USAF faces further push to boost UAVs in Afghanistan, Iraq

The US Air Force (USAF) is facing even more pressure to boost the presence of unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan and Iraq after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates bemoaned the tempo of aerial drone deployments in a 21 April speech.

Gates criticised the USAF and other services for resisting his repeated calls to dramatically speed up the sortie rates of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are much cheaper and offer greater loiter times than manned aircraft.

"My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield," Gates told an audience at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

"I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into theatre. Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's like pulling teeth."

Gates acknowledged that the US military now has over 5,000 UAVs - a 25-fold increase since the 9/11 attacks - but said that he wants to see the number increase more quickly.

The Pentagon has set a target of maintaining 24 combat air patrols of MQ-1 Predator UAVs in the air at all times by June 2008.

Image: The USAF has boosted its UAV numbers 25 fold over the past seven years, including this Predator operating in Kandahar (Jane's/Patrick Allen)