WASHINGTON: Early last year, the U.S. Air Force was able to keep no more than 11 of the remotely piloted, armed Predator surveillance aircraft flying over Iraq and Afghanistan at any one time.By last Sunday, that number had more than doubled, to 25, and air force officials now say they can guarantee at least that many of the hunter-killer aircraft will be aloft around the clock, a new element of the buildup in U.S. forces for the two wars.
The push to increase missions by the Predator, and its larger and more deadly variant, the Reaper, has been an issue of serious contention between Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the armed services, in particular the air force.
Gates has complained that it has been "like pulling teeth" to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance vehicles into the war zones. He sensed a lack of support for this new generation of unmanned - and therefore unglamorous - aircraft.
But as U.S. commanders look to draw down forces in Iraq, the larger numbers of these aircraft, which can circle for hours over targets, promise to decrease the risk to ground troops while increasing the prospects of successfully tracking terrorist and insurgent leaders.
Evan as the troop buildup in Iraq ends in July, the demand for greater hours of surveillance coverage will continue to grow.
"The real challenge the air force faces within the Pentagon in providing reconnaissance is that there is a revolution of rising expectations," said Loren Thompson, a military affairs specialist with the Lexington Institute, a policy research organization. "It keeps adding new reconnaissance systems, but expectations for performance are rising much faster than the number of systems."
Senior members of a task force created by Gates to accelerate the deployment of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance vehicles to the war zones were meeting this week to discuss fresh proposals.
Quick fixes under consideration include outfitting small civilian airplanes with sensor packages. Another proposal would delay by several months the opening of a second school for Predator operators so the trainers and aircraft involved could instead be committed to combat.
A call has gone out to the private sector to expand production of the entire arsenal of remotely piloted vehicles, even as the air force plans to end purchases of Predators and instead devote its resources to the Reaper, which flies higher and faster and carries advanced sensors and more bombs. Reapers, already flying in Afghanistan, are expected to be introduced to Iraq by fall.
In an effort to provide detailed surveillance images to troops in contact with adversaries, more than 3,500 hand-held devices, called Rovers, have been distributed to ground combat units, allow the units to view high-quality images from the surveillance vehicles. Previously the images were available only at headquarters.
But even with these indications of progress, a number of significant hurdles remain to expanding surveillance in the war zones - and each problem illustrates the continuing clash of cultures across the military and within the Pentagon.
Air force officials say their branch of the armed forces should be made the sole authority to manage acquisition of the largest and most deadly class of remotely piloted surveillance and attack aircraft to reduce duplication and produce savings in operations and maintenance.
But the U.S. Navy, in particular, counters that it has unique requirements for operating remotely piloted aircraft on the high seas and along coastlines. Thus far, senior Pentagon civilians have not approved the air force proposal. And the services continue to argue over who should fly these missions.
The army and Marine Corps argue that their young, video-savvy enlisted personnel are wholly capable of working the joysticks of these remote-control missions, and the services are rushing to field a number of smaller surveillance craft operated directly by combat units.
But the air force has pressed to allow only rated pilots to operate larger vehicles that can travel across a theater of combat, arguing that even though Predator pilots sit in the safety of control booths back in the United States, the task of maneuvering bomb-laden aircraft through complex airspace requires the seasoned judgment of trained aviators.
The air force's advanced, piloted fighters and bombers carry sophisticated sensors, and could join the surveillance mix.
But troops in combat do not always grasp the variety of aircraft that can bring them information. Air force planners say video and other surveillance can be delivered efficiently from many types of aircraft, not just the popular Predator.
"Everybody wants full-motion video because of what I call the 'persistent stare,' that allows everyone to analyze, to determine positive identification or points of origin, and be able to track," said Lieutenant General Gary North, commander of U.S. and coalition air forces across the Middle East. Those capabilities, he said, mean that the United States and its allies could undertake more precise attacks, with fewer unintended casualties, against targets who might not even know a Predator is overhead.
North said that in recent months, the Predator had been used with great success in military operations in Iraq, from Basra to Sadr City to Mosul. Air force officials said that in both war zones between March 1 and June 2 of this year, the Predators launched 64 strikes and the Reapers 32.
The debate over how to expand battlefield surveillance prompts air force officials to defend the service against assertions that it is letting its historic romance with white-scarf pilots detract from the defense secretary's priority of increasing surveillance over the battlefield.