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rfmcdonaldQuiet Babylon's Tim Maly has a post up, part of the Murmuration Festival of Drone Warfare, describing in text and in satellite images the leading to a drone-strike in October 2012 on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Who was hit, with what, where, launched from where, made where, and so on--the different factors are described. For instance:
Go, read the whole thing.
The Arena
Tappi—where the strike happened—is in Pakistan, near the Afghan border. It is sometimes spelled ‘Tapi’, sometimes called a village, and sometimes called an area. It is in North Waziristan, a mountainous region with a socially and religiously conservative culture. The rugged terrain makes it a difficult place to make a living and many locals emigrate to become labourers. When they can, they prefer a medical education.
After the fall of the Taliban government in Afganistan, insurgents began to move across the border and set up shop. In 2007, concerns over the Talibanization of the region led the National Security Council of Pakistan to hold a meeting to decide how to address the detriorating law and order situation. Their plan of action included the deployment of drones.
The region is marked by frequent blood feuds and Waziri religious leaders have been known to use outsiders—such as US forces hunting al-Qaeda fugitives—as a means of settling scores.
The Drone
The drones that killed Bibi Mamana were almost certainly US drones—MQ-1 Predators, flown by the CIA. They’ve been flying missions and hitting targets in Pakistan since 2004. The vast majority of the more than 360 strikes that have happened in Pakistan have been in North Waziristan.
The MQ-1 Predator was originally designed to be a high endurance surveillance platform, but later upgrades allowed it to carry a missile payload. A Predator can fly up to 740km, hold above a target for up to 14 hours, and still return to base. These high endurance times are perfect for the CIA, as it means they can keep a constant presence over an area, observing it for weeks.
Drones are not individual objects. They are distributed hyper-entities, smeared across the globe. A typical Predator system configuration might include four aircraft, one ground control system, a data distribution terminal, and a sattelite network to enable over-the-horizon control. The main piloting is often done from a remote location, but a ground crew is required in the field to maintain, launch, and land the aircraft.
Go, read the whole thing.
