US Air Force prepares drones to end era of fighter pilots

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Written by Edward Helmore in New York Edward Helmore in New York

Published: 24 August 2009 24 August 2009

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US Air Force prepares drones to end era of fighter pilots

The Pentagon aims to robotise 15% of US armed forces by 2015

As part of an expanding programme of battlefield automation, the US Air Force has said it is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots and signalled the end of the era of the fighter pilot is in sight.

In a controversial shift in military thinking – one encouraged by the now-confirmed death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone-strike on 5 August – the US air force is looking to hugely expand its fleet of unmanned aircraft by 2047.

Just three years ago, the service was able to fly just 12 drones at a time; now it can fly more than 50. At a trade conference outside Washington last week, military contractors presented a future vision in which pilotless drones serve as fighters, bombers and transports, even automatic mini-drones programmed to attack in swarms.

Contractors made presentations for "nano-size" drones the size of moths that can flit into buildings to gather intelligence; drone helicopters; large aircraft that could be used as strategic bombers and new mid-sized drones could act as jet fighters.

This Terminator-like vision in which future generations of fighter aces become cubicle-bound drone operators thousands of miles from conflict is already here: the deployment that began during the Bush administration has accelerated during the first seven months of Obama's term.

Some 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2015, the Pentagon's $230bn arms procurement programme Future Combat Systems expects to robotise around 15% of America's armed forces. In a recently published study, The Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Plan 2020-2047, air force generals predicted a boom in drone funding to $55bn by 2020 with the most exotic changes coming in the 2040s.

Last month, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates underscored the change in strategic thinking when he capped production of the F-22 Raptor, the US air force's most advanced interceptor, at just 187 planes, arguing that it was designed to fight 20th century super-power conflicts or "near-peer" engagements – and was not crucial to any future conflicts foreseen at the Pentagon.

In June Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said he couldn't envision a day when he had enough surveillance assets. "The capability provided by the unmanned aircraft is game-changing," offered General Norton Schwartz, the air force chief of staff. "We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries."

Some analysts view the Flight Plan study as a virtual death knell for the pilot profession and predict the F-22s' successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, could be the last piloted fighter program that is funded.

According to Oxford Analytica, the US is likely to account for 77% of global drone research and development and 64% of procurement over the next decade. US firms currently control more than 50% of the market and could gain a further 10% over the next decade.

As US domestic approval for the "Af-Pak" conflict slips (a new Washington Post poll found less than a quarter of the US public support sending more troops to Afghanistan), the reliance of drones is likely to grow, analysts say.

But with mounting civilian casualties, even as an estimated 100 Taliban militants and perhaps one half of al-Qaida leadership have been killed in drones attacks since September, there is rising Pakistani opposition to US strikes on its soil. Prime Minister Gilani repeated his requests this week for the transfer of drone technology to the Pakistani military. US officials have yet to publicly respond.

The air force study suggests areas of warfare too critical for automation, including dogfighting and nuclear-bombing, could eventually be handled by drones.

For now the numbers are overwhelming – 550 drone operators compared with 3,700 fighter and 900 bomber pilots – but a future in which pilots merely direct planes remotely is unsettling to many in 61-year-old service.

"Many aviators, in particular, believe that a 'man in the loop' should remain an integral part of the nuclear mission because of the psychological perception that there is a higher degree of accountability and moral certainty with a manned bomber," wrote Adam Lowther in Armed Forces Journal in June.

Colonel Eric Mathewson, who directs the air force task force on pilotless aerial systems, has sought to downplay the study's most futuristic predictions. "We do not envision replacing all air force aircraft with UAS (unmanned aircraft systems)," he says.

The CIA runs its Pakistan-focused drone programme from its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, while the air force has designated Creech AFB, 35 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada, as centre for operations for flights over Iraq and Afghanistan. No after-burners; no G-Force; no opportunity for "Top Gun" flair.

Currently, airborne drones are directed by trained pilots who then return to their assigned aircraft. This year, the service started training career drone operators with no airborne experience – they go to war in cubicles with a computer-game joystick and eight video screens.

"It is safe to say most pilots will always miss getting back in the air," Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Turner, who leads Predator and Reaper training at Creech, told the LA Times. "But we see where the air force is going."

The rapid development of drone aircraft has given smaller defence industry players, including General Atomics, makers of the MQ-1 Predator and the new, heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper that carries 14 Hellfire missiles and guided bombs, the chance to challenge established military contractors.

