[blog.wired.com] The MQ-9 Reaper (pictured), a bigger version of the famed Predator drone, flew its first mission over Iraq
on July 18, according to the Air Force. The armed Reaper deployed to
Afghanistan in 2007 and first saw combat in the fall of that year.
British officers compared the 5-ton bird to a "mini A-10." The Brits
are buying around a dozen Reapers of their own for Afghanistan service.
Reaper’s Iraq deployment is part of Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates‘ drive to get more surveillance systems into the fight. The
Pentagon’s goal was to have enough deployed Predators and Reapers by
2010 to maintain 21 round-the-clock "orbits," each requiring three or
four drones. By raiding the training unit at Creech Air Force Base,
Nevada, the Air Force beat the deadline by two years. In May, the service announced that it had 24 drone orbits for the "war on terror," including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and (presumably) Somalia.
But taking ‚bots from Creech has put kinks in the training system and possibly contributed to several recent crashes.
Defense firm Raytheon says better control stations are the solution.
"The [current] Predator ground station displays are like an engineering
diagnostics station, with complicated menus and ‚M-keys‘ with functions
that are easily confused," said Katie Heilner, a Raytheon engineer. The
company is offering new, simplified "Universal Control Stations" that
it says will reduce the robot accident rate.
Regardless, Air Force is now aiming to deploy as many as 50 orbits
by the end of this year. Lt. Gen. Mike Peterson said he wants most of
them to be Reapers, but right now the Air Force has only a dozen of the
bigger birds.
Source: http://blog.wired.com
