CBS-11 News (KTVT-TV Dallas/Fort Worth) November 5, 2004
Predator TV: Eye in the Sky Protects Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan
CBS-11 NEWS FIRST NEWS ORGANIZATION GRANTED ACCESS TO TOP SECRET SITE
By Robert Riggs
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA -- In the space of a few minutes, Air Force Captain Catherine Platt says she makes a surreal trip from a pitched battle over Iraq to the choreographed musical fountains in front of the luxurious Bellagio Casino on the Las Vegas strip.
The six-year veteran intelligence officer flies into combat zones half way around the world without ever leaving the ground at her Nevada air base.
"You definitely feel that you are inside the country and that you are there with the troops. That's why we take our job very seriously."
Air crews sit safely inside earthbound cockpits while they fly the unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft by remote control six thousand miles away from the actual battle. As jumbo TV screens on the Las Vegas strip promote show headliners, sixty-inch plasma TV screens located at nearby Nellis Air Force Base feature live bird's eye views of the Global War on Terrorism.
"It's Predator TV, a God's eye picture for troops on the ground that saves lives every day," says Lt. Colonel Stew Kovall, the Commander of the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron.
The Predator Operations Center keeps multiple Predator cameras aimed at targets during secret missions over Iraq and Afghanistan around the clock every day.
CBS 11 News (KTVT Dallas/Fort Worth) Reporter Robert Riggs and Photographer Manuel Villela were the first journalists ever allowed inside to observe and record operations.
Black and white video taken by a Predator's night vision camera approximately a mile away from the target clearly shows a man touching his forehead in the dead of night and other men walking around a street corner.
It's a suspected safe house for insurgents. By daybreak, the location appears as a pile of rubble on the television news feeds coming out of Iraq.
A second Predator watches a car and truck parked outside a building in an Iraqi neighborhood. Operators can tell from the Predator's thermal image if the vehicles' engines are hot or cold. Another Predator focuses on a ramshackle building at remote cross roads in Iraq.
A fourth Predator feeds live moving pictures as it slowly passes over rugged mountain terrain in Afghanistan.
The human targets have no hint that they are being watched, let alone watched from Las Vegas on banks of TV screens and computer monitors in what resembles a control booth for a commercial television production.
"We've got folks with the ability to look around corners and pass that information down to troops on the ground. So the Predator clearly protects them," says Brigadier General Craig Idhe the Commander of the 57th Wing which is part of Air Combat Command.
The Predator's cockpits are parked at Nellis Air Force Base in what looks like a mini-trailer park full of camouflaged cargo containers. High security barriers conceal its presence at the base that proudly calls itself the home of the fighter pilot.
Small ground crews based in Iraq and Afghanistan launch the Predators. Remote control is then passed by satellite to air crews that fly it while sitting at Nellis.
Captain Platt who is now assigned to the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron chalked up 200 combat hours on Predator missions and says it has been very rewarding.
"We've seen people setting up mortars and actually located improvised explosive devices (roadside bombs) and were able to prevent somebody with weapons from being able to shoot or injure any of our troops."
Platt operates the Predator's nose pod which contains cameras and a laser. The laser shines on targets to guide either the drone's pair of armor piercing Hellfire missiles or bombs dropped by fighters. The Predators can also help pinpoint targets for artillery fire and snipers. Platt now trains crews to fly the Predator at the Indian Springs Auxiliary Field located in the wind swept Mojave Desert about a forty five minute drive northwest of Las Vegas.
A visitor is immediately struck by how quiet it is on the Predator flight line in comparison to fighter bases where jet engines are usually screaming loud enough to drown out a Motley Crew rock concert.
The Predator looks like a model airplane bulked-up on steroids. The light gray colored fuselage is shaped like an upside down table spoon with an upside down V for a tail. It's basically a powered glider with a wing spanning the length of three standard size pickup trucks.
A snowmobile engine mounted backwards on the tail with a single blade propeller pushes the unmanned aircraft through the air at 80 miles-per-hour. When the engine revved up it sounded to me like an old Cessna 172. Shortly after takeoff, the sound of the Predator's 4 cylinder, 115 horse power engine quickly faded away and the aircraft's silhouette vanished from sight. It became apparent how the Predator can literally park high above its targets for up to twenty-two hours and not be noticed.
