U.S. Air Force Hires Private Companies To Fly Drones In War Zones
by Chris Thompson
CorpWatch Blog, December 16th, 2015
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=16059&printsafe=1
U.S. Air Force officials has begun to hire private companies to fly drone
aircraft operating over Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The unprecedented move
is in response to demands from the Obama administration to dramatically
expand the drone war just as the Pentagon faces a critical shortage of
military pilots.
As a result, civilian pilots will directly participate in military
operations for the first time since the drone wars began about a decade ago.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Air Force signed contracts with two
private companies in 2015 to provide enough pilots to fly two "combat air
patrols" or 24-hour surveillance flights that would involve as many as eight
MQ-9 Reaper drones per day. The Air Force plans to eventually expand its
fleet of privately piloted drones to 40 over the next four years.
Of the two companies, one, Aviation Unmanned, is a small, veteran-owned
outfit operating out of Dallas, Texas, which was awarded a contract on
August 24. The second is General Atomics, a large San Diego,
California-based military contractor that builds both the Reaper and
Predator drones and has been paid at least $700 million over the last two
years for a variety of drone support services. Their contract was awarded
April 15.
Good Jobs First, a watchdog group, reports that General Atomics has received
$614.7 million in U.S. federal subsidies since 2000. This past August,
Department of Labor investigators found that the company violated federal
law by refusing to pay 901 of its employees the rate determined by local
prevailing wage laws. General Atomics agreed to spend $945,000 to reimburse
employees.
This is not the first time that private contractors have played a role in
the drone wars. Companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics and
SAIC have long held contracts to analyze surveillance data gathered by
drones flying over war zones.
While Reaper drones are designed to be able to carry multiple Hellfire and
Sidewinder missiles, the Pentagon insists that these privately operated
Reapers will simply do reconnaissance and not carry weapons, nor will the
pilots have clearance to fire missiles.
Nonetheless, these contracts mark a dramatic uptick in the direct
involvement of private companies in military actions, which has drawn
criticism even from within the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s office who
say that such involvement may be a violation of international law. "Military
services should be vigilant to avoid contracted intelligence activities
where civilians may exert a significant amount of influence or control over
targeting and weapons release decisions," wrote Major Keric Clanahan, a
legal advisor to the U.S. Special Forces, in a recent article in Air Force
Law Review. "It is imperative that contractors not get too close to the tip
of the spear."
The decision to deploy private drone pilots stems from a longstanding crisis
inside the U.S. military In early 2015, the Air Force operated 65 combat air
patrols, or up to 260 drones patrolling war zones around the world, but was
under pressure from the Pentagon to expand the number of drones in the air
to 360. But pilots, overwhelmed by the complexity of the work and the
grueling schedule, began to vote with their feet and quit.
At an October conference of military contractors and government officials,
General Robert Otto, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance, summed up the problem. "Those crews have
been stressed about to the limit," Otto said. "Over time, pulling twelve
hour shifts, six days a week, year after year, and the only light at the end
of the tunnel is their Form DV-214, which their, you know, separation from
service. And many of the pilots have decided to take that option."
This summer, the Air Force was forced to reduce the number of combat air
patrols from 65 to 60, in order to keep its remaining pilots from retiring
at the end of their contracts. Nonetheless, the Air Force projects that it
will be 400 pilots short of the roughly 1,200 it needs to keep the drone
program running at current capacity.
Officials hope that the private contractors, along with additional support
from Army drone pilots, will fill the gap in the short term. But over the
long term, the problem of keeping a fleet of pilots in the service is
expected to get substantially worse.
According to a separate Los Angeles Times article, the Air Force recently
announced plans to radically expand its global drone operation, adding 65
new Reapers to its fleet, doubling the number of pilots, and building new
drone operations centers at Air Force bases around the U.S. The plan is
expected to cost roughly $3.5 billion, and the service will have to get
Congressional approval before conducting the expansion. Even if lawmakers go
along, training new pilots and building the new drone centers will take
years. It will be a long time before the service’s current pilots see any
relief, so the contractors may well be called upon again to fill an
ever-widening gap.