A British developer, QinetiQ, is currently developing an ultra long duration Zephyr high-altitude drone; another, Insitu, was recently acquired by Boeing after developing the Scan Eagle, a basic aerial platform originally designed for spotting ocean-going tuna.

Last April, BAE Systems announced it has won a contract to lead the development of crawling or flying robots designed to go into areas too dangerous for troops. General Atomics, in San Diego, has announced plans for the MQ-X, a three-in-one surveillance, attack and cargo drone.

Wonder at the sci-fi inspired technology, including the 2.3 gigapixel, Predator-mounted camera Gorgon Stare and Northrop Grumman's high-altitude Global Hawk, is not shared on the ground where it widely viewed as cowardice.

Plans for drones that could be directed autonomously present the military with a dilemma. Autonomous swarms of drones preprogrammed to attack on their own is, at the least, unnerving and legally problematic.

In Wired for War, author Pete Singer speculates the machines are harbingers of a new era of "cost-free war". In the Washington Post poll showing a majority of US public view the war in Afghanistan as "not worthing fighting", the detached appeal of drone combat is self-evident.

"It's a historic change," says Singer. "Going to war has meant the same thing for 5,000 years. Now going to war means sitting in front of a computer screen for 12 hours. Then you go home and talk to your kids about their homework."

Families evicted from their East Jerusalem homes after 50 years

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Written by Rory McCarthy in Sheikh Jarrah Rory McCarthy in Sheikh Jarrah

Published: 24 August 2009 24 August 2009

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Nasser Ghawi in front of what was his family home in East Jerusalem until he was evicted at gunpoint. Photograph: Gali Tibbon

The police came for them at dawn on a Sunday, heavily armed, wearing helmets and riot shields as they broke down the metal doors of the houses and dragged the two Palestinian families out onto the streets.

It was over in minutes, the Hanoun and the Ghawi families evicted from what had been their homes for the past five decades, and thrown onto the pavement before the sun had fully risen.

Within hours young, religious Israeli settlers had been moved in, guarded by dozens of armed police and their own private armed security guards.

These streets of Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, have become the new front line in Israel's complex battle to extend its control over this divided city; their latest victims 17 members of the Hanoun family and 38 from the Ghawi family.

Both families now sleep on mattresses on the street outside their homes and spend the day sitting in the shade watching settlers walk in and out of their front doors.

"I don't know how they sleep," said Maher Hanoun, 51. "We were here in our house legally. That is the important thing."

It was the second time he has been evicted from the house, but the first time settlers have moved in.

Around the corner sat Nasser Ghawi, 46, facing the same situation. "I am dying a hundred times a day," he said. "This is my house, this is what's left of my furniture. I have no other place to go. This is where I was born."

Israel insists these were apolitical evictions, carried out as a result of court rulings after years of legal hearings and a result of the fact that both the Hanouns and the Ghawis had not paid their rent for years.

Two weeks earlier the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, had told his cabinet that Jerusalem was "the capital of the Jewish people and of the state of Israel" and that "our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged."

"We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem," he said.

But Jerusalem is not a city like any other. The evictions triggered an unusually strong international protest. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, called the evictions "deeply regrettable". The British consulate said it was "appalled" and that the evictions were "incompatible with Israel's professed desire for peace". Robert Serry, the top UN official in the Middle East, called them "totally unacceptable" and a breach of the Geneva Conventions.

The Hanouns and Ghawis fled or were forced out by the 1948 war from their homes in what became Israel. In 1956 the two were among 28 Palestinian refugee families who were given houses in Sheikh Jarrah, then under Jordanian control.

Under an agreement at the time between the families, Jordan and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, they gave up their right to a lifetime of refugee aid in return for paying a token rent for three years before the properties would transfer to their ownership. That transfer never happened.

In 1967 Israel captured and occupied East Jerusalem and later annexed it – a move never recognised by the rest of the international community. The homes were placed under the control of the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property.

Then in 1972 two Jewish groups claimed ownership of the properties and began demanding rent. They said they had proof that the land was once owned by Jews in the late 19th century, when a Jewish community was established close to the nearby tomb of Simon the Righteous.

Later a lawyer for the Palestinian families secured an agreement from the court that turned the Palestinians into "protected tenants", under which they were to pay rent to the Jewish groups. The families said they never approved such an agreement and most decided not to pay. "If I had paid rent it would have meant that the Jewish side was the owner," said Ghawi.

