US military looks at supplying troops with drones

WASHINGTON, Dec 9, 2009 (AFP) - The US military is taking a serious look at resupplying combat troops in Afghanistan using unmanned aircraft, an Air Force general said Wednesday.

Faced with the task of delivering vast amounts of supplies by land and by air to troops in the mountainous, land-locked country, senior officers were considering using pilotless aircraft to help with the job, said US Transportation Command chief General Duncan McNabb.

After talks with the US Marines Corps, McNabb said his command had acquired a number of drones for possible supply missions.

"We bought some, to see how that would work," he told a gathering of defense writers.

The general said drones could ferry smaller-scale cargo and retrieve global positioning system (GPS) receivers left behind when supplies are airdropped.

"You might be able to, for instance, not only deliver medicines and smaller kinds of cargo, you could also use it to bring back out the GPS receiver," he said.

Pallets dropped from military aircraft are guided to ground using GPS receivers and sophisticated software. But retrieving the receivers can pose a headache.

With the amount of airdropped cargo growing, using drones could make "the cost of an air drop pretty cheap" and offered an "exciting" prospect, according to McNabb.

But the general did not say when his command might be ready to launch drone supply missions.

The military and spy agencies have dramatically expanded the use of unmanned aircraft in recent years, using them mainly for intelligence gathering, as well for attacks on insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.


by Sara Hussein
(c) 2009 AFP