Free Republic

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington— The radar-evading drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior U.S. official, raising fears that the aircraft's sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals. It was unclear whether the drone's mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said. Though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the...

Such is the state of U.S./Pakistan relations that no one seems fully confident this was accidental. Is there another “alliance” in the world of which that could be said — where one country wipes out two dozen troops from the other and it’s not instantly clear it was a terrible miscalculation instead of a response to some shadowy provocation?Is it “friendly fire” if the two sides aren’t really friendly? “It seems quite extraordinary that we’d just nail these posts the way they say we did,” said one senior American official who was in close touch with American and NATO officials...

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is weeks away from launching an unmanned aerial asset to help deputies fight crime. The ShadowHawk helicopter is six-feet long, weighs fifty pounds and fits in the back of an SUV. “We can put it over a fire, put it over ahazmat spill, put it over a house with a suspect barricaded inside and literally give the incident commander the ability to look at the entire scene with a bird’s eye view, ” Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said. Sheriff’s deputies will fly the ShadowHawk with nothing more than a laptop computer and a remote control...

Reporting from Washington— On the evening of April 5, a pilot settled into a leather captain's chair at Creech Air Force Base in southern Nevada and took the controls of a Predator drone flying over one of the most violent areas of southwestern Afghanistan. Minutes later, his radio crackled. A firefight had broken out. Taliban insurgents had ambushed about two dozen Marines patrolling a bitterly contested road. The Air Force captain angled his joystick and the drone veered toward the fighting taking place half a world away, where it was already morning. He powered up two Hellfire missiles under its...

WASHINGTON, Sept 20 (AFP) - Iraq could unleash a biological attack on the West by using unsuspecting people traveling abroad as carriers of deadly germs, a prominent Iraqi defector warned late Thursday. Nuclear scientist Khidhir Hamza, who left Iraq in 1994 and now lives in the United States, told the US Congress he suspected the Iraqi security service, which runs the country's biological weapons program, had already used people traveling abroad to reunite with relatives to infect exiled dissidents with the deadly AIDS virus. "An angle rarely reported -- and I found extensive incidents regarding it when I left...

The United States acknowledged Friday it was flying drones out of Ethiopia under a counter-terrorism campaign in the Horn of Africa but said the aircraft were unarmed and not carrying out raids. "The US has unarmed and unmanned aircraft at a facility there to be used only for surveillance as part of a broad, sustained integrated campaign to counter terrorism," Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby told AFP. "These unmanned aircraft are being used only for surveillance and not conducting strike missions." The Pentagon, the White House and the State Department confirmed the drone flights out of the airfield in Arba...

AT the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier. The presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security, international law and the future of...

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, on Friday criticized the Obama administration’s action in killing Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric who advocated jihad against the United States. Paul was the strongest critic on the Republican side in condemning the attack, which was praised by other candidates including Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian like Paul, also questioned the tactic of killing a U.S. citizen without due process.

Yesterday, the Turkish media reported, “Turkey … agreed with the US on a deal involving the transfer of US-engineered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could prove crucial in combating terrorism.” The Predator drones, expected to be delivered in June 2012, are supposed to help the Turks combat terrorists, which in Ankara’s narrow definition means the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) crossing into Turkey from the Iraq border. The Predators, said Turkish defense minister İsmet Yilmaz, “are UAVs with better qualities and features than the [Israeli-made] Herons.” Ankara, the report explains, was “disappointed by Israel's failure to return six Herons it had...

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A surveillance drone has crashed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. An Associated Press reporter saw pieces of the drone, which was shaped like a small plane, before it was removed by African Union soldiers. It had crashed into a house in the city center.

Two themes have already emerged in the still-early 2012 presidential contest:Republicans are running against Washington and President Obama is running against part of Washington, the Congress that gave him his early legislative achievements.The newest entrant to the GOP race is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who touched on one of the most emotional and volatile issues sitting on the nation's debate table: border security, illegal drugs from Mexico and illegal immigrants.In his announcement speech in South Carolina on Saturday, Perry said:America’s standing in the world is in peril, not only because of disastrous economic policies, but

Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell addressed the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs regarding the legality of unmanned drones. Her basic premise;in a designated war zone the use of armed drone is legal instrument of war but when used outside the immediate area it is a violation of international law. Much debate in legal circles has led to the consensus that such actions are illegal because the US is not in a war against a state. In their view al Qaeda is a criminal organization and the Taliban is their land lord. In a narrow perspective of international law,the...

The unusually heavy barrage suggests the US has no intention of halting its drone programme despite tensions with Pakistan Three suspected US missile strikes in north-western Pakistan in less than 12 hours have killed at least 38 alleged militants, an unusually heavy barrage at a time when relations between the two countries are badly strained, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

At the most recent Zhuhai air show, the premier event for China’s aviation industry, crowds swarmed around a model of an armed, jet-propelled drone and marveled at the accompanying display of its purported martial prowess. In a video and map, the thin, sleek drone locates what appears to be a U.S. aircraft carrier group near an island with a striking resemblance to Taiwan and sends targeting information back to shore, triggering a devastating barrage of cruise missiles toward the formation of ships. Little is known about the actual abilities of the WJ-600 drone or the more than two dozen other...

NAIROBI, Kenya - US military forces landed in Somalia to retrieve the bodies of dead or wounded militants after a US drone strike targeted a group of insurgents, Somalia's defense minister said yesterday. The operation is at least the second time US troops have landed in Somalia after a targeted strike, ...

WASHINGTON — The clandestine American military campaign to combat Al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen is expanding to fight the Islamist militancy in Somalia, as new evidence indicates that insurgents in the two countries are forging closer ties and possibly plotting attacks against the United States, American officials say. An American military drone aircraft attacked several Somalis in the militant group the Shabab late last month, the officials said, killing at least one of its midlevel operatives and wounding others. The strike was carried out by the same Special Operations Command unit now battling militants in Yemen, and it represented an...

Pakistani terrorist helped carry out deadly attacks worldwideIt's not easy being the chief of one of the U.S. Department of Defense's largest contractors. At the trial of accused terrorist David Coleman Headley, he revealed that he plotted with al-Qaida and local Pakistani terrorists to assassinate the head of Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT). I. A Troubled PastDavid Headley grew up as Daood Sayed Gilani. The son of a U.S. government radio broadcaster and diplomat at the U.S. Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C., Mr. Gilani was immersed in American culture. But when his parent's marriage fractured in 1960s Mr. Gilani was dragged...

Washington – The U.S. targeted Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia in a drone attack last week, in what was believed to be the first such airstrike in the anarchic eastern African nation, The Washington Post reported Thursday. The U.S. drone targeted two senior members of the al-Shabaab insurgent militia, amid growing fears in Washington that the Islamist group was seeking to expand its operations overseas. The two militants, who had ties with Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born preacher believed to be hiding in Yemen, were wounded in the attack, the report quoted a military official as saying.

Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk Above we have a Global Hawk UAV that has just returned from Iraq in one nonstop flight, rather than packed and transported via C-5/C-17 cargo, as would normally be the case. Do note the mission paintings on the fuselage- looks like 250+, they're really working these things, and drones are here to stay. This super-snooper can stay up for 36 hrs while operating above 60,000 feet, fulfilling the prior high-altitude surveillance role of the legendary, manned U-2. The Global Hawk is controlled via satellite by a flight-control center team in California's Mohave desert, who enjoy the...

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds. The base’s indoor flight lab is called the “microaviary,” and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. “We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight,”...