Drone Strike Kills 20 Militants in Pakistan

[High_Gravity]

Drone Strike Kills 20 Militants in Pakistan

(PESHAWAR, Pakistan) — American-fired missiles killed 20 Islamist militants in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, most of them members of a powerful insurgent network fighting the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Two missiles slammed into a house close to the town of Miran Shah in North Waziristan, a militant hotspot that lies just across the border from Afghanistan, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
(See pictures of the Taliban's war in Pakistan.)

They said 14 of the dead were Afghan militants belonging to the Haqqani network, a Taliban-linked militant faction fighting the U.S. in Afghanistan.

Six were Pakistani militants supporting the group, which America regards as one of its deadliest foes in Afghanistan, they said.

It was not possible to independently confirm the officials' account of the attack because the region is too dangerous for independent reporting.

Locals and rights groups say civilians are regularly killed in the drone strikes. There are never public investigations into those claims.

Washington began the missile program that targets al-Qaida and the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border in 2005, but stepped up the pace in 2008 and again when the Obama administration came into office. At peak times, there can be as many as three or four strikes per week.

Read more: U.S. Drone Strike Kills 20 Militants in NW Pakistan - TIME

 

[Mr. H.]

Check it out...

US Army to fly 'kamikaze' drones


http://news.yahoo.com/us-army-fly-kamikaze-drones-232345942.html

 

[waltky]

Air Force secretly flying armed drones on counter-terror missions from Ethiopia...

U.S. drone base in Ethi*o*pia is operational
October 27,`11 - Part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate

The Air Force has been secretly flying Reaper drones on counterterrorism missions from a remote civilian airport in southern Ethi*o*pia as part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, U.S. military officials said. The Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethi*o*pia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia, where the United States and its allies in the region have been targeting al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda.

On Friday, the Pentagon said the drones are unarmed and have been used only for surveillance and collecting intelligence, though it would not rule out the possibility that they would be used to launch lethal strikes in the future. Mindful of the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in which two U.S. military helicopters were shot down in the Somali capital of Mogadishu and 18 Americans killed, the Obama administration has sought to avoid deploying troops to the country. As a result, the United States has relied on lethal drone attacks, a burgeoning CIA presence in Mogadishu and small-scale missions carried out by U.S. Special Forces. In addition, the United States has increased its funding for and training of African peacekeeping forces in Somalia that fight al-Shabab.

The Washington Post reported last month that the Obama administration is building a constellation of secret drone bases in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, including one site in Ethi*o*pia. The location of the Ethio*pian base and the fact that it became operational this year, however, have not been previously disclosed. Some bases in the region also have been used to carry out operations against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. The Air Force confirmed Thursday that drone operations are underway at the Arba Minch airport. Master Sgt. James Fisher, a spokesman for the 17th Air Force, which oversees operations in Africa, said that an unspecified number of Air Force personnel *are working at the Ethio*pian airfield “to provide operation and technical support for our security assistance programs.”

The Arba Minch airport expansion is still in progress but the Air Force deployed the Reapers there earlier this year, Fisher said. He said the drone flights “will continue as long as the government of Ethi*o*pia welcomes our cooperation on these varied security programs.” Last month, the Ethio*pian Foreign Ministry denied the presence of U.S. drones in the country. On Thursday, a spokesman for the Ethio*pian embassy in Washington repeated that assertion. “That’s the government’s position,” said Tesfaye Yilma, the head of public diplomacy for the embassy. “We don’t entertain foreign military bases in Ethi*o*pia.”

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[Divine Wind]

Check it out...

US Army to fly 'kamikaze' drones


US Army to fly 'kamikaze' drones - Yahoo! News

Awesome. It won't be long before we have weapons with both a long range, but are small enough to take out an individual without harming those around them.