so well-built, well-insulated, and have air-to-air heat exchangers for fresh air without much energy loss.
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/38940

Electric cars apparently use less energy per mile then it takes just to refine the oil into gasoline to go the same distance:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

Another irony is that in the 1940s and 1950s nuclear physcisits realzied the thorium-based nuclear power would be inherently safer and more abundant than uranium and plutonium based nuclear power (you can't easily make bombs from thorium and it can't melt down easily because it is used already in the molten state and can be drained easily into cooling tanks) but thorium power was discarded precisely because it was safer (you could not make bombs from it). So, instead of cheap, abundant, safe thorium power, we got lots of nuclear bombs to fight over middle east oil fields and other resource rich areas we would not need to access if we had cheap power.

I wonder that will come out of this press conference tomorrow (still not sure if it is a scam or confusion or not):
http://pesn.com/2011/06/17/9501849_Defkalion_Announces_Energy_Catalyzer_Press_Conference/
"By now, most people following exotic energy breakthroughs have read about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) cold fusion technology. It utilizes nickel powder, hydrogen gas, an undisclosed catalyst, heat, and pressure to produce large amounts of energy. The technology is capable of producing over 4 kilowatts of thermal power from a reactor vessel only fifty cubic centimeters in volume (about he size of your fist). Cold fusion research has been ongoing for two decades, and there have been thousands of successful experiments. However, Andrea Rossi's technology is the most promising cold fusion technology yet to emerge.
Andrea Rossi's company Leonardo Corporation has licensed the technology to the Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies Inc., with sole purpose to sell, license, and manufacture industrialized commercially applicable products using the Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer with global exclusivity rights; except the Americas. Defkalion has recently sent out invitations to certain individuals to attend a press conference about the technology on June 23, 2011. The invitation is self explanatory, and is posted below. "

But in any case, we'll probably have dirt-cheap solar panels in twenty years through nanotechnology or similar improvements in materials. We'd have had cheaper solar a lot sooner if either we had more government-funded R&D on them or if US consumers had to pay the true cost of fossil fuels up front (including defense expenditures and health costs and pollution costs and war risk).
http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html
http://www.energyandcapital.com/article

Is this good or bad for the future?

[Kiyooka]

Robots dehumanize war, but if war shifts away from human casualties, isn't this a good thing?

Will drones ever be cheaper than training a grunt?

Re:Is this good or bad for the future?

[idontgno]

At what point does the dehumanization of combat come full circle and become robots fighting robots, may the side with the last robot standing win?

I can't tell if this would be Heaven or Hell... because a war with no appreciable human cost becomes the war that never ends.

It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it.

-- Robert E. Lee
Battle of Fredericksburg (13th December 1862)

Re:Extreme dishonor.

[flyingsquid]

Murdering goat herders from 50000 feet by remote control is the most extreme form of cowardice I have ever seen or heard of.

Engaging the Taliban with robots is not a fair fight. It's not honorable. But the point of combat isn't a fair fight, it's not to gain honor, it's to win. And winning means making the fight as unfair as possible- fighting him on your terms, not his, using tactics and terrain where you can use your strengths and your equipment to your advantage. So instead of engaging the Taliban on foot, you engage him in such a way that he can't hit you back. That means engaging masses of Taliban with AK-47 assault rifles with A-10s tankbusters armed with 30 mm gatling guns designed to take out Soviet armor. Chasing down footsoldiers with Apache gunships. Obliterating Taliban headquarters with GPS guided artillery rockets which allow you to put 200 pounds of high explosive within a meter of where you're aiming, from 25 miles away. Or having some guy in Nevada shoot at a truck carrying Taliban leaders with a Reaper drone.

Fighting unfairly is nothing new. That's why armies try to take the high ground, and have better weapons and armor than their enemies, and to attack with superior numbers, and better discipline. Because it makes the fight unfair. Fighting unfairly is how the Battle of Agincourt was won. The English used a weapon- the longbow- that allowed them to take out the French knights before the French could get them. It was unfair, it was dishonorable, and it delivered the French a crushing defeat. And fighting unfairly and dishonorably is also how the Taliban fight. The Taliban have trouble beating the U.S. in a firefight so they have increasingly used improvised explosive devices that allow them to attack U.S. troops without exposing themselves. They pretend they're civilians so the U.S. doesn't know who to hit. They hide in the middle of civilians so that it's impossible to attack them without hitting civilians. They use suicide bombers. Is it fair? Is that honorable? Of course not. But their goal is to win, not to be honorable, or to fight fair.

There are limits to what's acceptable. Killing civilians deliberately, or with reckless disregard, is one of these, and sometimes the U.S. military has done this. And whether the U.S. really should be in Afghanistan at this point is debatable. But fighting unfairly is the whole point and it's naive to argue otherwise.

Re:I wonder what that works out to in murders

[butalearner]

Why can't we figure out that we aren't wanted in that part of the world and just fuck off? They don't want us, they don't need us. Just fuck off before we pick up more bad karma and blowback.

If you know your neighbor beats his wife and threatens to kill her, and she doesn't say anything, do you stay silent? What if you heard the story from a coworker, or from your brother across the country?

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think most people would agree that they have a moral obligation to interfere in someone's life in some situations. There's a line somewhere, but it's probably different for everybody. Now what happens when the oppressor runs an entire country, committing what you consider morally reprehensible acts that are not illegal in that country? Who should have the authority to do something? Nobody? Can we really leave it up to the people when opposing viewpoints are quashed violently?

Sam Harris gave this interesting TED talk that argues that science can answer moral questions like these, though he doesn't really address how we (as in the people of the world) should deal with it. I don't think there is an objective answer to these things...that's what makes international politics so difficult. To some people, removing Gaddafi (when he made clear he wouldn't listen to dissent) is worth it.

Re:Stargate SG-1

[Ihmhi]

Yes, it was indeed an episode of Stargate SG-1. That episode was The Other Side, featuring Rene Auberjonois as Space Hitler.

"Close the iris." *thud*

Because they will come here

[Quila]

They want us dead. It's really quite that simple. It is much more effective to reach out to where they are and kill them before they get here.

this isnt

[nimbius]

an accomplishment really, its like gloating about the uptime counter on the
quarter million dollar accounting server with occasional atrocious mathematics.

Less war machines...more science machines.

Re:Extreme dishonor.

[couchslug]

War is not sportsmanship. It is never supposed to BE sportsmanship.

When war is resorted to, the enemy is either to submit, or die.

Re:Extreme dishonor.

[tehcyder]

Engaging the Taliban with robots is not a fair fight. It's not honorable. But the point of combat isn't a fair fight, it's not to gain honor, it's to win.

It's not killing armed Taliban fighters that is the problem, genius, it's flattening entire villages because someone told you that the Taliban might be there, and, oh dear, looks like we were wrong, there's another nail in the coffin of winning hearts and minds.
We are not fighting against the whole of Afghanistan, we are fighting against the Taliban - that's the difference from WWII.