US concerned about Iran drone program

AFP/The Australian:

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has expressed concern over Iran's aerial drone program, saying the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.

"Countries like Iran are developing their own UAVs and already have a UAV capability," Mr Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee, using the acronym the military uses for drones - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

"That is a concern, because it is one of these areas where - if they chose to, in Iraq, in Afghanistan - they could create difficulties for us."

Drones however "are relatively slow fliers and we have a very capable Air Force", Mr Gates said.

"So I actually think that our ability to protect our troops from these things, particularly in a combat theatre like this is quite good."

The main concern, he said, was that terrorists could get hold of the drones.

...

While our air force is quite capable, it has not been allowed to use many of its assets recently in Afghanistan. But I do think the drones would be vulnerable to attack. Israel shot down a Hezballah drone during the 2006 war.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more