October 19, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 1, 1422

WASHINGTON, Oct 18: The United States is for the first time flying armed unmanned aircraft into combat in Afghanistan, with operators controlling the planes thousands of miles away in the US, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing Defense Department officials.

The Post said the use of the armed RQ-1 Predators is a revolutionary step in the conduct of warfare. The slow-moving, propeller-driven aircraft have been flown by the Air Force for six years to gather intelligence, most recently in combat during the Kosovo war in 1999.

But now the Air Force has outfitted them with Hellfire antitank missiles, powerful weapons usually carried on helicopters, the Post reported, quoting unnamed officials.

Not much is known about how the armed Predators have been used in Afghanistan, but a government official said they have fired their missiles several times, the report said.

The attacks by the Predators mark a turning point in military history because they signal that the Air Force is now able to survey and then shoot at ground positions from lower altitudes without putting pilots at risk, according to the Post report.

According to the Post, military strategists said the Bush administration’s war on terrorism could lead to the use of additional new technologies and methods, some of them still secret.

“I think this war is going to give you the revolution in military affairs,” said Eliot Cohen, an expert in military strategy at Johns Hopkins University.

The Air Force is also believed, for example, to be trying to weaponize the RQ-4A Global Hawk, a much longer-range unmanned surveillance aircraft that might eventually be able to carry weapons from the continental United States to targets around the world. In April, the craft — which has a longer wingspan than a Boeing 737 — flew over 13,000kms from California to Australia, the Post reported.

Predators are usually operated by the Air Force. But in the Afghanistan conflict, the day-to-day operation has been handled by the Central Intelligence Agency because of its ongoing effort tracking Osama bin Laden, according to a source familiar with the operation quoted in the Post.—dpa