Archive for the ‘Middle East’ Category
USA killer drones
The reports of the CIA scrambling to assemble secret drone bases near Yemen appear not only to be true, but to have been a dramatic understatement, as The Washington Post is now reporting the U.S. is building a large number of bases across the entire region to house their favorite flying killer robots.
From Ethiopia and Djibouti, to a “reaper” base in the Seychelles, U.S. officials say they are hoping to get broad coverage across Africa and the Middle East, with eyes on escalating the wars against assorted al-Qaeda affiliates for “years to come.”
All this comes amid growing concerns that the CIA has mostly abandoned espionage in favor of killing people with robots via remote control. That, however, might not necessarily be a growth industry.
Instead, researchers are working on a number of software packages to take the “remote control” out of the picture and let the robots decide on their own who to lob missiles at. Researchers say this would be an important development because the robots would decide who to murder much faster than CIA targeters are liable to. Antiwar
The United States is assembling a series of secret drone bases in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of covert counterterrorism operations aimed at alleged militants in Somalia and Yemen. The Washington Post
One of the drone bases that the Obama administration is establishing is in Ethiopia. Another drone base is located in the Seychelles, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean with a population of 85,000. Seychelles has hosted drones since 2009, ostensibly to track pirates in regional waters. Politico
The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen. The Washington Post
The U.S. government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in the Republic of Seychelles illustrate the efforts the United States is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons. The Washington Post
In addition, Turkish officials say that they are in talks with the United States over deployment of a fleet of Predator drones on its soil, an unmanned aircraft system seen important by Ankara in its fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Hurriyetdailynews
The U.S. military has flown unarmed Predators from Iraqi bases since 2007 and shared the planes’ surveillance video with Turkey in a secretive joint crackdown against fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Hurriyetdailynews
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/200621.html