In recent years the legal cases against them have gathered pace. Last November, after a court ruling, police evicted one of the families: Mohammad and Fawzieh al-Kurd. Then in May the court ordered the Hanouns and Ghawis to leave their homes as well, finding in favour of the Jewish groups: the Sephardic Community Committee and Nahalat Shimon International.

However, because East Jerusalem is occupied, Israel is under legal obligation not to change the status of its residents and not to settle its population on occupied land.

In addition, while in these cases the Israeli legal system was used to support Jewish property claims dating back before 1948 it is never used to support similar Palestinian property claims, otherwise hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants could stake claims to houses and land they once owned in places like west Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa before the creation of Israel.

"The state of Israel needs to reconsider the future consequences of this process, which allows Jews to claim ownership of property that belonged to them before 1948, but prevents the same claims from being realised by Palestinian residents," said Ir Amim, an Israeli organisation that works for a more equitable Jerusalem. "A general opening of ownership cases – Jews and Palestinians — from before 1948 could place the state of Israel in an impossible predicament in Jerusalem."

Or as Ghawi saw it: "It is only a law for the Jewish people … My father has 18 dunams [18,000 sq m] of land near Rishon Lezion [inside Israel]. We've asked for it back, but the Israeli government won't even register our case."

These are unlikely to be the last evictions. Put together they form a pattern of a growing Israeli settler presence stretching deeper into Arab east Jerusalem. Plans already submitted by settler groups show they want to build several hundred new homes in this area. Eventually, if successful, it would form a ring of Jewish settlements around the Old City and would link to a major settlement deep in the West Bank.

"Our strategic plan for the city is one: a belt of Jewish continuity from east to west," Benny Elon, Israel's then tourism minister, said during a tour of Sheikh Jarrah in 2002. It would greatly weigh in Israel's favour any future negotiations over the final borders of the Israeli state.

Mohammad Sabagh, 60, and his four brothers are another of the refugee families of Sheikh Jarrah. They have a court hearing over their case in October and fear eviction. "It's clearly a political case," he said. "They want to build a wall of settlers and eventually no Arabs will be allowed through."

Unfortunately, Lieberman is Right

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Written by Joharah Baker for MIFTAH Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

Published: 24 August 2009 24 August 2009

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It is a rare occasion when any Palestinian agrees with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Unfortunately, his statement about the prospects of peace rings hauntingly true.

"In the 16 years since the Oslo Accords, we haven't managed to bring peace to the region, and I'm willing to bet that there won't be peace in another 16 years, either. Certainly not on the basis of the two-state solution," Lieberman said.

Palestinians will definitely disagree with the right-wing minister over why peace is not likely, but the fact remains that he does have a very valid point. If peace were to prevail on the basis of a two-state solution, this would have been achieved years ago, at least as far back as the Oslo Accords in 1993. However, the facts on the ground today have completely sabotaged any real chance for two states, or at least for a viable, geographically contiguous Palestinian state, to come into being.

The reasons are obvious. Since 1988, the Palestinians have officially accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, that is, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. This declaration alone had plenty of holes in it, given that practically, it was a relinquishment of 78 percent of historical Palestine. It also meant the fate of over four million Palestinian refugees, kicked out of their homes in 1948 and never to return, would be up for negotiation. Still, in the name of a final peaceful solution and an independent country to call their own, the bulk of Palestinians accepted the future state of Palestine alongside Israel.

Fundamentally, the problem with this solution is not in the actual proposal, which as mentioned earlier, is workable after the initial compromise was accepted. No. Rather the problem lies in what has happened since then and what continues to happen until today. All parties, especially the Palestinians and Israelis, understand that the core of the conflict is about land. One only has to look at the disappearing hilltops of the West Bank to confirm this. Instead of the rolling green and brown hills characteristic of Palestine's terrain, hideous and foreign-looking red-roofed settlements have blanketed much of the horizon. At present, the 120-some illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem (yes, these are illegal too), along with their infrastructure and Jewish-only bypass roads have devoured huge chunks of the occupied West Bank.

What's more, these settlements have been strategically placed by Israel in a way that slices the Palestinian territories into divided and isolated cantons, connected only by Israeli-manned checkpoints. The West Bank is no longer one geographic entity, like it used to be pre-1967. Neither is east Jerusalem, also considered occupied territory under international law. Instead of the international community – in this case the United Nations- ensuring that the occupied territories remain untouched until a final solution for them is reached, it has turned a blind eye for over 40 years to Israel's colonialist expansion there, the result of which is now half a million Jewish settlers living on occupied Palestinian land and essentially robbing the Palestinians of any real chance at establishing their own state.

