Report: US staged drone strike in Phl

MANILA, Philippines - The US military conducted a drone strike in the Philippines in an attempt to kill Indonesian terrorist Umar Patek in 2006, according to an article yesterday in the Sunday magazine of The New York Times.

“The Drone Zone,” written by Mark Mazzetti, reported that a Predator drone fired a “barrage of Hellfire missiles” in the “jungles of the Philippines” to kill Patek.

The same article said the drone strike was reported as a “Philippine military operation.”

The strike failed to kill Patek but killed others in the area. Patek was recently convicted by an Indonesian court and sentenced to 20 years for his role in the nightclub bombings in 2002 in Bali, Indonesia that left 202 people dead.

Defense officials in Manila said last week that the US has offered to provide drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, to help the Philippines monitor its territorial waters amid a maritime dispute with China in the West Philippine Sea. 

The New York Times reported that the US has three different drone programs. One is run by the Pentagon operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other two are classified programs run separately by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command. Both maintain separate lists of people targeted for killing, the article said.

“Over the years, details have trickled out about lethal drone operations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen and elsewhere. But the drone war has been even more extensive,” the article said.

The New York Times revealed the Pentagon is increasing its fleet of drones by 30 percent and US military leaders estimate that within a year, the unmanned planes could outnumber actual pilots.

The report cited Holloman Air Force Base at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, 200 miles south of Albuquerque.

“Many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the US Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the ‘sensor operator,’ focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser,” the article said.

The US military has increasingly relied on the use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that prompted them to re-engineer its training program for drone pilots.

“Trainees are now sent to Holloman just months after they join the military, instead of first undergoing traditional pilot training as they did in the past. The Air Force can now produce certified Predator and Reaper pilots in less than two years,” the article said.

Pilots during the training are having difficulty in landing the unmanned airplane in the runway. As much as the US military has tried to make drone pilots feel as if they are sitting in a cockpit, one veteran pilot said it is “not just playing a video game.”

The “pilots” are stationed in the US but they fly their combat drone missions abroad. The program apparently saved the US Air Force money and their pilots safely out of harm’s way.

Luther (Trey) Turner III, a retired colonel who flew combat missions during the Gulf War before he switched to flying Predators in 2003, said that he doesn’t view his combat experience flying drones as “valorous.”

“My understanding of the term is that you are faced with danger. And, when I am sitting in a ground-control station thousands of miles away from the battlefield, that’s just not the case,” the article quoted him as saying.

“I firmly believe it takes bravery to fly a UAV

As more than one pilot at Holloman told me, a bit defensively, ‘We’re not just playing video games here,’” the article said.

President Aquino earlier declared the Philippine government is allowing the US drones to conduct reconnaissance flights but not to drop bombs.

Aquino said drone strikes would definitely violate a ban on US troops from participating in combat operations.

Hundreds of American troops have been helping the Philippine military to contain the Abu Sayyaf for a decade.

Aquino stressed the US troops are acting as trainers and military advisers, not to participate in combat operations.