‘Every brigade has its own drone’

Major General Jeff Buchanan, chief spokesman for the Unites States Forces in Iraq (USFI), spoke to the Bureau last month about the role that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have played in the Iraq War. A veteran of three tours in Iraq, he argues that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance are the fields that have benefited the most from drone technology.

Could we start first by talking broadly about how the US’ use of UAVs in Iraq has changed over the years? Use of UAVs has increased quite dramatically since they were introduced back in 2007, but particularly in the last year. To what extent is this an indication of their effectiveness?

Remotely piloted aircraft [RPAs] have been very useful here over the years and their use has, like any system over almost nine years of use – across all our nine years of experience in Iraq, many of our systems have changed as the conditions have changed. I think this is broadly reflecting the fact that the military really works hard to be a learning organisation. We look at our tactics, how we use the systems we employ, the nature of our joint and inter-agency coordination – all of these things have changed over the last nine or ten years as we’ve learned from other nations, from our inter-agency partners, from our own forces and from the Iraqis that we’ve dealt with.

So we’ve changed our use of all things, and I think that RPAs are just one of those. And technology has evolved over time as well, so what started out as a system that was only available in few numbers and controlled at the highest levels has now made it down. Every one of our brigades has its own RPA. That’s part of our structure, so we have the tools that these aircraft provide available at a much lower level than before.

Courtesy USFI

I think that the dominant use in Iraq has not been for providing ground attack or things like that. It’s really all been about intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), as a tool for commanders to help better understand what’s going on.

Source: thebureauinvestigates.com

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