Al-Qaeda has trained cats to infiltrate Creech AFB, sneak into the power substations and posthumously inherit 72 virginal kittens by shorting out the communications link to the US Air Force's Predators and Reapers flying over Afghanistan.
That is my satirical interpretation, anyway, of the following remarks yesterday at the Quad-A convention by Col Grant Webb, a Creech resident and director of training at the joint unmanned aircraft systems center of excellence. (Fast forward to about the 40-second mark.)
More seriously, this anecdote helps explain Creech power outages reported last October by Esquire magazine, and noted on The DEW Line.
It also offers a glimpse into a point of philosophical friction between army and air force officers. For many army officers, the very idea of remote split operations is antithetical to the service's warrior mentality. As the army starts deploying its version of the Predator/Reaper family -- the MQ-1C Sky Warrior, the ground-based controllers will be stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's because the army believes that UAS crews and the troops they protect should be co-located. The air force prefers to station controllers at Creech, located comfortably on the outskirts of Las Vegas, relying on satellite communications to pilot Reapers and Predators flying half a world away.
Of course, as long as UAVs are controlled from the ground, the communications link will remain a single point of failure regardless of where the ground station is physically located. The Al-Qaeda suicide cat brigade is just one of the threats.
That is my satirical interpretation, anyway, of the following remarks yesterday at the Quad-A convention by Col Grant Webb, a Creech resident and director of training at the joint unmanned aircraft systems center of excellence. (Fast forward to about the 40-second mark.)
More seriously, this anecdote helps explain Creech power outages reported last October by Esquire magazine, and noted on The DEW Line.
It also offers a glimpse into a point of philosophical friction between army and air force officers. For many army officers, the very idea of remote split operations is antithetical to the service's warrior mentality. As the army starts deploying its version of the Predator/Reaper family -- the MQ-1C Sky Warrior, the ground-based controllers will be stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's because the army believes that UAS crews and the troops they protect should be co-located. The air force prefers to station controllers at Creech, located comfortably on the outskirts of Las Vegas, relying on satellite communications to pilot Reapers and Predators flying half a world away.
Of course, as long as UAVs are controlled from the ground, the communications link will remain a single point of failure regardless of where the ground station is physically located. The Al-Qaeda suicide cat brigade is just one of the threats.
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