The business of fighting a war certainly has changed since I accompanied US
Marines five years ago on the invasion of Iraq.
Back then I was living in a makeshift tent, two miles south of the Iraq
border. It was miserable. The food was served in plastic pouches. The toilet
was a bucket full of chemicals. The showers did not work. It was 43C (110F),
and I was wearing rubber boots, gloves, a hooded, charcoal-lined bio-suit, a
gas mask and a bulletproof vest.
So it was with a heavy heart that I returned to the front lines five years
later. I updated my will, checked my life insurance policy, said an
emotional farewell to my wife and son and boarded the flight to . . . Las
Vegas.
Yes, combat has changed a lot since 2003. For a start, the front line is no
longer required to be on the same continent as the battlefield. My first
morning back I awoke in a corner suite of a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip,
from where I could watch the sun rise over the desert from the 35th floor
while enjoying a £15 room-service breakfast.
By 7.30am I was on the road making the same 45-minute commute into the desert,
to Creech Air Force base, that approximately 2,500 servicemen and women –
including 50 or so Britons from the RAF – make every day.
As far as these people are concerned, Creech is closer to the front lines than
any base overseas. The reason why became clear as we pulled up in a cloud of
dust next to a petrol station on the empty I-95 freeway. Overhead we could
hear a thrumming noise, like a lawnmower engine, and then we glimpsed what
appeared to be a very large model aircraft with a giant mechanical eyeball
strapped to its nose. It performed a giddy turn then came in to land next to
the freeway. It was, of course, an MQ-1 Predator – the future of warfare, if
the US Air Force is to be believed.
Unmanned and fully armed, with a wing span of about 15 metres, the Predator
can perform both reconnaissance and attack missions via remote control,
meaning that the “pilot” can be in an air-conditioned shed outside Las Vegas
while the aircraft is 7,500 miles away, firing Hellfire missiles at
goat-herders-cum-insurgents in Iraq.
“This used to be a pretty lazy base,” said Colonel John Montgomery, a 22-year
veteran, as he greeted us later in one of Creech’s high-tech conference
rooms. “Now it’s big, and it’s getting bigger. We’re about three years ahead
of where we’re supposed to be.”
That much was obvious because the base is separated by only a brick wall from
a trailer park. Work is now under way to move the facilities farther back.
When construction of the Predator began in 1995, by General Atomics, it was
considered a bit of a toy. For a start, it was merely for surveillance and
it could be dismantled and packed into a box. After a few years, however,
the Predators had been equipped with Hellfire missiles, and, importantly,
had stopped getting iced up and crashing in bad weather. The “eyeballs” –
the rotating sensors strapped to the nose – had improved dramatically,
offering high-quality video feeds that can tell from 15,000ft if an
insurgent is limping.
By October last year the Predator had spawned an upgraded model known as the
Reaper, powered by a turboprop engine, capable of carrying four Hellfire
missiles (instead of two), plus two laser-guided bombs. Today there are
thought to be about 60 Predators and Reapers in combat, flying
around-the-clock missions and streaming live video back to anyone with a
computer, an internet connection and the necessary US security clearance.
The aircraft are flown remotely from mobile, caravan-sized ground control
stations at Creech and other bases in North Dakota, California and Arizona.
Soon they will also be flying from New York, Texas, and northern England
(the RAF has ordered three Reapers at £5 million each, with more to follow).
The ground control stations send their commands via a fibre-optic link to a
satellite relay station in Europe, which bounces them into space and back
down to the aircraft.. Take-offs are handled by launch-and-recovery teams
out in the field.
Although The Times was not allowed to sit in on any live missions at
Creech, we were able to observe a simulated one. What strikes you when you
first enter a ground control station is just how much the control panel
looks like a two-player arcade game. The pilot and sensor operator each have
three main TV screens: one showing a car navigation-style map, the next a
live video feed and the third displaying technical data.
There are other, smaller screens to either side, on which live instant
messages can be sent to colleagues on the ground or in the operations
centre. The control panel is being upgraded with bigger screens so that the
US Federal Aviation Administration will allow Predators to be flown in
commercial airspace in nonemergencies.
How do the pilots feel about giving up their Top Gun fantasies for a system
that is practically indistinguishable from a video game? “It’s not as
glamorous,” admitted Colonel Montgomery. “But we try to ingrain in our
pilots that this is a serious business. It might seem like a computer game,
but it is not. If you mess up, people die.”
To prove the point, he showed us recorded footage from a Predator of a
Hellfire missile being fired at a sniper in an apartment building in Iraq.
Having detected the muzzle flash, the Predator, controlled from the Nevada
desert, used a laser beam to send the missile through the window where the
sniper was standing, killing him instantly but leaving the two apartments to
either side of him intact.
The advantages of the Predator programme are hard to argue against: the
servicemen and women get to live with their families, they tend to make less
mistakes, because they are not exhausted or in fear of their lives, and
everything they do is subject to live supervision.
There have been no friendly-fire incidents involving Predators. Added to that,
the Predators are practically green by US military standards: because of
their light weight and big wings, they burn 25lb of fuel per hour, as
opposed to an F16’s 5,500lb of fuel per hour. But for anyone who watched the
Terminator films, it is hard not to worry. After all, the Predators
will soon be programmed to “talk” to each other, so that they can decide
between themselves which one is best equipped to carry out certain missions,
based on fuel, payloads and other technical data. And what about the ethics
of employing a military force that, increasingly, never has to see blood or
experience mortal fear?
I wondered what the Marines I met five years ago make of these new, digital
warriors in their air-condi-tioned offices and with their Las Vegas
lifestyles. “Probably they make fun of us,” Colonel Montgomery shrugged.
“But we get e-mails from them all the time saying, ‘you saved my life’.”
Chris Ayres is the author of War Reporting for Cowards
