Flying bots rule the skies in combat zones around the globe. Now the battle is on between the joystick jockeys and the fighter jocks.
By Noah Shachtman
The F-16s had come and gone, dropping a pair of 500-pound satellite-guided bombs on an insurgent safe house in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.
Now it was up to Major Shannon Rogers to see whether they had hit their target. With a tug of the throttle, he brought his plane to
10,000 feet for a closer look.
Typically, it takes hours, even days, to get an accurate idea of the damage bombs have caused in a war zone. GIs on the ground have
to make their way to a target and report back. But Rogers can get the job done in minutes.
As his plane passed over the site of the safe house, dawn was breaking - a clear, sunny morning that had yet to give way to the August
heat. But for Rogers, it was after sunset. He was operating his Predator unmanned aerial vehicle - a drone - from a secure terminal
at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas.
Tracking the feed from the Predator's camera, Rogers could see rubble where the safe house had been. He and a sensor operator
on his crew watched a crowd gather to ogle the destruction. Then a white Dodge pickup rolled up with a .50-caliber heavy machine
gun in the back. Five men climbed out, ran into the house, and returned to move the truck to a secluded alley. They began loading
ammunition and arc-welding the .50-cal's mount.
Back at Nellis, Rogers wasn't limited to just assessing battle damage. He could also inflict it; his Predator was equipped with
two Hellfire laser-guided missiles. Rogers, who flew F-15s (call sign: Smack) before switching to drones, radioed for authorization
to destroy the Dodge. He got it.
