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October 30, 2001
Dr. Susan
Block
We're All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
John Pilger
Hidden
Agenda
of the War on Terror
David Krieger
Nukes on
the Loose
Jack McCarthy
Neo-Nazis
and 9/11
Marina Kalashnikova
The Brzezinski
Interview
Richard
Manning
Terrorism:
a definitive history
October 27, 2001
Edward
Said
A
Vision to Lift the Spririt
October 26, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Genocide
Scholar Gagged
Over Comments on the
Bombing of Afghanistan
Rahul
Mahajan
Poisoning
the Well
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why I Opposed
the
Anti-Terrorism Bill
John Troyer
Put
the War to a Vote
Norman Madarasz
What It
Means to be
Against the War
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance Attacks
US Bombing Strategy
Richard Lloyd Parry
Terrible Images
of a "Just" War
October 25, 2001
Ghassan
Andoni
Raid
on Bethlehem
N.D. Jayaprakash
From
Hiroshima to NYC
Evan Schultz
Memo
to Ashcroft:
Read Marbury
The Sunshine
Project
Assault
on the BioWeapons
Convention
Sarah
Turner
Cashing
In on Patriotism
Latin American Colloquium
on Systemology
The Meridia Manifesto
Noam Chomsky
The
New War on Terror
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
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Nostradamus
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
Responses to 9/11:
Chomsky, Russell Banks,
Zinn, and Alice Walker
A Free ebook from
Seven Stories Press
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
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October
30, 2001
Flying Blind
The Problem with
the Predator
By Jeffrey St. Clair
Few things are as predicatable as the excited
bleats of Pentagon flacks touting the killing efficacy of new
weapons systems every time the US begins a military operation.
During the Gulf War, the press was dazzled with reports of smart
bombs and Scud-blasting Patriot missiles. The bombing of Sudan
and Afghanistan in 1998 saw the Pentagon and representatives
from Boeing boast about the advent of new cruise missiles. The
war on Serbia witnessed the use of Stealth bombers and the Predator
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, which the Pentagon portrayed as being
the unsung hero of the Kosovo air war.
It is equally predictable that many of
these claims fall on their face after the bombing ceases and
a final assessment is down. Those precision-guided weapons were
laughably inaccurate. The Scud missiles launched by Iraq evaded
the Patriot interceptors with ease. The stealth bomber has proved
to be so thin skinned that in cold weather it performs with all
the agility of a flying ice cube.
Now comes the Predator UAV, which the
media, clinging to every word of Pentagon press releases, has
hailed as a "revolutionary" reconnaissance aircraft
of the future. In recent days, the press has begun to speak
of this aircraft, now puttering over Afghanistan, as the key
to the war on the Taliban. ABC News even went so far as to predict
that it "may turn out to be Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare."
The Predator drones are 27 feet long
with a wingspan of approximately 49 feet. They cruise along at
the leisurely pace of about 84 miles an hour, scouting for targets.
The planes are made at a $25 million per copy pricetag by the
San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which describes
its creation as the Pentagon's "eyes in the sky."
But a newly unearthed report by Thomas
Christie, the Pentagon's top systems testing officer tells a
much different story. Christie is director of Department of Defense's
Director of Operational Test and Evaluation division. According
to Christie's report, "the system's limitations have a
substantial negative impact on the Predator's ability to conduct
its missions," and that "poor target location accuracy,
ineffective communications, and limits imposed by relatively
benign weather, including rain, negatively impact missions such
as strike support, combat search and rescue, area search, and
continuous coverage."
In sum, this revolutionary new weapon
doesn't work right when confronted with wind, cool temperatures,
rain, snow or cloud cover-a resumé of incompetence that
makes the B-2 bomber look like a model of efficiency by comparision
and certainly must make bin Laden and his harem sleep sounder
at night. Christie's devastating report sat dormant for months
until was unearthed by one of the Pentagon's biggest pains in
the neck, the Project on Government Oversight. The leaked report
can be viewed at POGO's excellent
website.
Once these planes go into full-scale
production there's often no turning back regardless of how badly
the machines perform on the battlefield. That's why the Pentagon
and its bevy of contractors, such as General Atomics, work so
assiduously to keep the nose of the Pentagon press corps trained
to the hype about the plane's potential, while keeping its performance
record buried away.
But by nearly any standard the Predator
is a dreadful product. According to the Pentagon's report and
insider information:
- Since 1995, an estimated 17 of the 50
Predator aircraft built for the U.S. Air Force have crashed
during testing and another 5 are believed to have been shot
down on military missions. At $25 million per Predator, hundreds
of millions of dollars have been lost during testing alone.
- Director Thomas Christie, Operational
Test and Evaluation, wrote in the report that the Predator is
"not operationally effective or suitable" because
the aircraft has several critical limitations.
- When flying in the rain, Predator missions
are negatively impacted in a number of ways including poor target
location accuracy and ineffective communications, according
to the Pentagon's report.
- There is considerable concern that the
Predator is highly vulnerable to being shot down because it
flies at a slow speed and at low altitudes. It also cannot perform
its mission while flying at night, according to the Pentagon's
report.
Ultimately, the report concludes, "DOT&E
finds the system to be not operationally suitable...because
of the serious deficiencies in reliability, maintainability
and human factors design."
"When the national media fails in
their investigative responsibilities, it is American service
men and women, as well as American taxpayers, who suffer the
consequences," said Danielle Brian, Executive Director of
POGO. CP
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