A Predator drone spy plane helped police make arrests after a North Dakota family's run-in with a local sheriff. Rodney Brossart, shown here, and his daughter and his three sons face felony charges. (Lake Region Law Enforcement Center / December 8, 2011)
Reporting from Washington—
Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.
Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.
He also called in a Predator B drone.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare...[Full Article]
Obama has authorized the use of deadly predator drones in Libya. During a news conference, Secretary of Defense Gates said the drones offer NATO more precise targeting against enemy forces nestled in crowded areas.
“This is good news for the Libyan rebels who have been complaining about NATO’s lack of support in recent days,” writes Michael Hughes for the Examiner.
It is not so good news for Libyan civilians. In 2009 alone, CIA operated Predator drones killed around 700 civilians in the tribal area of Pakistan.
“The true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 per cent,” said the Washington-based New America Foundation last March. A report released by the organization, The Year of the Drone, studied 114 drone raids in which more than 1200 people were killed. Of those, between 549 and 849 were reliably reported to be militant fighters, while the rest were civilians, the London Telegraph reported.
The illegal campaign began under Bush and escalated after Obama assumed office. There were 45 drone attacks during Bush’s two terms. In Obama’s first year alone, there were 51 attacks.
In recent months, Pakistani civilians have taken to the street to protest against the relentless attacks. In April, the Pentagon said it would continue the attacks despite official complaint from Islamabad. “Panetta (CIA chief) has an obligation to protect this country and he’s not going to halt any operations that accomplish that objective,” said Obama officials.
In September of 2010, the CIA “drastically increased its bombing campaign,” according to the New York Times. The escalation included attacks by U.S. military helicopters. In October, the U.S. apologized for a helicopter attack that killed two Pakistani soldiers at an outpost near the Afghan border.
Gaddafi’s opponents applauded the introduction of Predator drones into the engineered conflict. “We are so pleased,” media liaison official for the rebels’ Transitional National Council (TNC), Mustafa Gheriani, told AFP in Benghazi. “We hope that this can bring some relief to the people in Misrata.”
On Friday, former presidential candidate and Arizona senator John McCain arrived in Benghazi. “The American people support you very strongly and we know it’s necessary to help as much as we can,” McCain told a crowd of about 100 Libyans, the UPI reports.
In March, polls revealed that the American people do not support attacking Libya. Following Obama’s national address on his Libya policy earlier this month, a Pew Research poll indicated that 57% of Americans believe the U.S. policy lacks a clear goal, up from 50% who said the same thing a week earlier.
McCain is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. He has advocated increasing military strikes against the African country in order to remove its leader, Moammar Gaddafi, who was on track to normalizing relations with the United States prior to the color revolutions instigated in the Middle East.
In 2009, Gaddafi sunk any chance to repair its diplomatic relationship with the United States when he announced he was considering nationalizing the country’s oil. “Oil should be owned by the State at this time, so we could better control prices by the increase or decrease in production,” the dictator declared.
In addition to calling for nationalization, the Libyan leader called for support of his proposal to dismantle the government and to distribute the oil wealth directly to Libya’s 5 million citizens.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection's first MQ-9 Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle to be stationed along the northern border of the United States lands at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., Dec. 6, 2008.
Credit: Reuters/Department of Defense/Senior Master Sgt. David H. Lipp/Handout
PHOENIX | Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:43pm EDT
PHOENIX (Reuters) - The U.S. government will have unmanned surveillance aircraft monitoring the whole southwest border with Mexico from September 1, as it ramps up border security in this election year, a top official said on Monday.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said U.S. Customs and Border Protection would begin flying a Predator B drone out of Corpus Christi, Texas, on Wednesday, extending the reach of the agency's unmanned surveillance aircraft across the length of the nearly 2,000 mile border with Mexico.
"With the deployment of the Predator in Texas, we will now be able to cover the southwest border from the El Centro sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground," Napolitano said during a conference call...
[Webmaster - They will start using drones and blimps on the borders...then slowly start moving inland...increasing the control grid. All for our "security" of course...]
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) - The Pentagon is assigning a unit of the unmanned Predator drone aircraft to a military base in Ohio.
The move helps retain 866 jobs at the Springfield Air National Guard. In addition, the base will take on expanded work by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which is headquartered at nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.
The base's future had been in question. An agreement to train military pilots from the Netherlands to fly the F-16 fighter ends in September.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said Friday the base's new mission means it will no longer rely on temporary missions to remain open.
The MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency to strike at al-Qaeda terrorists along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