In comes US President Barack Obama. He, unlike many of his predecessors, also understands that land is key to any permanent solution. That is why he has insisted that settlement construction be frozen. The question however, is how effective will this be even if he does secure a freeze on settlement construction for a year, something which looks unlikely given Israel's obstinacy on the subject? Reports have circulated about Israel begrudgingly accepting a six-month hiatus in settlement construction. That is, with the exception of east Jerusalem and the 2,500 or so housing units in settlements that have already started.

Add to this a recent Peace Now report, which revealed that even if the government agreed to a settlement freeze, this would include only 40 percent of construction in settlements today. The majority of settlement building is undertaken by private companies, over which the government has no control.

Settlements aside, there is the separation wall to consider. Israel, which continues to maintain that the wall was primarily erected for its own security purposes, has proven that it is actually a de facto border. It does not run along the Green Line but deep within the West Bank where the major Jewish settlement blocs are located. Hence, it effectively puts these settlements on the "Israeli" side of the wall, thus cutting into the so-called future Palestinian state and isolating Palestinians both from each other and in some cases, from the land off of which they live. Let's not forget that the wall alone cuts into approximately seven percent of the West Bank but practically, takes up nearly 40 percent in infrastructure and roads systems.

So, what's left? There are isolated pockets of Palestinian constituencies living in crowded cities and towns. Each major area is separated from the other by Israeli checkpoints and all are isolated from Jerusalem by a strict Israeli checkpoint and permit system.

East Jerusalem, occupied in 1967 is supposedly to remain unaltered until final status negotiations determine its fate. However, neither has east Jerusalem escaped Israel's colonialist clutches. Approximately 200,000 Jewish settlers live in the surrounding settlements while individual settler groups continue to take over house by house in strategic areas of east Jerusalem in a bid to Judaize the entire city. Along the road to Jerusalem anyone can see the painful sight of two evicted Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, whose homes are now inhabited by Jewish settlers.

Hence, when all is said and done, a very bleak picture indeed stares back at us - one that tells a single truth. Without a major reversal of Israel's measures on the ground over the past 42 years in the Palestinian territories, the two-state solution can never come to fruition. For that to happen, there must be an international political will for change, something we have yet to see in full force.

So when Lieberman says that President Obama's goal of establishing a Palestinian state within two years is "unrealistic", we Palestinians have no choice but to concur.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters: "Walled Horizons" film premieres

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Written by Matt Matt

Published: 21 August 2009 21 August 2009

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Pink Floyd's Roger Waters: "Walled Horizons" film premieres
    http://www.brain-damage.co.uk/latest/roger-waters-walled-horizons-film-premieres.html

Written by Matt   
Wednesday, 19 August 2009

[PHOTO: Pink Floyd's Roger Waters at Israeli seperation wall]

This morning, at the Al-Hakawati Theatre, in East Jerusalem, "Walled Horizons" received its Jerusalem premiere. The film looks at the humanitarian impact of the West Bank Wall, and is narrated by, and features, Roger Waters, who visits the Wall and comments on his observations (see picture, right). The film also features Palestinians affected by the Wall and three Israeli senior security officials, two of whom were directly responsible for planning its route and explain the Israeli position for constructing the Wall.

The date was chosen as it marks the first World Humanitarian Day along with the fifth anniversary of the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Wall.

Roger is featured in the opening shot of the 15-minute documentary walking beside a concrete section of the barrier, upon which is painted a giant lying on its back.

"The reason for walls is always fear, whether the personal walls that we build around ourselves or walls like this that frightened governments build around themselves", Roger explains. "They are always expressions of a deep-seated insecurity.

"It fills me with horror, the thought of living in a giant prison," Waters continues, as the camera watches him spray-painting "We don't need no thought control" on the separation wall.

Speaking to the Associated Press on his last visit to the area, back in June (full report here), he said he hoped that "this awful thing is destroyed soon."

"People who haven't actually seen this, what's going on here, can't actually imagine the impression that it has on you, the sick, kind of churning feeling that you get in your very heart when you see this, how depressing it is," Waters said. He promised that if it does come down one day, he'll perform at the site, as he did in Berlin 1990 where that wall had fallen. "In fact, I would insist on it," he said.

We're hoping to bring you the complete film, online, shortly.