Having seen the difference this initiative has made, the US Army has decided to duplicate the same thing in Afghanistan next year. Of course, the use of armed and unarmed drones in Afghanistan will not be a new thing; there are already hundreds of them operating over the skies of the country, hitting insurgent targets. Predator armed drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US Special Operations Command have also been firing missiles at targets inside Pakistan almost daily for the past several weeks, killing militants as well as Pakistani civilians, according to Pakistani officials. In the last strike two missiles fired by a Predator drone hit a residential compound in the Tapai area of North Waziristan last Thursday, killing at least nine people. According to reports, some Arab nationals were among the victims.
A senior administration official said increased air strikes by remotely piloted CIA Predator drones, as well as a commando raid by US Special Forces deep in Pakistan on Sept. 3, were having an impact on al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, who are increasingly using the tribal areas of Pakistan as sanctuary.
“The people on the ground realize that the safety they’d grown accustomed to wasn’t so safe,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, due to the ongoing operations. “It puts them on the move. It has them talking on their networks. They may devote more manpower to posting guards and sentries. They move around and move away from the border and don’t stay in one location as long.”
These Predator strikes, which certainly have an impact on insurgents, are reactive and rapid responses to the growing number of attacks over the border. They will continue and will be strengthened and consolidated by the new Afghan drone initiative called Task Force ODIN-A, which is an acronym for “Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize.” ODIN-A is set to begin early next year and will coincide with the planned deployment of 4,500 additional US troops to Afghanistan.
Senior US military officials confirmed the initiative and said the drones and manned surveillance aircraft would be deployed to identify insurgent targets inside Afghanistan, including on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan. The US military will use the information gathered by the drones and the aircraft to launch air strikes and ground attacks on the targets.
According to senior US officials, the new drones that will be deployed to Afghanistan will be unarmed ones which are designed to give lower-ranking army commanders access to the real-time surveillance and intelligence information that was generally reserved for senior ranks. The US military believes that this access to real-time intelligence by small fighting units has made a very important difference in the decline of insurgency in Iraq, namely fewer ambushes, fewer attacks, fewer improvised explosive devices and fewer casualties. The same thing can be replicated in Afghanistan.
Although the Afghan initiative hasn’t been formally announced, Defense Secretary Robert Gates alluded to it during a congressional hearing last month, saying that he was going to “recreate” the Iraq effort and replicate it in Afghanistan with additional assets.
Whether the Iraqi effort will be replicated and to what extent in Afghanistan, we will have to wait and see. However, if it does happen, drones will certainly prove their value in fighting insurgencies, which will be a major turning point for modern warfare.
