The rapidly increasing activity in remotely piloted aircraft attack operations over both Afghanistan and Pakistan is an indication of America’s increasing interest in achieving a war-fighting ability whereby ultimately no Americans need be anywhere near the actual war zone.
In a recent incident last week a Predator drone aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into a crowd of Afghans that military authorities said were suspected insurgents. Despite the fact that they were only ‘suspected’ of being insurgents, the armchair-bound Predator pilots in Washington nonetheless decided to launch an attack against them that resulted in the deaths of thirteen of them and wounding three others. In another attack earlier this week, a Predator fired a Hellfire missile that killed three other fighters in Afghanistan.
With the recently announced ‘surge’ into Afghanistan likely to drive fighters over the borders into Pakistan, there is likely to be an increased use of drones over Pakistan which has already experienced a high level of drone attacks. As the ‘surge’ was announced, drone production programs were upgraded to bring more of them into operation.
It seems that operations in southern Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan are likely to become the first real testing ground of this latest mode of war-fighting where only small on the ground specialised units need to be in place to interface the intelligence they gain with the intelligence gained by the drones.
Drone pilots are being quickly as well as more efficiently trained in the US to meet the increased demand for the use of drone weapon platforms.
Drone attacks on Pakistan are increasingly alienating the Pakistani government who have called on the US to stop. However the call for a cessation of the attacks has fallen on deaf ears as the US continues to use drones against targets inside Pakistan.
With the art of remote war-fighting being rapidly advanced and with the expectation that it is likely to be used in the upcoming war against the people of Yemen, one can only imagine the renewed sense of power that the US must have which, when coupled with its sense of moral exceptionalism, will no doubt only spur them on to greater things in the Middle East for their allies Israel.
1 comment:
Yes, the age of recliner-chair warfare is at hand. That some of it takes place in Californian is deeply ironic.
Imagine a peaceful beach scene and a truck pulls up and two men (or even two women) set the truck up so that it faces the waves then they switch on their monitors and a scene in Pakistan appears.
"That looks suspicious," says one and presses a button. A huge explosion results. "Hot dog!" the man shouts, "there's an arm and it's still twitching."
"Look at that wave," the other man replies.
"It's more fun playing video games," the first man cries. "I'm so glad I joined the air force and became a pilot. Serving your country is so...uplifting!"
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