CNSNews.com July 24, 2007
Pentagon Control Over Drones Lacking, Report Says
By Jeff Golimowski
Washington (CNSNews.com) - An Army unit fighting abroad needs real-time video surveillance of an objective in front of them. The target is high priority and could mean life or death for American soldiers.
The unit requests a Predator Unmanned Aerial System, a sophisticated aircraft capable of feeding video images of the battlefield back to soldiers safely behind the line, eliminating the need for a dangerous mission.
But there is a problem. When the Predator shows up, the unit realizes another, similar drone, a Hunter UAS, has already been dispatched to fulfill the same task. Two extremely expensive, highly useful pieces of military hardware in high demand by forces across the battle theater are tied up in the same place, duplicating each other.
"There should be some mechanisms to kind of cross-pollinate to share information," said Sharon Pickup of the Government Accountability Office.
The incident involving more drones than needed in one place comes from a GAO report to the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, released this month.
In it, investigators take a hard look at the way the Department of Defense handles these new and extremely useful assets being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The results aren't always pretty.
"The bottom line is the DOD might not be able to evaluate how well they're meeting the needs of the war fighter [with drones] or what new systems they need," Pickup said.
Specifically, the report notes a lack of an overall structure for assigning the more than 3,900 drones bought by the Pentagon over the past five years. Spending on the unmanned aircraft has jumped from $363 million in 2001 to a requested $2.54 billion next year.
"If you're a brigade combat team you know where your assets are, what you sent them to do," explained Pickup. But at any given time there are other tactical units "out there" too - each with their own assets - which most commanders have no way of knowing about, she added.
The state of affairs frustrates many on Capitol Hill, where one staffer, speaking on background, described the problems with using drones in Iraq and Afghanistan as a familiar song but with new lyrics.
"Inter-service conflict is alive and well, regardless of all the talk about jointness," the staffer said. "At some point after I don't know what billionth dollar is spent on UAVs they're going to find out they maybe bought too many. But it's not like we seem to have a plan ... right now we're just buying as many systems as we can stand."
The GAO report agrees, noting the Defense Department has no way of measuring how effective the drones in use are or even how they're being used.
But Pickup conceded that the technology is so new and situations change so quickly in the war zone, the military can be forgiven for not keeping good records.
Defense industry expert John Pike of Globalsecurity.org said the drone programs are still in the "wild west" phase and the military should not be too concerned with filing reports yet.
"All of this stitching-it-all-together type stuff the GAO is talking about, you can worry about that once things calm down a bit," said Pike. "[GAO] is basically saying 'the military is a bad bookkeeper and we're having trouble auditing their books.'"
The report recommends the Pentagon develop performance standards and other ways to keep track of what each drone is doing and how much they are contributing to the overall mission.
By determining which versions of the drones are most effective at doing what, it says, the military will be in a better position to deploy the systems effectively in the next war.
Pike said that approach may be obsolete.
"Your capabilities are changing quickly and the enemy is changing," he said. "How much of [what we're learning] is just applicable to the Baghdad security plan versus something that's going to be generally applicable to future combat systems?"
Pike said the battle over how to monitor and regulate drones is a symptom of a much larger issue in the modern military - namely who controls what.
Historically, the Air Force has been given control over virtually anything that flies (with the notable exception of Navy aircraft and helicopters.) But UAVs are different. They fly, but are often assigned to small, flexible teams - a reality that complicates the type of centralized control advocated in the GAO report.
"Upward reporting is not rocket science," said Pike. "The challenge is how do I manage to report up, without getting commanded down."
In an appendix to the report, the DOD "generally concurred" with the findings. It said Pentagon officials have assured the GAO that they are working to get a better handle on the way drones are used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to better address their effectiveness.
Pentagon media officers did not respond by press time to inquiries regarding this story.
© Copyright 2007, CNSNews.com
