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Predator: The Remote-Control Air War Over Iraq and Afghanistan: A Pilot's Story
by Matthew J. Martin, Charles W. Sasser
Like the machine gun in World War I, the tank and bomber in World War II, and the atomic bomb during the Cold War, the Predator drone is the defining weapon of the War on Terror. In Iraq and Afghanistan, both sides strike their blows at a distance, the terrorists with remotely detonated roadside bombs, and American forces with precision guided missiles from above.
Lt. Col Matt Martin takes us inside the hidden world of Predator operations. As both a knowledgeable practitioner and an amateur philosopher, he offers a very necessary counterpart to the speculators and pundits who have declared the Predator the ultimate weapon, or the first step towards illegal and inhumane automated warfare. The Predator, like all early stage technologies, is unstable and vulnerable to winds, clouds, and losing touch with the ground station. It is far from unmanned, every drone is operated by two pilots supported by immense teams of intel analysts and maintenance technicians.
Martin writes with candor and clarity about the misfortunes of war. He is responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians. You may or may not buy his rationalizations that war is random, and that no amount of planning can prevent a child from biking into the kill zone in the twenty seconds between pulling the trigger and missile impact, but he rightfully compares the Predator to messier alternative methods of doing the same, from commando raids to saturation bombing. It's strange to hear Martin talk about developing a cop's instincts for illegality when he's watching from a camera 10,000' above the battlefield; how much can an American learn about a foreign nation just from watching aerial video? But the results, and ability to track down insurgent mortar teams, speak for themselves. There are no battles in this new war, just alternating pairs of explosions.
Two caveats; Martin is an air force officer, and so not involved in the CIA's campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, and the main action of the book takes place before 2008, so the successful anti-IED Task Force ODIN is also not covered. But with that in mind, this is a vital insider's take on a significant emerging weapons technology.
Lt. Col Matt Martin takes us inside the hidden world of Predator operations. As both a knowledgeable practitioner and an amateur philosopher, he offers a very necessary counterpart to the speculators and pundits who have declared the Predator the ultimate weapon, or the first step towards illegal and inhumane automated warfare. The Predator, like all early stage technologies, is unstable and vulnerable to winds, clouds, and losing touch with the ground station. It is far from unmanned, every drone is operated by two pilots supported by immense teams of intel analysts and maintenance technicians.
Martin writes with candor and clarity about the misfortunes of war. He is responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians. You may or may not buy his rationalizations that war is random, and that no amount of planning can prevent a child from biking into the kill zone in the twenty seconds between pulling the trigger and missile impact, but he rightfully compares the Predator to messier alternative methods of doing the same, from commando raids to saturation bombing. It's strange to hear Martin talk about developing a cop's instincts for illegality when he's watching from a camera 10,000' above the battlefield; how much can an American learn about a foreign nation just from watching aerial video? But the results, and ability to track down insurgent mortar teams, speak for themselves. There are no battles in this new war, just alternating pairs of explosions.
Two caveats; Martin is an air force officer, and so not involved in the CIA's campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, and the main action of the book takes place before 2008, so the successful anti-IED Task Force ODIN is also not covered. But with that in mind, this is a vital insider's take on a significant emerging weapons technology.