The Predator's ground based cockpit is called a ground control station. The Air Force pays forty million dollars for a Predator package that consists of the ground control station, satellite uplink, and four aircraft.
The Predator's two member crew sits side-by-side at one end of the windowless cockpit which is chilled to sixty degrees to keep racks of electronic gear cool.
Captain David Lercher, an F-16 pilot, has flown 150 combat hours in the Predator. The eight year Air Force veteran patrolled no-fly-zones over Iraq in his fighter jet prior to the start of the war.
Lercher grips a control stick similar to the F'16's but there is a two second delay between pilot and aircraft. That's the time it takes the signal to reach a Predator flying on the other side of the world. "It's probably the most difficult plane to land in the military's aircraft inventory. The two biggest challenges are the lack of depth perception and no peripheral vision that you normally get out the canopy of a fighter jet", says Lercher.
He looks at a grainy black and white TV screen and compares it to looking through a soda straw. But it has given Lercher a new perspective on the dangers faced by soldiers, "It was pretty satisfying hearing the voice of a Special Operations commander on the ground in Afghanistan knowing that he had somebody up above helping them out. It really puts you in touch with the ground. Watching them sacrifice. I can't tell you the exact number of lives we've saved. But it's going on all the time."
The Air Force uses pilots from fighters, cargo planes, and tankers as Predator pilots. It also uses navigators that are instrument rated civilian pilots. Best of all, if a Predator goes down there's no pilot lost or captured. Keeping a Predator squadron in Las Vegas reduces its footprint in a combat zone. The air crews, maintainers, and a considerable number of support personnel stay out of harm's way.
Just like fighter pilots, the Predator pilots operate under the same rules of engagements that govern the use of deadly force. Even the snack bar for the Predator's 11th Reconnaissance Squadron resembles that of fighter pilots. It's dubbed the "Snake Pit". A cage in the corner of the bar houses the squadron's python mascot and a rack full of beer mugs sport the squadron's "Snake Eyes" insignia.
Lercher calls the Predator an eye in the sky, "it has the time and gas to stay there and wait for the terrorists to come out from behind a corner, come out from behind a building, whatever the case may be and pinpoint their position."
Commanders under U.S. Central Command in Iraq, referred to as the Predator's customers, also receive the Predator's video feed so they can tell the air crew where to point its cameras.
Operators in Las Vegas match the Predator's image to that of aerial photographs to precisely identify locations.
Soldiers on the ground can look around corners thanks to the Predator. A laptop computer called a ROVER that's outfitted with antennae receives the Predator's live video feed. Most ground troops are unaware that the Predator aircrew that they are talking to over the radio is stateside in Las Vegas.
To emphasize the Predator's importance, Lt. Colonel Steve Keeton, the commander of the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron shows a motivational video tape his trainees. Predator TV catches insurgents in the act of setting up a mortar tube to launch an attack against U.S. forces in Iraq. In the blink of an eye, a hellfire missile stops the ambush.
"The Predator knows where it is and knows where its target is with ferocious precision. All of this will soon be put to the test in Fallujah where U.S. Marines, British, and Iraqi troops are poised for a mass assault on the insurgent stronghold," says defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.Org
The Predator is the marriage of low tech and high tech. Its low tech airframe is built out of off-the-shelf parts. Pike says recent innovations in high tech information systems launched the Predator after a series of false starts, "in the last five years advances in digital cameras, high bandwidth satellite communications, microprocessors, and software came of age in the Predator."
Predators have flown 70-thousand combat hours. The 15th Reconnaissance Squadron, the largest of three squadrons, flew 19,500 hours last year alone. That's about three times the number flown by a fighter squadron. The 15th Reconnaissance Squadron's Commander, Lt. Colonel John Harris is enthusiastic about the future of unmanned aircraft, "If we had four times as many Predators that we do right now all of those aircraft would be in use every day, there's that much demand for it. If you liken it to aviation, we are beyond the Wright Brothers but we are at about World War One. I mean there is so much left to do with this technology."
Harris says the biggest challenge is helping Predator aircrews shift mental gears in and out of combat everyday. When I asked if Captain Platt had witnessed ground troops suffering casualties through her Predator viewfinder, she took an emotional pause, "like any soldier you press on with the mission and you get the work done. And you don't let those things get to you."
© Copyright 2004, CBS Broadcasting Inc.
