Despite Obama's plan to shift drone campaign, CIA still behind strikes
When missiles fired by CIA drones slammed into Yemen and Pakistan last week, the attacks ended a period of relative quiet for the Obama administration's lethal counterterrorism program. They also served as a reminder that the CIA is not ready to relinquish its role ...
American and Pakistani officials disagreed sharply Thursday about whether an Islamic school was struck by a U.S. drone, in an unusual attack that inflamed tensions over the CIA drone campaign. According to Pakistani officials, three missiles were fired into a compound in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province ...
Despite repeatedly denouncing the CIA's drone campaign, top officials in Pakistan's government have for years secretly endorsed the program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts, according to top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos obtained by The Washington Post. The files ...
Al-Qaida hopes to sabotage, destroy drones
Cells of engineers are working to exploit vulnerabilities of the weapons system, so far but they have not succeeded, a classified report finds.
A drone of your own in the near future?
Kevin Good thought there was an 80 percent chance he could successfully deliver his brother's wedding rings with a drone. "The other 20 percent is that it could go crashing into the bride's mother's face," the Bethesda, Maryland, filmmaker told his brother. His brother was ...
For fledging UAV industry, droning on is a no-no
When is a drone not a drone? When the people who manufacture them say so. That's their hope, at any rate. The drone industry — sorry, the unmanned aerial systems industry — is in the midst of a massive rebranding campaign. For most Americans, the ...
Surveillance prompts creation of covert clothing
At the Pentagon and CIA, they are known as "countermeasures," the jargony adaptation of Newton's Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The U.S. Army in Iraq jammed cellphones to counter deadly roadside bombs triggered by calls. Osama bin Laden switched ...
Al-Qaida's Yemen branch eyes a new haven
Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen is focusing on expanding its presence in a remote eastern province that is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, even as it remains the target of U.S. drone strikes and Yemeni military assaults, according to Yemeni officials. Last year, a ...
Government mulls drones purchase to boost surveillance in East Asia
The government will consider purchasing unmanned surveillance aircraft, similar to the U.S. military's Global Hawk, to enhance its high-altitude surveillance capabilities and better respond to the changing security environment in East Asia, according to a draft outline of the Defense Ministry's interim report. In addition ...
The steel-gray U.S. Air Force Predator drone plunged from the sky, shattering on mountainous terrain near the Iraq-Turkey border. For Kurdish guerrillas hiding nearby, it was an unexpected gift from the propaganda gods. Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) filmed the charred wreckage Sept. ...
A bat-winged experimental navy drone executed landings on an aircraft carrier for the first time, marking a major advance in robotic aviation.
U.S. drone program 'tough to dismantle'
The White House is ready to hand U.S. drone operations back to the military from the CIA, but counterterrorism officials are convinced the Pentagon hasn't improved enough yet.
