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By Root 1054 0

building more Predators and Reapers, training drone pilots, creating an Air Force wing, building secret bases in the Middle East, hooking up satellites, and resolving other support-related issues. From 2003 to 2007 the number of drone strikes rose incrementally, little by little, each year. Only in 2008 did the drones really come online. During that year, which included the last three weeks of the Bush administration, there were thirty-six drone strikes in Pakistan, which the Air Force said killed 268 al-Qaeda and Taliban. By 2009 the number of drone strikes would rise to fifty-three. Since the Air Force does not release numbers, and the CIA does not comment on being involved, those numbers are approximate best guesses, put together by journalists and researchers based on local reports. Since journalists are not allowed in many parts of the tribal areas in Pakistan, the actual number of drone strikes is unknown.

As much publicity as drones are getting today, there is a lot more going on in the skies than the average citizen comprehends. According to T. D. Barnes, “There are at least fifteen satellites and an untold number of Air Force aircraft ‘parked’ over Iraq and Afghanistan, providing twenty-four-hour-a-day coverage for airmen and soldiers on the ground. The Air Force is currently flying surveillance with the U-2, Predator, MQ-9 Reaper, and Global Hawk. These are just the assets we know about. Having been in the business, I would expect we have surveillance capability being used that we won’t know about for years.” The majority of these platforms, all classified, are “in all probability” being built and tested at Area 51, says Barnes.

In April of 2009, reporters with a French aviation newspaper published drawings of a reconnaissance drone seen flying over Afghanistan. With its long wings, lack of tail, and two wheels under its belly in a line, like on a bicycle, what became known as the Beast of Kandahar looks reminiscent of the Horten brothers’ flying wing of 1944. What was this new drone built for? It seemed not to have a weapons bay. Eight months later, in December of 2009, the Defense Department confirmed the existence of the drone, which the Air Force calls the RQ-170 Sentinel. Built by Lockheed Skunk Works and tested at Area 51 and Area 52, the newest drone appears to be for reconnaissance purposes only. As such, it follows in the footsteps of the U-2 and the A-12 Oxcart, comanaged by the Air Force and the CIA at Area 51. Save for its name, all details remain classified. It is likely flying over denied territory, including Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia. Fifty-five years after Richard Bissell set Area 51 as a secret place to test-fly the nation’s first peacetime spy planes, new aircraft continue to be built with singular design and similar intention. Despite the incredible advances in science and technology, the archetypal need for reconnaissance remains.

Quick and adaptable, twenty-first-century surveillance requirements means the future of overhead lies in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. The overhead intelligence take once provided by CIA spy pilots like Gary Powers, Ken Collins, Frank Murray, and others now belongs to remotely piloted drones. The old film cameras, which relied on clear skies, have been replaced by state-of-the-art imaging systems developed by Sandia and Raytheon, called synthetic aperture radar, or SAR. These “cameras” relay real-time images shot through smoke, dust, and even clouds, during the day or in the dark of night. But as omnipotent and all-seeing as the drones may appear, there is one key element generally overlooked by the public—but certainly not by the Pentagon or the CIA—when considering the vulnerability of the Air Force’s most valuable asset with wings. Drones require satellite links.

To operate a drone requires ownership in space. All unmanned aerial vehicles require satellites to relay information to and from the pilots who operate the drones via remote control. As the Predator flies over the war theater in the Middle East, it is being operated by a pilot sitting